Forgotten CDs

Rolf, I know this is not the place but I just wanted to say a quick thanks for your posting of Nielsen's first symphony on the old Docent site. Tremendous performance under Jenson that puts every modern rival in the shade. Did he record the other 5 symphonies? Do you have them available for download?

best regards, Barry

Torontonian, I hope you enjoy it (though at £4.85 it's not a huge deficit if you don't!). I just got out my DG copy and must say it does really have the spirit of "new discovery" about it. (I've also just played Gardiner's Harold in Italy – similarly thrilling Berlioz conducting – but that's another story!) 

Thank you, Rolf, for identifying the French Forgotten CD site. While I am not planning to buy any of their advertised recordings, I was able to finally determine when an LP I bought in New York in 1962 was recorded. The Record Hunter in mid-town Manhattan was having a sale on deleted Concert Hall discs and I bought the recording of the three Arriaga String Quartets shown at the top of the second page of the site. The LP although recorded monaurally in 1950 is very musical, and I still listen to it occasionally. As I recall it was among the first few LPs I bought in the US after having arrived from the UK in August of 1982. Concert Hall discs were not that well pressed and tended to be noisy.

On a final note, a very brief additional exploration of the site disclosed that are many other wonderful musical recordings listed in the Forgotten catalogue which have not been available since the 1950's and 1960's. Irvine Shamrock.

One of the great joys of the digital era is the ability to rip all your CDs onto a hard drive and allow your player to randomly select tracks for you.

Whilst I would only occasionally wish to do this, the shock of re-discovery when you do is thrilling. Recently I was experimenting with my new Oppo BDP83 multi-media player and decided to connect a hard drive full of music. I hit the random selection and a wonderful succession of unexpected (and long dormant) music issued forth in crystal clear sound. When I checked my Squeezebox, there was the same feature, which has since been used rather a lot.

Of course we will mostly sit down to listen to a specific recording but, when undecided, I will so often find myself selecting the same favourite group of GROCs (apologies to EMI) - at the moment Janet Baker singing Gondelfahrer, Jessye singing Befreit, Richter's Chopin Scherzos, Lupu's late Brahms, Horenstein's Mahler 8 - endlessly. Also it would be quite tiresome to be presented with bleeding chunks of opera interspersed with variation sections and symphonic index points. But the trick is to allow your ear to be captured by something once-loved but forgotten and switch to normal play to hear out the rest of the piece.

I'm sure a great number of us have thousands of recordings and probably only listen to a fraction of them. Rip them onto disk and liberate the music from your shelves!!! 

I came across a truly forgotten cd last week -- the Tebaldi/Di Stefano Forza conducted by Santini.  It was so forgotten, I couldn't even remember buying it.  I did remember listening to it at a friend's house one evening.  Then I remembered that he leant it to me.  Now I remember -- this is his forgotten cd!!!  And he's since moved to Chicago!

Picking up the new cover CD this morning  I noticed the excerpt from the CD of the Month -Anima Eterna/Immerseel- and having been intrigued by the review put it on. Expecting to be shocked and disturbed by a revolutionary new sound I wasn't. I enjoyed the open clear sound of the orchestra, tempo a little steady perhaps, in fact it all sounded quite familiar; what did it remind me of? Or perhaps who? Then in a flash it came -Klemperer! Sure enough his 1963 recording was still on the shelves and the booklet notes referred to the contemporary concert reviews; clarity, attention to detail within firm overall grip etc etc. So I played the same movement and -Fantastique-in fact a little more exciting than Immerseel I thought!