July 23, 2009: First impressions of Classical TV

The Great Recession Project on Examiner.com has run its course.  However, I would assume that there are still many readers who are watching their budgets very closely when it comes to buying concert tickets;  and I feel that, regardless of economic conditions, there is a lot to be said for using the Internet to stay connected to the global concert scene.  The more opportunities we take to attend concerts in the physical world, the better will be the listening skills we bring to the concerts we attend in the physical world.  Therefore, I shall try to continue releasing information about such cyberspace opportunities;  and, as time allows, I hope to offer review treatments similar to those I give to concerts here in San Francisco.  From that point of view, I wish to draw upon a press release I received yesterday announcing the launch of a new virtual concert service:

[begin press release]

NEW YORK, NY – July 23, 2009 – On July 23rd, Classical TV announces the launch of a website with the mission to offer no less than the greatest performing arts online—a library of full-length videos of opera, ballet, drama, jazz, pop and documentaries available for streaming online to home computer and entertainment systems. The site offers both an exclusive library of videos of performing arts events available for unlimited free streaming along with frequent pay-per-view special events: hot-ticket current season performances from the world's great opera houses, theaters, and concert halls for $4.99 or $9.99 for a 72-hour pass.

Unparalleled Library of Exclusive Content, Unprecedented Access to Everyone

Classical TV currently features over 250 hours of free content out of the 1200 hours of material it has acquired and is regularly adding to the site. These include performances from the world’s most prestigious stages such as New York's Metropolitan Opera House, St. Petersburg's Mariinsky (Kirov) Theater, Chatelet Theatre Paris, the Salzburg Festival and many others. Artists featured include Plácido Domingo, Renée Fleming, Anna Netrebko, Roberto Alagna, Martha Argerich, Pierre Boulez, Lionel Hampton and many more.

This rich collection of material ranges from classic performers of the mid-20th century like Maria Callas to highlights from the current season such as Doctor Atomic offered as a high definition stream from the Metropolitan Opera. In addition to these bright stars and famed performing arts venues, Classical TV offers up treasures from the archives that have rarely been seen but are now available to a worldwide audience. Never before has this material been so widely available, on-demand, to worldwide audiences at little or no cost.

New pay-per-view performances will be offered at least once each week. Upcoming special events at www.classicaltv.com, priced at $4.99 or $9.99, include high definition streams from the Metropolitan Opera’s 2008-2009 season such as La Sonnambula with Juan Diego Florez and Natalie Dessay, and Thaïs with Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson plus Eugene Onegin from the Bolshoi Opera, Giselle from Dutch National Ballet, Peer Gynt from the Zurich Opera and much more.

Editorial Content from Renowned Arts Journalists

Classical TV also offers a wealth of lively and informative exclusive editorial content including feature articles, topical playlists, insider columns, and cultural news that give fresh insights into the world of classical performance and context for Classical TV’s vast library. Classical TV's roster of commentators includes some of the most respected cultural journalists including David Shengold, Vivien Schweitzer, Claudia La Rocco, Glenn Kurtz and Robert J. Hughes (whose Classical TV blog Hughes Views offers his unique perspective on the latest news from the current cultural scene).

Classical TV Offers Viewers Pay-per-View Content Free on Special Launch Weekends

To celebrate the launch, Classical TV will invite viewers to experience the site by offering limited-time free access to the Opening Gala of the 2009 Salzburg Festival, exclusively available from Classical TV. This concert – featuring the Vienna Philharmonic led by Nikolaus Harnoncourt performing waltzes and polkas by Josef Strauss and Schubert’s Eighth Symphony – will usually be available on the site for $9.99 for a 72-hour stream. From July 30th to August 1st, viewers will have free front-row access to this performance from the world’s most prestigious classical music festival just days after the event takes place in Vienna’s Great Festival Hall.

In the months of August and September, Classical TV will continue to offer limited-time free access to two special presentations showcasing the breadth and depth of its pay-per-view library. From August 13th-16th viewers will be able to access an exclusive free preview of the Best of the Montreux: Three Legends. This production offers classic performances from the world renowned Jazz Festival by Nina Simone (from 1976), Johnny Cash (1994) and Ray Charles (1997). Pavarotti – The Duets: The Best of Pavarotti and Friends will be available free from September 3rd-7th and features the celebrated tenor performing with Elton John, Bono, Andrea Bocelli, Sting, Mariah Carey, and Celine Dion. These performances are highlights from the series of United Nations charity concerts Pavarotti held each year in his home town of Modena, Italy to benefit War Child, and victims of war and civil unrest in Bosnia, Guatemala, Kosovo, and Iraq. Normally $9.99 each for a 72 hour stream, both of these presentations will be offered to viewers free on these Classical TV launch weekends.

[end press release]

To supplement the above "official" announcement, I should state that I have already made my first serious visit to the Classical TV home page.  There is a lot to explore;  and, at first blush, it seemed much easier to find the for-fee items than the free ones.  However, as the I Ching teaches, perseverance furthers;  and I was delighted to discover in the Classical Music Video category a free offering of four works by Edgard Varèse conducted by Pierre Boulez.  Given how difficult it is to find any performances of Varèse's music, let alone hear recordings of his work on the radio, I was duly impressed with my discovery and dropped everything to view the program.

On the whole it was a highly instructive listening experience.  I knew two of the works, "Octandre" and "Ionisation," very well, not just from recordings but from studying the scores.  I also remember a particularly exhilarating performance of "Octandre" by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center from the days when I lived in the New York area.  The other works on the program, "Offrandes" and "Amériques," I knew only from recordings.  In addition this was my first opportunity to examine closely the work of Pierre Boulez as a conductor in two different settings.  "Amériques" was performed by the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, while the remaining works were performed by his own Ensemble InterContemporain.

Perhaps the greatest shortcoming in the way Classical TV handled this material was that the Program Notes hyperlink did not work.  The music was preceded by a ten-minute background piece on Varèse, but it was no substitute for a good set of notes such as those we expect to find in a San Francisco Symphony program book.  Thus, anyone getting a first taste of Varèse from this video might find him perplexing.  However, the cameras do a good job of guiding the ear through both his structures and the instrumental combinations he uses to achieve his highly characteristic sonorities.

Watching Boulez also involves a bit of a learning curve.  The first impression is that all of his effort goes into using his right arm to beat time according to a rigidly steady pulse.  However, this is a conductor who recognizes the importance of knowing where the climaxes are and making sure that they are recognized as such.  As James Oestreich reported in The New York Times, this is his strategy for conducting the massive symphonies of Gustav Mahler;  and he takes the same approach to these much shorter works by Varèse.  Once one recognizes this strategy, one begins to observe how he uses almost all of the rest of his body to communicate this fundamental understanding of how those climaxes are situated.  This is most evident in "Amériques," which is the longest work on the program;  but it comes into play just as much in the chamber ensemble performances of the three shorter compositions.

So, whatever quibbles I may have with this particular package that Classical TV has made available, I certainly cannot argue with either the price or the quality of the performance.  I also observed that the entire production came from RM Associates, a name I remember from the programs I used to watch on the Ovation Channel before it went out of business.  Perhaps Laura Battle was right when she argued in the Financial Times that cyberspace may be a game-changer for the very nature of the business of classical music performance.  Cyberspace may turn out to be more than a viable alternative for those who are particularly budget-minded;  it may become a primary resource for those serious about their listening experiences, regardless of how generous their budgetary resources may be.