Classical Corner Classical Music Corner (thread #50)

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by George P, Sep 29, 2013.

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  1. Scott Wheeler

    Scott Wheeler Forum Resident

    Location:
    ---------------
    Thanks for the heads up. I wonder if it is the interview with Jim Svejda. I actually got to sit in on that interview. It was crazy. Just the three of us in the little DJ booth.
     
  2. coopmv

    coopmv Newton 1/30/2001 - 8/31/2011

    Location:
    CT, USA
    Now playing the following CD, another recent arrival for a first listen ...

    [​IMG]
     
  3. dale 88

    dale 88 Errand Boy for Rhythm

    Location:
    west of sun valley
    If you want to try some Barber inexpensively, any of the Naxos discs with Marin Alsop are quite good. I especially like the Violin Concerto and the Piano Concerto from Naxos. There is also the James Ehnes on Onyx for the Violin Concerto if you are interested.


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  4. goldwax

    goldwax Rega | Cambridge | Denafrips | Luxman | Dynaudio

    Location:
    US of A
    Thanks, that's a darn sight cheaper than buying the 2-CD version!
     
  5. coopmv

    coopmv Newton 1/30/2001 - 8/31/2011

    Location:
    CT, USA
    Now playing the following early music CD, another recent arrival for a first listen ...

    [​IMG]
     
  6. George P

    George P Way Down Now Thread Starter

    Location:
    NYC
    :thumbsup:
     
  7. George P

    George P Way Down Now Thread Starter

    Location:
    NYC
    This Naxos Barber PC CD is aewsome!!
     
  8. coopmv

    coopmv Newton 1/30/2001 - 8/31/2011

    Location:
    CT, USA
    I think I have 3 CD's of works by Samuel Barber. My classical music collection is definitely Eurocentric and very American-light.
     
  9. feinstei9415

    feinstei9415 Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Bend, IN
    A new Decca Box: "Decca Sound: The Analogue Years" Stay away!!! Excrable sound!

    With great anticipation I ordered this set from Amazon.co.uk last month and received it a week ago. Both the packaging and sound are simply awful. Where are the original liner notes? Where is decent mastering? These things sound like they were mastered during the worst phase of the CD era. They're extremely LOUD (NO DYNAMIC RANGE on any of the CD's that I've listened to so far). Although the repertoire and artistry is esteemed, I couldn't wait to get each disc out of the CD player so my poor aged ears could have a rest. What's most disgusting is that they packaged these things like the worst of budget "grocery store" CD's, with no liner notes, a book with a self-congratulatory essay on how "great" Decca's analogue sound was. Perhaps it was great and perhaps the original packaging was artistically beautiful, but the hacks who mastered this grotesque monstrosity and the hacks who packaged it have sullied Decca's once great reputation by this incredibly awful set.
     
  10. goldwax

    goldwax Rega | Cambridge | Denafrips | Luxman | Dynaudio

    Location:
    US of A
    Have you heard the prior Decca Sound box set?
     
  11. coopmv

    coopmv Newton 1/30/2001 - 8/31/2011

    Location:
    CT, USA
    Looks like they took a page from the Sony playbook ...
     
  12. feinstei9415

    feinstei9415 Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Bend, IN
    goldwax asked:
    Have you heard the prior Decca Sound box set?

    I reply:
    Nope, this was my first foray into these massive sets.
     
  13. coopmv

    coopmv Newton 1/30/2001 - 8/31/2011

    Location:
    CT, USA
    Now playing the following CD, a recent arrival for a first listen ...

    [​IMG]
     
  14. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    This is absolutely hilarious in a sick kind of way. The Decca Analogue Years presented in all their dynamically brickwalled digital glory! But you have to remember that the midlevel executives doing reissues at these conglomerates (the old labels are dead) are 30 or early 40 somethings who mostly listen to brickwalled non-classical music and think it's great. The recordings probably have been given industrial No Noise treatment as well. This shouldn't be a surprise since past Decca remasters have been slipshod, as for example with Maazel's Sibelius cycle.
     
    5-String likes this.
  15. jimsumner

    jimsumner Senior Member

    Location:
    Raleigh, NC, USA
    bluemooze and drh like this.
  16. jukes

    jukes Forum Resident

    Location:
    Southern Finland
    Yet you quoted me quite a lot. (Nothing is clear to me.) -- My orig. post was a question to RiRilll's statement: "As much as I like Haitink this statement of his appears to me as silly." I just wanted to know what individual statement was silly, and provided two examples I think aren't silly at all.

    That's funny:
    I mean, from where do you get the statistics? ;) I don't disagree with the general idea. -- I tend to believe that 21st century software can imitate the expressions of human emotion, but what do I know: haven't followed the developments recently.

    Or the score isn't as exact as public wisdom suggests (after all, it's for the people of the same musical culture; therefore there's a lot that don't need explanations). Perhaps more like the few notes on the events in a play. Like "Mr. A [comes in]: 'Oh, what a rainy day.'" How he comes in and how he expresses the words is up to the decisions of director - and of actor, perhaps.

    (Actually there has been compositions made by computer software already few decades ago, and they were not dismissed by public - not as long as the public was unaware of the origin of the tune. Examples I remember were "serious composers" sometime in seventies or early eighties fiddling with the popular song form by "transposing" the notes of several songs [tangos & such] into computer-based form, then letting the app do the math concerning the harmonies and melodies etc. of the songs, and finally generating a new song based on avarages based on the older songs. But they were not played by a computer but by studio musicians.)

    And then, something Totally Diffrent... Recently I got a one more Beethoven box from probably Seventies: "De negen symphonieën". Klemperer conducting Philharmonia Orchestra; full symphonies cycle, 8 LP's in a box with booklet in the Dutch/Netherlands. I was sort of hoping that they're old EMI mono recordings (the stereo ones I have as an Eighties digi versions: a cd-box). but unfortunately they turned out to be just normal early-Sixties stereo recordings. However, the labels are saying: "Columbia". That was odd, because usually Columbia redordings have been released in Europe as CBS records. But I learned after several searches that EMI really released some records with the Columbia label. It was only afterwards that I remembered that we had some EMI/Columbia releases in mychildhood... Eventually, I bothered to study the booklet and all my questions were answered. It was a book club release from 1970, probably that's also the reason, why there wasn't on box cover any "proper" (fancy colour) picture - keep the costs down.

    Flip side of the find is that some of the LP's are in quite a bad condition. They look almost pristine, the vinyl surface is clear, no scratches. But mostly they sound like they were played with a broken needle/coin. However, I haven't washed the LP's yet. I'm out of the antistatic spare bags. There's no point in washing the LP's and putting back into the (moulded?) bags. Well, at least they smell like there's a mix of dust and mould... Bugger, that was second time I bought something that looked almost pristine but wasn't that at all. Oh well...
     
  17. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    Thanks for your reply and the discussion. :agree:
     
  18. feinstei9415

    feinstei9415 Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Bend, IN
    Mr. Bass wrote:
    This is absolutely hilarious in a sick kind of way.

    I reply:
    I can't hear NoNoise on any of the stuff that I've heard. Just LOUD!!!!! Of course, the majority of these recordings were incredibly multi-miked (the engineers knew what instruments should be mixed higher -- they knew more than the conductor or composer of the music) so the sound picture is so over-dense and miserably captured that NoNoise wouldn't be an issue.

    As I mentioned though, the biggest "crime" here though are the album sleeves. They chose cover art that wasn't the original (substituting 1980's cheap-ass art for the beautiful Decca covers) and they didn't see fit include the liner notes. The RCA reissues manage to reproduced the original cover art and liner notes (albeit very tiny), but the "artists" at Polygram are too uncoordinated and uncaring to do so. Who are the hacks who work on this garbage????
     
  19. John S

    John S Forum Resident

    Location:
    Columbus, OH
    Thanks to all for the Barber recommendations. I am giving the Naxos piano concerto a go, along with this:

    [​IMG]

    My Rough Guide recommends this, besides I need some Korngold.

    BTW, does anybody know what DG means by "4D Audio"?
     
  20. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic

    DG 4D was some variant on the idea of RCA Dynagroove in the sense that they do manipulations of the mastertape (new equalization, noise shaping into ultrasonic regions etc etc) to make what they consider a more realistic sound. Worked out well for Dynagroove. :sigh:
     
  21. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    I was sort of joking about the No Noise. That's an EMI fetish. Yes the Decca engineers spot miked but only in the Phase 4 recordings did they make that the raison d'etre of the pressing. The other classical LPs issued by Decca were predominantly recorded with some variant of the Decca tree omni mic setup and supplemented with some information from the spot mics. The omni mic set up is a bit more diffuse (phasy) with vaguer physical location information than most cardioid mic recordings. This is why there is so much bloom and ambiance on Deccas (analogue I mean). I don't know what recordings are in the referenced box set but it appears that they were remixed as well as compressed dynamically. If you have an LP issue of one of them, play it and compare.
     
  22. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    Now Listening To

    Charles Ives. Choral Music. Gregg Singers. Columbia 360.

    Ives wrote dissonant chamber and orchestral music for the most part but his choral music is more traditional sounding albeit in a rough revivalist manner.

    iveschoral.JPG
     
    Stone Turntable likes this.
  23. Robin L

    Robin L Musical Omnivore

    Location:
    Fresno, California
    The "Omni" microphones used in the Decca Tree are more like Wide Cardioid, with a hot spot that peaks around 15k on axis. The Russian Oktava MK-012 microphone has a similar response pattern. In any case, the Decca Microphone has very accurate image placement. I agree with Scott Wheeler that the classic Decca recordings are about as good as it gets.

    A great LP usefully spotlit to the max, the Solti/Chicago Symphony Orchestra LPs of Mahler's Seventh easily morphs into surround sound on the old SQ processors. Recall the system at College of the Sequoias in Visialia Music Room—4 AR 3a's in surround configuration hooked up to a Quad receiver, 1973/1974. A very cool noise it made. I suspect once you get into the Seventies, the Decca Classical productions went to multi-track, same as everyone else. Difference was, the Decca Engineers knew what they were doing. You could really hear the perspectives shift about when the Tonmeisters were overruled by the Generalmusikdirektors.
     
    Last edited: Nov 3, 2013
  24. George P

    George P Way Down Now Thread Starter

    Location:
    NYC
    :wave:

    Let's continue this here.
     
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