You Cannot Start Without Me: Valery Gergiev, Maestro

You Cannot Start Without Me: Valery Gergiev, Maestro Review

From the time of his emergence on the scene in Western Europe and North America, conductor Valery Gergiev has been controversial. His almost spastic conducting style, his incredibly full schedule seemingly more than one man could fulfill and, most of all, the musical results of his efforts have led to divided opinions among music lovers. This documentary, made originally for New York's public TV station WNET, does a pretty good job of drawing a portrait of the man, delving into such things as his origins, his devotion to the music and culture of Russia, his rehearsal style, and his hectic professional life (and resultantly meager private life). There are ample clips of rehearsals and performances including concert performances of Mussorgsky's Russian Easter and excerpts from many other Russian standards by Stravinsky, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky. Among the extras are sections about the reconstruction of St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater, the Moscow Easter Festival and the like, as well as Gergiev holding forth on topics such as conducting, opera, ballet and management of musical organizations. He is clearly shown to be a force of nature both within and without his native Russia. There are commentaries by his manager, members of the London Symphony, soprano Anna Netrebko and others.

The visual aspects of this DVD are delightful. I had some difficulty understanding some of the spoken parts of the film, at least partly because Gergiev himself has a rather low-pitched gruff voice and his English, while fluent, is highly accented and there are no helpful English subtitles for his spoken English. There are subtitles for the non-English portions of the film.

I would recommend this film to those who are already fans of Maestro Gergiev. And perhaps those who are new to him would find it interesting, although possibly a bit less so. Certainly one has an opportunity to experience the sometimes electric results he gets from orchestras.

Total timing: Documentary 87mins; extras 69mins; Subtitles: English, French, German, Japanese, Russian, Spanish; Sound: PCM Stereo; Dolby Digital 5.1; Picture format: DVD 9 NTSC, 16:9; Region code: 0 (worldwide) playable on NTSC and PAL machines

Scott Morrison

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