I just received this disc back from a friend of mine. It's a bit hard for a non-musician to pass judgment on the worth of this disc. I do however have some notes on what a violin student thought of this production so much of this will be second hand reporting.

This is a two part documentary of the violin by a violinist. The first part of titled 'The Devil's Instrument' and is an examination of 20th Century violin as master Yehudi Menuhin passes away.

The second part is an examination of artists, playing styles and the instruments themselves. It is titled 'Transcending the Violin'.

For a violin student this disc should be mandatory. It's such a rare collection of footage that it's an excellent learning tool for violinists. I would note that the documentary is quite strong for establishing unique styles. It's also quite useful for establishing your own style.

Also notable is the interviews with current violinists and their favourites and inspirations. I go as far as Nigel Kennedy and Sophie Anne Mutter so I'm not exactly an expert.

This disc is about to see the rounds of a local music school so as a educational tool it's quite invaluable.

A lot of the material is fairly inaccessible to the layperson however. For its intended audience there's nothing quite like it.

The picture is 4:3 PAL and of quite excellent quality when the footage is modern. However the documentary relies heavily on archival footage and the quality varies from fairly clean B&W from the 60's to damaged and stuttery film from the early half of this century. Some of the footage is silent B&W recut with the music tracks from other sources.

Audio is an oddity; Dolby 2.0 Mono at 192k/s. Various Dolby decoders will pick it up as Dolby 2.0 stereo. There's excellent vocal intelligibility and adequate audio fidelity for what is mostly old magnetic reel to reel recordings.

There's no extras except for a multilanguage booklet that acts as a listing of the various pieces played.

I original asked for this one to review because I had just finished watching the region 1 Universal release of 'The Red Violin' which is a dramatisation of the life of a violin over several centuries. Like most Universal discs it's close to reference standard especially the dts surround soundtrack. That would be the perfect companion to this disc.