scores

Twilight: The Score
$18.98
Very Good, Close your eyes and it bring either the movie or the book into focus

Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 in Full Score
$16.95
These Dover score editions are best known for their low prices. For the Beethoven symphonies, these are pretty much just reproductions of the 1865 Litolff edition, which contains numerous mistakes that were corrected in later, better editions. The 9x12 format is good for the full score format, making it easy to view all the orchestral parts at the same time. The note heads are big enough to be clearly legible.

Knowing the deficiency of the source edition, my major complaint is there are no measure numbers so it's a big inconvenience for anyone wishing to study specific points in the score.

BTW, all these are available for free download as PDF on [...]. But for me, having these in a book format beats having to print out page after page of PDF which gets messy.

Keeping Score-Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5
$26.98
I'm not a musician or particularly knowledgeable about music so I suppose this DVD was targeted at someone like me. I have watched two DVD's in the series "Keeping Score" the first being the Tchaikovsky 4th and now this the Shostakovich 5th. The tone of the first was playful and very enjoyable & I learnt a lot about how the composer put together his 4th symphony. This current DVD was in stark counterpoint to that in that the stakes for Shostakovich were those of life and death. I really learnt a lot from listening to Michael Tilsen Thomas's explaination of the background and reasoning behind the 5th Symphony of Shostakovich & I thought the performance of the piece as part of the 2007 Proms was outstanding. I want to see and hear more - Mahler's 1st, Brahms' 2nd, Sibelius' 4th all would be welcome additions to this series. Many thanks SF Symphony and MTT.

Keeping Score-Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique
$26.98
'I feel, therefore I am.' For Hector Berlioz and for the Romantic Movement, those were more than words; they were a song of the heart. But with the unprecedented outpouring of emotion in his Symphonie fantastique, Berlioz almost overpowered Paris. This orchestral sonic spectacular, written to win the heart of a beautiful actress, demanded sacrifice from its author and his audience. From romantic daydreams to deadly displays of devotion, the symphony relates an 'episode in the life of an artist,' that artist being the love-obsessed composer himself. Join Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony as they follow Berlioz to the brink and beyond in this volume of Keeping Score. As a bonus, the disc includes a full-length concert performance of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique.