Search - Scotland: A Musical Journey on DVD

A Poorly Organized Scottish Miscellany

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 11/23/2006

(2 out of 5 stars)

"This DVD is like a jewelry box with a drawer containing jumbles of brightly colored beads, gewgaws, and semi-precious stones. Except it is like a box with two drawers: one with travelogue-ish pictures, the other with unrelated music. There are too-color-saturated moving pictures of scenes from the Scottish countryside, islands, mountains, cities. There are bits and pieces of fairly familiar classical music accompanying them. There is no voice-over narration, no narrative thread, no indication when one, say, leaves the Isle of Skye and begins flying over Staffa, no clue about one's whereabouts except in a very vague sense lent by the sketchy titles to each 'chapter', e.g. 'Flight over Scotland and its Islands to Edinburgh', 'Eilean Donan Castle, Isle of Mull, Urquhart Castle, Loch Ness.' Nothing is specifically identified. Presumably one is simply to respond to beauty or grandeur or quaintness of each scene.

The end result is that this 'Musical Journey' is a hodgepodge and although superficially pleasant to look at or listen to, it makes little sense. I can imagine that someone who has traveled in Scotland can identify many of the sights and remember their own experiences of, say, Blair Castle or Calton Hill. But otherwise it is no more a keepsake than a t-shirt or tartan tie gotten at a Princes Street boutique.

The musical excerpts (but not who is playing them) are identified in the accompanying booklet, and are remarkable for their unrelatedness to the scenes they accompany. Why does the G.R.S. variation (No. 11) from Elgar's 'Enigma Variations' accompany pictures of a Scottish weaving mill except for a connection between its quick tempo and that of sheep running in a field or a loom's shuttle? Why does Handel's 'For, behold, darkness shall cover the earth' from 'Messiah' accompany scenes of Loch Rannoch? Why does an excerpt from Lucia di Lammermoor's Mad Scene underscore scenes of Eilean Donan and Loch Ness, and why does the excerpt end abruptly on an unresolved chord?

This DVD seems to have been patched together visually and musically from other DVDs (or, more likely, VHS tapes) and this explains its budget price. I can imagine it playing quietly in a corner in an upscale doctor's waiting room or in the showroom of a travel agency. I have trouble imagining anyone voluntarily watching it more than once in their own home.

But the pictures, confusing as they are, are nice.

Scott Morrison"

Relive your scotland memories

Julie B. | chicago, il usa | 04/21/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"i bought this despite the other negative review. i'm so glad i did. we went to scotland last year, and viewing this was like getting to revisit our whole trip. i got to see things from all sorts of angles we didn't get to see before. we never got to tour fingal's cave so it was great to get to see it just as though we were there. the skies and clouds and mountain and loch vistas were all breathtakingly beautiful. there was the pristine white lismore lighthouse; the multi-colored buildings lining the water at tobermory; a sailboat in oban harbor; the lovely white and gilt interior of inverary castle...we will watch this over and over."