Classical Corner Classical Music Corner

I'm not sure of your playback chain, but you can get a perfectly acceptable blu-ray player for $50 and have it output audio to the AVR via HDMI. Audio quality will be a function of AVR quality, not blu-ray (perhaps excepting extremely low-end blu-ray models).

Many Sony blu-ray players offered SACD as well, although they seem to have dropped the feature. For instance, the $80 BDP-S5100 is a great player and even though I'll stick with my Oppo for SACD, it's nice knowing that it can do it as well (I have the Sony hooked up in the bedroom).

 

I have a Samsung external BluRay drive, intended for obviously my computer. I have used it a few times as a regular DVD/RW. Looks like I will need to buy some kind of a universal player that can play SACD and BluRay for my main stereo system, which is now using an old Rega Planet 2000 CDP ...

 

Maazel conducted my favorite 7th but not from this set though. Still a great set.

 

Keep an eye on your connections - my bluray has optical but my budget amp only takes RCA so I can't take advantage of the audio blurays on my current system.

The downside of enforced downsizing, I had two sound systems at the old place

 

Can we please get back to the discussion of classical music?

This is not a hardware thread.

 

Might want to continue here:

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/best-hardware-for-classical-music.489478/page-3#post-13548105

 

Too much vintage and turntable stuff there.

 

Well, for heavens sake, edumakate us.

 

Thanks, appreciate the reminder - forgot about that thread.

 

The "Wandererfantasie" today. I think I prefer this interpretation to Pollini's, Brendel's, and Richter's. Great sound, too, if just a trifle distant for my taste.

 

Hopefully in the future there will be a budget box set of his Schubert, for those of us who haven't bought any of the individual releases yet.

 

Okay Schubert fans, a query. Most pianists who have recorded the Sonata D. 840 play only the first two movements, the ones Schubert completed. Others have recorded completions of the other movements. Is Richter the only pianist who has recorded the sonata with the unfinished third and fourth movements?

 

Nah. Folks can do what they like.

 

Kempff didn't.

 

Thanks for your opinion. That means you have heard both the SACD and SHM-SACD versions. I will certainly give a try to that surround mix!

 

I have a 78 RPM set someplace with Ray Lev playing the completed movements. I'm sure I have others on LP.

 

I think I've got that set somewhere too. IIRC she plays a completion by Ernst Krenek. I'd guess that was the first recording of the sonata.

 

So you like Paul Lewis Schuberts?

 

Pierre Amoyal, violin
Frederic Chiu, piano
Grieg: Violin Sonatas
Harmonia Mundi, 2000

I found sonatas 1 & 2 OK, but I am curiously not liking their Sonata No. 3. I found their performance boring.

I am going to listen to the No. 3 Sonata by Heifetz, then I have two more versions of all three sonatas to hear.

 

Apologies if this has already been posted in this thread. Here's an interesting and very amusing interview with Dame Myra Hess.



I thought she was being not quite fair in criticizing her recordings, but just today I got the APR set of her recitals at the University of Illinois in 1949. Listening to the first disc now, there's something here, an intensity, a sense of something being communicated to the listener, that's not present in most of her studio recordings in anything like the same degree.

 

Haven't heard any SHM-SACD versions. I would guess the surround mixes would be the same, assuming the SHM-SACD has a surround mix. I'm of the school that values mastering over media.

 

Currently listening to Wind Music from Renaissance Italy performed by Piffaro. Disc 3 of the DG 100 CD History set. All completely new to me and quite enjoyable. This may be the first instrumental music from that period I have sat down and listened to.

 

Good morning-finally got my electricity and cables back yesterday after Friday's storm. This morning I am watching a DVD-containing The Red Baton and Notes Interdites. Gennedy Rozhdestvensky. The art of conducting and conducting/music under the Soviets. Rudolf Barshai is also extensively interviewed. A bonus feature has Rozhdestvensky conducting a performance of his Dead Souls, based on Schnitke. Viktoria Postnikova is featured on piano. The segment about the Soviet system has some very interesting archival footage going back to right after the civil war. Oistrakh, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Richter, Krennikov, Stravinsky, Rostropovich, etc.

 

Can anyone advise what Renaissance musical instrument sounds amazingly similar to a sitar? Thanks.

Two amazingly catchy tunes from Giorgio Mainerio; ecclesiast and sometime occultist

 

Oops! spelling error in my previous post-Gennady not Gennedy.