The Reichsorchester Blu-ray offers decent video and great audio in this enjoyable Blu-ray release
Enrique Sanchez Lansch directs this documentary that examines the history of the Berlin Philharmonic during the years 1933-1945. Using archive material alongside testimony from witnesses present at the time, the film seeks to shine a light on the members of the orchestra itself, charting their destinies, and examining the role they played in Nazi Germany's propoganda machine.
Music is supposedly the universal language, but in the hands of the Nazis, it was just another propaganda tool. As with
so many other supposed cultural touchstones, Hitler and his acolytes proclaimed Germanic (actually "Aryan") music to be
inherently superior to any other, and as a result forever colored (some would say sullied) the reputations of such
composers as Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss, two especially beloved artists of power wielders in The Third Reich.
It's therefore more than a little ironic that the Third Reich, responsible for wreaking so much havoc in the general artistic
life of Germany, may actually have been instrumental (no pun intended) in saving what is a hallmark of Germany's cultural
accomplishments: the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Until the Nazis came along and assumed state control of the
orchestra in 1933, it had been a musician owned and run affair and, as such, was constantly teetering on the edge of
bankruptcy. It's not exactly a secret that many artists live entirely in their right brains and wouldn't know a financial
statement or balance sheet from a veritable hole in their collective heads.
As with so much pain and trauma caused by
Hitler's regime, there's an undeniable melancholy hanging over this part of the Berlin Philharmonic's history, despite the
fact that Nazi control meant that the orchestra at least weathered the sturm und drang of the Second World
War.
However well the Nazis' control of the orchestra may have turned out in terms of the group's survival, there are still
deep
and abiding scars in terms of the members forced to leave, and the enduring ambivalence of those who stayed,
including
the Philharmonic's most famous conductor, Wilhelm Furtwangler (who did not leave Germany until February, 1945).
This is an often fascinating but rather sad documentary that shows that some Germans still haven't come to grips with
the
trauma the Nazi era inflicted on various people. There are still apologists firmly on display here, people who insist that
this
Jewish professional or that wouldn't have stayed in Germany under any circumstances due to professional career
advancement, while family members of these same Jewish players insist their relatives were quite happy in Berlin but
were
forced to leave because of the environment.
While it's obvious there are still lingering aftereffects of the now distant Nazi terror, it's also commendable that the
Berlin Philharmonic chose to commemorate its 125th anniversary (in 2007) by casting some light on this little looked at
era in the orchestra's history. The answers may in fact not be easy, but it's good that someone at least thought to ask
some salient questions.
The Reichsorchester is presented with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. Contemporary interview segments
look decently sharp, if sometimes not very well saturated, and as is to be expected the archival footage varies greatly in
quality.
The Reichsorchester's LPCM 2.0 mix does quite well for this documentary since relatively little of it actually includes
long snippets of music. This is mostly a talking heads affair and the commentary is delivered with good fidelity and
reasonable range.
Wilhelm Furtwängler Conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (SD; 9:57) is the complete performance
of Richard Wagner's Prelude from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg which was filmed in 1942 at a concert given at an
AEG Company plant. Parts of this performance are excerpted in the actual documentary. There are couple of issues with
this presentation: first of all, no subtitles are included, and there is a brief spoken introduction in German, but more
problematically what one assumes was the original 1.37:1 aspect ratio has been masked to create an artificial 1.78:1
framing. This has been done generally well, though occasionally tops of heads are cut off.
The Reichsorchester just barely seems to scratch the surface at times of still lingering ambiguity on the part of some
who lived through the Nazi era, but perhaps that very ambiguity is instructive as to where some at least in Germany are in
terms of coming to terms with the horrors of a bygone age. This is often riveting stuff nonetheless, and comes
Recommended.
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