Music DVDs

Latest releases reviewed

Latest releases reviewed

KAISER CHIEFS
Live at Elland Road Polydor ***

Whether Leeds band Kaiser Chiefs become more than a footnote in the annals of UK pop/rock remains to be seen. Certainly, the band's track record to date would tempt you into betting that after album number four they will split up. Which would – at least in a parallel universe where the likes of Ron Sexsmith, David Mead and Neil Hannon mingle regularly in the top three – be a shame. For all their faults, the band know how to kick it live. Frontman Ricky Wilson gives it socks, so there is no lack in bounce and jump. Indeed, the main flaw of the DVD lies in how ordinarily the show is filmed. Given that it's filmed at the ground of the band's beloved Leeds United, one might have expected some visual oohs and aahs amid songs as punchy as Oh My God, Ruby, I Predict a Riotand Never Miss a Beat. But no; it's just a filmed gig on a football pitch. Extras include six tracks filmed at the BBC Electric Proms.

TONY CLAYTON-LEA

WAGNER: THE COPENHAGEN RING
Soloists: Irene Theorin, Johan Reuter, Stig Andersen. Royal Danish Opera. Conductor: Michael Schonwandt Decca *****

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Wagner's great epic of power and morality presents enormous problems for performance, and few companies or indeed countries have the resources or the appetite to stage it in its entirety. This production from the Copenhagen Opera has a typically sensible Danish approach, setting the drama in different decades of the 20th century, using sets which are both uncluttered and symbolic. The result is a clarity for the unfolding of the cosmic story, something that is often missing from more elaborate productions, illuminating the inner drama while in no way taking from its power and complexity. The singers are well able for the demands of their roles, with Irene Theorin particularly memorable as a modern-day Brünnhilde, who in this production finishes Götterdämmerungas a pregnant widow instead of jumping on the funeral pyre to join her dead Siegfried. And quite right, too.
www.decca.com

COLMAN MORRISSEY