Forthcoming Releases

Hi Petra, Hi Parla,

One of the characteristics of much high-end hi-fi has been the elimination of tone controls (in an attempt to achieve the shortest signal path).  Whilst this raises few problems for new and/or well-engineered recordings, there are many older recordings that require judicious use of tone controls to reveal their best.  Also some CD transfers have been poorly done.  This latter issue may be relevant to the discussion of the new Moravec transfers from Supraphon.  Whilst many of their earlier CD transfer were fine, several recent ones have been very poor: most recently a 2010 remastering of Karel Ancerl's beautiful recording of Dvorak's New World symphony is absolutely dreadful, requiring maximum use of my quite versatile Quad 99 tone controls to make it listenable at all. The recent Talich transfers are rather poor too. So, for your sakes, I hope they have done a better job with the Chopin Nocturnes.

By the way Petra, I agree with you about Moravec's Brahms concerti - superb.

All the best,

Chris

Baiba Skride is not a violinist I have heard from before but her new coupling of the Stravinsky and Frank Martin violin concertos has been in my 'basket' on Amazon for over a week now. The Stravinsky is a difficult work to pull off, it needs humour (which Schneiderhan couldn't find) but don't over do it (as Zehetmair did). Russian humour, quite like Shostakovich's 9th symphony. The coupling of the Martin Violin Concerto is attractive as well, not a work I have heard before but Frank Martin can sometimes be very interesting.

33lp, you wrote; ".....historic recordings which if properly transferred to CD with minimal or zero computer processing can sound far better today than ever on good equipment."

This is important isn't it.  There are many excellent transfers and quite a few less than excellent.  One of the saddest cases is the wonderful recording Decca made of Parsifal at the 1951 Bayreuth Festival (with Knappertsbusch). Following a legal dispute with Teldec, Decca were unable to issue it on CD and then Teldec made a complete hash of the CD transfer; it was soon deleted.  Now you can only get it on Naxos, well transferred from LPs, but sounding less good than my own LPs. There are lots of other examples of classic recordings poorly transferred.

Concerning hi-end equipment though, I must say that though my equipment is not nearly so impressive as Parla's (I have Meridian CD player, Quad 99 + 909, and ESL2905s) my experience has been that poorer recordings have generally become more tolerable as I have improved my Hi-fi.  I suspect that the range of recordings we can listen to is more to do with our individual tolerances as listeners than the equipment we use.  Also, I'm at least a generation older than Parla, I think, and many of the key musical experiences in my 'formative' years come from the late '50s to the early '70s.  I couldn't be without these.  But it is always a pleasure to discover superlative new performances splendidly recorded, my most recent being the wonderful Haydn quartet recordings by the Parkanyi quartet, for which recommendation Parla, again many thanks!

Chris

Like you, 33lp, it was with 78s that I first learned about the wonders of classical music. My grandfather introduced me to Elisabeth Schumann in Lieder, Dinu Lipatti in Bach, Huberman in the Beethoven concerto, Weingartner in Beethoven 9, and others. Even now I still 'hear' the places where the 78s turned over. He was very keen on a soprano called Elisabeth Ohms (singing Leonore's aria from Fidelio).  It was my grandfather who gave me a 'wind-up' HMV horn gramophone and second-hand 78s were a great early source of pleasure for me.  The first hi-fi we had at home coincided with the arrival of stereo.  Kleiber's recording of Figaro, and Karl Richter's first recording of St. Matthew Passion were early LP purchases.  

Prices, then and now, are interesting.  In 1963 I sat in the front Gallery at Covent Garden for Mozart's Figaro. Solti conducted, with Geraint Evans, Tito Gobbi, Joan Carlyle, Mirella Freni and Teresa Berganza. I paid 15/- (75p). The Kleiber recording cost £8.  Today I could probably buy two complete CD sets for the price of the opera ticket!  How times change. The cost of recorded music has fallen much more in real terms than the price of opera tickets has risen. That Kleiber recording of Figaro, though, still stands for me as one of the very greatest opera recordings.

Chris

Speaking of good pianists, Decca is going to release, early August, a recital of the very notable Nelson Freire, called Brasileiro, featuring music mostly of his compatriot Villa-Lobos.

DG is also releasing the same period a new very promising CD of the quite influential and significant guitarist Pepe Romero, called Spanish Nights, with music of Rodrigo, Torroba, Turina and his late father Celedonio Romero. (Nobody seems to be even remotely interested in this lovely and charming instrument and its very interesting repertory).

Parla

Hi Parla.

I'm afraid that you misunderstood my posting. What I meant was that if ALL that you wanted to play had to be on 1) SACD format, or 2) wonderfully recorded but Had to also be in modern sound, etc. that you would be missing out on many wonderful recordings through the years. Not that SACDs or high resolution recordings detract from a wonderful experience! Far from it--and I enjoy those too.

I have a number of older recordings which I relish listening to (like the Cortot/Barbirolli/Chopin recording). Personally, I'd much rather listen to a recording with some hisses and clicks than one which has had too much "filtering" applied to it, etc., that it just sounds flat and lifeless to me. For me, it's the music that matters the most and most of the time I can just sit back and let it speak to me. And yes, occassionally I do run across that odd recording which just is really jarring to me....trying to remember which one it was that I heard not too long ago. It was one from the 1940's...will have to see if I can jog my memory! Hopefully, one of these days, I'll get a new record player and will then have some fun comparing a few CDs that I have to some newly acquired LPs to see if I can hear much difference--and also whether or not it truly makes much difference for me. I can hear and do appreciate the differences between some CDs and their SACD versions, and if possible, I do opt for getting them on SACD. Also between someone who has done a good job remastering an older recording and someone who hasn't so I think that we are all on agreement there.

Anyway, do you listen to and enjoy historical/older recordings? Any cutoff date or method of recording that you refuse to listen to? As in, for example, "I refuse to listen to any mono recordings" (not me here, just an example!)?

Happy listening!

Petra