Stravinsky's Pulcinella - Busoni's Arlecchino by Alessandro Riga / Conductor: David Agler / Artists: Alessandro Riga, Sabina Willeit, Maurizio Lo Piccolo, Marco Alemanno, Luciano Cannito and others / Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna / 2008 DVD Total Playtime: 113 MInutes Region 0 NTSC Made in Europe UPC 8032632536048 Release Year: 2008 Video Format: NTSC Case Type: Tall/DVD Case Subtitle Language: English, Italian Sub-Genre: Ballet Genre: Music & Concerts Run Time: 46 Minutes & 67 Minutes Movie/TV Title: Stravinskij - Pulcinella & Busoni - Arlecchino Aspect Ratio:16:9 Busoni conceived the idea of Arlecchino after witnessing a performance of Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire, and while the work is by no means atonal, let alone dodecaphonic, its hard-edged economy of means definitely points to Busoni's awareness of change in the winds of early 20th-century music. The language is very close to that of Doktor Faust; although the subject-matter of this 'opera buffa' is ostensibly less weighty than that of the latter, it is notable that both are based on masked, puppet-figure plays, suggesting a less than charitable view of human nature, and the musical material of sections of Arlecchino could have been lifted wholesale from the darkest pages of 'Faust'. 2 DVDs. Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna; David Agler.
