I like to watch...

[chebby]

...the London Symphony Orchestra's YouTube channel...

http://www.youtube.com/user/Lso

Sorry to be a bit of a Philistine, but I find classical music far more engaging if I can watch the performers (BBC Proms for instance). It gets me through a whole concert, whereas I get too distracted just playing a CD or listening to a performance on R3.

However, after teasing me with all those great YouTube clips, I can find hardly any LSO DVDs (or Blu-rays) on Amazon.

I would probably end up buying most of them if they produced DVD/BluRay versions rather than just CD/SACDs. (A Blu-ray box-set of Beethoven's Symphonies by the LSO, or a complete Handel's Messiah would be great.)

Does anyone else like to watch as well as listen? (Specifically with respect to classical music.) I don't mean ballet or opera - they are quite well represented on DVD - but any classical music. I like to watch the conductor, the soloists, the choirs and the orchestra as a whole.

(I can't be alone in this.)

Ah well, only a month until the Proms

 

[plastic penguin]

It's a mood thing. If the proms are on and I'm really "up" for it then great. Otherwise I can take it or leave it.

 

[matthewpiano]

I love both. Being able to watch the conductor and musicians can add a great deal to the experience and, as a pianist myself, I particularly love to watch film footage of great players, especially when there are good shots of their hands.

There is, however, something wonderful about listening to a great piece of music on CD through an involving sounding system. I love nothing more than putting a Mahler symphony on, for example, and revelling in the tonal and timbral colours of the music without distraction. I mention Mahler because I am in love with Bernstein's recording of the 5th Symphony with the VPO at present and I couldn't think of anything worse than being distracted from the sheer power of this performance by visual elements. There are other recordings that make me feel the same - Beecham's Berlioz on EMI, the same conductor's Rimsky-Korsakov, Karajan's DG recordings of 'La Mer' (Debussy) and of the Alpine Symphony (Richard Strauss). These interpretations need nothing more than the sound to completely involve me with the music.