Zdenek Kosler - Musical Journey: Switzerland & Austria & Germany - DVD

The Places - the scenes shown are of the Benedictine Abbey and Church at Einsiedeln, in the Swiss canton of Schwyz. The monastery, in origin dating from the 10th century, was largely rebuilt in the 18th century to designs by Caspar Moosbrugger of Vorarlberg, a former lay brother in the community, and has long been an important centre of pilgrimage to the shrine of the Black Madonna, now in a black marble chapel built in the early 19th century. The impressive interior of the church contains frescos by Cosmas Damian Asam and stucco work by his brother Egid Quirin Asam. The Music - the tour is accompanied by the third and fourth of the four Orchestral Suites by Johann Sebastian Bach and a Concerto for oboe, violin and continuo by Antonio Vivaldi.

The musical tour starts in the Bernese Alps, which offer some of the finest scenery in Switzerland, with glaciers and snow-covered expanses, waterfalls, mountain lakes, and the towering Matterhorn. The Nymphenburg Palace and Park, in Munich, present a contrast, in their baroque elegance. The tour ends with glimpses of the Chiemsee, the largest of the Bavarian lakes, with it's three wooded islands, on one of which Wagner's patron, King Ludwig II, built his folly, the Schloss Herrenchiemsee. Music for the tour is taken from Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, one of the best known of all romantic concertos. This is followed by his 'Souvenir d'un lieu Cher,' three pieces originally for violin and piano, but here orchestrated by the composer Glazunov.

The places visited in this film range from the icy slopes of the Jungfraujoch, approached by the highest railway in Europe, to the tranquility of Lake Thun, the imposing waterfalls of Trummelbach and the distinctive French, German, Italian and Romansch regions of the country. The music for this tour of Switzerland is by Franz Schubert, a composer who spent his life largely in his native Vienna. His famous 'Unfinished Symphony', the two movements of which were written in 1822, were not performed until 37 years after Schubert's death, when the manuscripts were discovered at the home of Schubert's friend Anselm Huttenbrenner. The music continues with Schubert's 'Fifth Symphony', written in the space of a few weeks in 1816, when the composer was nineteen.