Poor video quality compared to others
sansai | 09/17/2009
(2 out of 5 stars)
"I bought this DVD for one thing only: Josef Hoffman playing Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp minor on NBC. The quality was very poor compared to the same footage on "The Golden Age of the Piano" ("The Art of Piano" also contains the same performance, but I cannot judge the quality on YouTube). "Golden Age" has particularly crisp and clear video and audio, and also includes the NBC announcer introducing Hofmann (unlike "Unrivaled" and "Art of Piano"). However, the "Golden Age" narrator annoyingly speaks over the performance towards the end, so I was looking for the complete performance without interruption. Not only was the video quality on "Unrivaled" poor, but the DVD would not work in most players I tried, and worked only intermittently in the single player that did work. If anyone knows of a clean, complete copy of this performance (including the announcer, if possible), please leave it as a comment. Thanks."