Elliott Carter – Quintet & Voices (DVD Music)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: B     Extras: C     Music: B

 

 

In another attempt by Mode Records to push the DVD-Video format for diverse music usage, Elliott Carter – Quintet & Voices (1998) offers six music tracks, a video for one of them and interview with the three principals involved, including Carter himself.  The music-only segments are:

 

1)     Fragment II (1997)

2)     Quintet For Piano & Strings (1997)

3)     Syringa (1978 with vocal)

4)     Tempo E Tempi (1998 with vocal)

5)     Quintet For Piano & Winds (1991)

6)     Retrovailles (2000)

 

 

Lucy Shelton supplies the vocals, but as good as she is, they are the most awkward parts of the disc musically.  Track 2 has a bonus video version, which is an improvement over a simple tel-op for these long music pieces, but calling a tape a film and simply shooting the performance in low light is nowhere nearly as creative as what Mode is doing otherwise with these discs.  The first two tracks make their debut on this disc.

 

The PCM 96kHz/24Bit 2.0 Stereo sound is clear and full, if not exactly a surround piece.  The music runs about 80 minutes and extra video nearly an hour additional.  Again, this is a great way to have the music, even over CD, but you had better like Classical if you expect to get replayability from this title.  With DVD-Audio on the fritz, and even wane thanks to its problematic menus and secondary performance to Super Audio CD in the best cases, record labels are trying to push DVD-Video for music in every way they can.  It was an early surprise moneymaker in the DVD market.

 

Extras outside of the DVD include a SA/CD-sized booklet in several languages and a pullout with additional information who taped the video segments.  Elliott Carter – Quintet & Voices is one of Mode’s better DVD-Video music titles, even if it lacks multi-channel sound and other extras Mode has come up with.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo