Search - High Fidelity: Adventures of the Guarneri String Quartet on DVD

Intimate

Amos Lassen | Little Rock, Arkansas | 11/30/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

""High Fidelity: Adventures of the Guarneri String Quartet"



Intimate



Amos Lassen



The Guarneri String Quartet is world famous and it is brought into our homes by the wonderful new DVD from First Run Features. As we listed to great pieces by Haydn, Schubert, Mozart and Beethoven we watch the quartet during rehearsals and recording sessions an on tour to places like Prague, Venice, Baden-Baden and across America. This is one of the best music films that I have ever seen and it is important because the quartet is set to retire at the end of this season.

The quartet has received many an award among which is the highly prestigious Award of Merit from the Association of Performing Arts presenters. Likewise their recordings have won many awards and their collaborations are world famous.

The film is created by Allan Miller who was part of the creative team that gave us "From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China".

The DVD captures not only the music of the masters but also the music of the quartet and the personalities that make it up. The quartet has been together for twenty-five years and what a tribute to them and a way to remember their wonderful harmony.

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Dull

Ghost(Ghost(M)) | 05/31/2010

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This is a dull old (1989) documentary. The film makers obviously didn't have any interesting idea to build the film around: it's all rather loose, wordy but unedifying, mouldering, totally lacking in incisiveness. On the positive side, there's a good amount of music here, so if you're a fan of this group, you will probably like the film somewhat, simply because of the opportunity to see the guys move around, say something, and play music. Another thing that I found annoying was that they were constantly out of tune."