This DVD is actually two films in one. The first half is Conducting Mahler which intersperses pieces from Mahler's 10 symphonies with the thoughts of conductors Chailly, Haitink, Abbado, Muti, and Rattle. The 2nd half is I Have Lost Touch with the World, which is similar but only covers the 9th Symphony.
I have been a Mahler devotee for 30 years, so I was very excited when this DVD was acquired by my library. The pluses are the conductors' thoughts and experiences, the ability to see them conducting up close, and the pieces themselves as performed by world class orchestras. The negatives are many. There are no English subtitles, and their absence is keenly felt because of the WRETCHED sound editing (So many key ideas and passages are lost because of bad miking, particularly of Haitink and Abbado discussing the 7th ,8th and 10th symphonies in the film's first half.) And you must constantly adjust the volume, as the music is miked very loud but the interspersed interviews are miked very low. As wonderful as it is to hear the pieces from the 10 works covered in the film's first half, it is equally frustrating that they are not identified on the screen, and they are sometimes not from the symphony just discussed. (The irony is that the played pieces ARE identified in the 2nd half of the film -which is only about the 9th Symphony!) The conductors' thoughts vary in their effectiveness,Chailly's being perhaps the most enlightening. Abbado, while a wonderful Mahler conductor, is not a good speaker in this film. I was so disappointed that the filmmaker did not include Benjamin Zander instead , as he is justly famous for both his Mahler conducting and his articulate teachings about Mahler.
The 2nd part of the film, I Have Lost Touch With The World, is for me the most valuable part of the film, as it is a coherent well-ordered and more-than-superficial look into the grand 9th and all its parts. The words of famed Mahler expert Henry-Louis de la Grange I found particularly valuable. (His inclusion in the first half would have helped a lot.) The filmmaker has tackled a very big project here. There are currently no other films that attempt to cover this ground, so I am grateful for the film and all it teaches me(as I watch and rewatch it.) And you will most likely learn and benefit from seeing it. I only wish it did not have so many deficiencies.
