Keeping Score: Holidays Symphony - DVD

As seen on PBS, the San Francisco Symphony's ongoing series, Keeping Score, explores Berlioz's romantic masterpiece, Smymphonie Fantastique. This orchestral sonic spectacular, written to win the heart of a beautiful actress, demanded sacrifice from it's author and his audience. From romantic daydreams to displays of devotion, the symphony relates an Inchepisode in the life of an artist,Inch that artist being the love-obsessed composer himself. This DVD includes as a bonus a full-length concert performance of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique.

Shostakovich may have hidden a subversive cipher beneath the surface of his life-saving Symphony No. 5. After his opera Lady MacBeth was publically condemned as immoral by Pravda, the Soviet newspaper, Shostakovich knew he only had one chance to redeem himself. When he penned this fifth symphony, the composer was literally writing for his life. Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony explore the hidden language of this masterwork. As a bonus, the DVD includes a full-length concert performance of this symphony.

Directed by Gary Halvorson, David Kennard, Joan Saffa.