Search - Salzburg: A Musical Journey - A Musical Tour of the City of Mozart on DVD

Pretty Pictures and Music Haphazardly Organized

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 12/06/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The only other DVD in this 'Musical Journey' series of DVDs from Naxos that I've seen is the one about Scotland, and it was dreadful. This one is marginally better, largely because the travelogue-type pictures don't skip all around so that you have no idea where you are. In this DVD one is told that one is visiting, say, Hohensalzburg Fortress or St. Peter's Cemetery and Collegiate Church. Still, there is no voice-over or subtitle identifying precisely what one is seeing at the various sites and the booklet notes don't do much more than give a little historical background. There are poorly organized (and very hard to read) on-screen paragraphs about the various places but the DVD is awkwardly programmed so that one keeps getting dumped back to the beginning of the program after reading the text. One can also read in both the booklet and in on-screen text what music is being played in the background. These selections tend to be brief excerpts from various of Mozart's works, e.g., the middle movement of the Clarinet Concerto, one of the German Dances, the overture to Così fan tutte. Nowhere are we told who is playing these excerpts, but we are given catalog numbers for Naxos CD releases of the works.

It is hard for me to imagine who would be buying this DVD. It's the sort of thing one can imagine buying in a souvenir shop in Salzburg except that the booklet is in English.

I can't give this much of a recommendation except for those who might want to have a souvenir of a trip to Salzburg. Still, it's pleasant to watch and listen to idly while doing the ironing or polishing one's shoes.

Scott Morrison"