Product Details

• Actors: San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas
• Directors: David Kennard, Joan Saffa, Gary Halvorson
• Format: Classical, Color, Import, NTSC, Widescreen
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: French, English
• Region: All Regions
• Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: G (General Audience)
• Studio: San Francisco Sym
• DVD Release Date: November 10, 2009
• Run Time: 109 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B002SKF7HQ
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #111,532 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shostakovich Mocks Stalin, December 28, 2009

By 

Zarathustra (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Keeping Score-Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5 (DVD)

In 1924 Lenin died and Joseph Stalin, named as one member of a troika to rule the Soviet Union, took sole power as leader of the country despite Lenin's earlier warnings. In the early 1930s, Stalin launched his disastrous collective farming plan, which resulted in six million deaths from starvation in the Ukraine alone. In the late 1930s, Stalin launched his Great Purge, which resulted in the imprisonment of thousands of citizens in Gulag labor camps. No sector of society was spared this punishment and many artists were targeted.
In 1936, Shostakovich fell from favor after his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District was sharply critizised by Stalin and the Communist Party apparatus. Fearing for his life, Shostakovich composed his triumphant Fifth Symphony, which brought him back into favor with Stalin and the Party.
But was the Fifth really what it seemed? Michael Tilson Thomas dissects the symphony and shows that Shostakovich, taking a cue from Mahler's Fourth Symphony, was secretly mocking the Stalin regime by changing a few notes from the expected major key to a minor key.
Thomas presents newsreel footage of the 1930s to illustrate the fear that pervaded Stalin's reign and interviews artists from that age who tell what it was like to live under Stalin's rule.
A complete performance of the Fifth Symphony follows.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow!!!, November 13, 2009

By 

M. J. Edwards "Cityfan2" (Charlotte, NC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Keeping Score-Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5 (DVD)

I'm not a musician or particularly knowledgeable about music so I suppose this DVD was targeted at someone like me. I have watched two DVD's in the series "Keeping Score" the first being the Tchaikovsky 4th and now this the Shostakovich 5th. The tone of the first was playful and very enjoyable & I learnt a lot about how the composer put together his 4th symphony. This current DVD was in stark counterpoint to that in that the stakes for Shostakovich were those of life and death. I really learnt a lot from listening to Michael Tilsen Thomas's explaination of the background and reasoning behind the 5th Symphony of Shostakovich & I thought the performance of the piece as part of the 2007 Proms was outstanding. I want to see and hear more - Mahler's 1st, Brahms' 2nd, Sibelius' 4th all would be welcome additions to this series. Many thanks SF Symphony and MTT.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant disc, December 9, 2009

By 

Timothy Ferris (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Keeping Score-Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5 [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)

MTT's lucid, lyrical analysis conspires with spectacular cinematography and sound to create one of the finest classical music videos ever made--an inspiring work that surpasses even the justly famous television studies contributed by such earlier titans as Leonard Bernstein and Glenn Gould. If you've been wondering how far your HDTV/surround system can take you, look no further.