What a dud. What a bore. What a shame. Don't get me wrong... I love Uri Caine's stuff, especially his eclectic avant-jazz reimaginings of music by Gustav Mahler (and Wagner, Bach, Schumann, and Beethoven too.) And I also adore Winter and Winter, probably the classiest record label around these days.
So when I found out they were branching out into DVD releases, I naturally expected great things - especially since one of their first "Film Edition" projects, which are tantalizingly described as "celluloid improvisations," was inspired by Uri Caine's Mahler explorations.
Gustav Mahler: detaching from the world certainly has the trademark Winter and Winter look and feel, from the corrugated bio-friendly packaging to the sparse, artsy booklet inside. The actual content of the DVD, however, is unfortunately a lot like a Ken Burns documentary on quaaludes — if such a dreadful thing can even be imagined.
The soundtrack is excerpted from Uri Caine's Primal Light and Dark Flame CDs (with one track from Wagner e Venezia) so there's no new music to be heard here if you are already familiar with those albums. But it's all good stuff, to be sure (even though the selections are often faded in and out and edited).
Except you have to endure Uri Caine's narration as well, and believe me, he's no James Earl Jones or Morgan Freeman. Caine's spoken delivery, completely unlike his music, is dry, monotone, and lethargic. He's also clearly reading from a scripted text that consists mainly of biographical anecdotes, excerpts from Mahler's letters, and so forth - the usual PBS-style documentary fodder.
If you prefer, you can switch to the German narration read by Fritz Winter instead, who is also credited as the film's writer and director and is presumably related to Stefan Winter, the label's founder and executive producer. Maybe that's how he got the job.
Article comments
1 - Bill Gallagher
Thanks, Stephen, for your cut-to-the-chase review of this DVD. I was just about to go to eBay to buy it (at $21 with shipping, rather than the premium price, but even so ... ). Now I won't, and you spared me from being disappointed.