My favorite symphony is Rachmaninoff's 3rd in A minor. Can anyone recommend a version, preferably vinyl? It's hard finding any releases of this great work. I lucked out when I got back into vinyl by finding a stash of unplayed (or unopened) DG classical LPs from the 60's and 70's, including some tulip labels, at my local Good Will.
Cécile Chaminade, Danielle Laval - Pieces For Piano (Sonate En Ut Mineur, Arabesque, Impromptu, Automne, Tarentelle) Listening to a wonderful record of one of my favorite under-appreciated composers, Chaminade. The recorded quality here is great but loud birds can be heard after the first band and a strange tape flutter glitch, never the less an enjoyable lp of an obscure composer. My first post in this thread, I'd have thought I posted here before as I collect classical lps, mostly rare repertoire-related stuff. I have a lot of solo piano stuff and that's why I got my newish technics turntable, low wow and flutter. Nice to see a thread like this!
Me too, though it's hard to find piano records that don't have a bit of irritating wow or general qc issues, especially of the sort of obscure stuff I like. A large chunk of my piano obscurities collection came from one chap who was into this stuff before I was even born! and wrote liner notes for Hyperion and others. Small labels often have the most fascinating stuff, the most noisy pressings and the most wf issues, in my experience. It's a real shame as I love this music and it just isn't out there in other formats.
Since collecting classical, I have bought CDs and a few SACDs. For obscure stuff, I look to labels like Marston, APR, Naxos Historical, Orfeo, Pearl, Biddulph, Guild and BBC Legends.
Paulina Drake - Woodland Sketches The Piano Music Of Ethelbert Nevin And Deward MacDowell Keeping with the piano theme and moving to America, this is currently spinning, wow and crackles galore but worth it for these wonderful minitures I have yet to find anywhere else. As a 78 collector Nevin's Narcissus from the water scenes was long an orchestral favorite but I'd never heard anything else written by him.
Ward Marsdon is an absolute genious and I'm pleased to say I contributed a cylinder to the recent Mccormack release! Bidulf are always good but can be very hard to find now.
Wow, very cool that you contributed that! And yes, I am a huge admirer of Ward Marston's work. I subscribe to all the solo piano CD releases from his label. Biddulph CDs were fairly easy to find a few years back at some of the local shops. I have slowed in looking for them, but some of the performances have shown up on later releases on other labels. I love that Biddulph usually used Marston and Obert-Thorn, two of my favorite transfer engineers.
A fellow 78-o-phile! Welcome! Ethelbert Nevin wrote a number of what you might call "greatest hits," (mostly songs) beloved of artists in the acoustic and early electric eras in any event. The ones in my collection are "Mighty Lak' a Rose" (6 recordings--Edison (2), Victor (2), Columbia, Brunswick), your selection "Narcissus" (3 recordings, all Victor, all piano solos), "Oh That We Two Were Maying" (one, Alma Gluck on Victor), "Venetian Love Song" (1 recording, Herbert's Or. on Victor), and the biggie: "The Rosary" (no fewer than 12 recordings, some sung, some instrumental arrangements--Edison (2), Columbia (2), Pathe (3), Victor (4), and one honorary version on Victor LP). And I hasten to add, I have not gone out of my way to collect Ethelbert Nevin! His music seems to be akin to what an old boss said about Barbie dolls: if you have a little girl, don't bother going out of your way to buy them, they'll come to you of their own accord.
Taking a cue from two recents posts, I thought I would put on Rachmaninoff's third symphony, as conducted by the composer. Transfers by Ward Marston.
Ah yes, we spoke about 78s here before I think! I forgot he wrote "maying" goodness knows how many records of that or the rosary are in my collection. I have gone out of my way to collect 78s of Victorian/Edwardian ballads (someone has to rite?) and maying was a real favorite, sung by solo singers and duets, even Alma Gluck and Louise Homer (two women) sang it which I always fond interesting.
I found it very interesting that for the pristine issue of the Schnabel beethoven piano sonatas, Obert-Thorn chose to use the emi lp box set rather than the hmv 78s. I have all those sonata society sets as original issues and always thought they were among the most noisy of all the hmv 78s I've had, the only way they can be enjoyed, by me at least, is with an acoustic soundbox on my home-made large horn machine (based on the EMG machines of the 30s) with bcn/fibre needles, all modern stylie make them sound like a bonfire!
He had already done that entire set using 78s for Naxos Historical. Maybe he wanted to try something different? By the way, I have the entire set and find it to be my favorite transfer of this material.
No revisiting this two CD set. Not my top choice for this repertoire, but his playing sure can be dazzling. There is some clicking on the recording, sounds like fingernails, similar to what I have heard in some of Arrau's recordings.
A sampling of Nathan Milstein from Biddulph's sampler 10 Great Violinists of the Twentieth Century Disc 6 The notes are not always good. They forgot to list 7 of the short pieces on Milstein's disc. I list them all below. The short pieces seem to be from the middle to late 1930's. I enjoyed the short pieces more than the Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1 from 1942, New York Philharmonic, John Barbirolli conducting. CD 6: Nathan Milstein [77:22] Max BRUCH Concerto no. 1 in G Minor, op. 26 Philharmonic-Symphony of New York John Barbirolli (conductor) Frédéric CHOPIN Nocturne in C-sharp Minor, op. post. (arr. Milstein) Franz LISZT Consolation no. 3 in D-flat Major, S. 172 (arr. Milstein) Henryk WIENIAWSKI Polonaise brillante no. 1 in D Major, op. 4 Romance, from Concerto no. 2 in D Minor, op. 22 Karol SZYMANOWSKI Tarantella Bedrich SMETANA Andantino (no. 2 from Aus der Heimat) Zoltán KODÁLY Il pleut dans la ville, op. 11 no. 3 (arr. Milstein) Modest MUSSORGSKY The Seamstress (arr. Milstein) Peter I. TCHAIKOVSKY Scherzo op. 42 no. 3 (arr. Efrem Zimbalist) Igor STRAVINSKY Berceuse (from The Firebird, arr. Samuel Dushkin) Ernest BLOCH Nigun (no. 2 from Baal Shem Suite) Manuel DE FALLA Asturianas (from Siete canciones populares Españolas, arr. Paul Kochanski) Ildebrando PIZZETTI Affetuoso (no. 1 from Tre Canti) Niccolò PAGANINI Rondo à la clochette (from Concerto no. 2 in B Minor, op. 7, arr. Kreisler) Leopold Mittman (pianist)
https://www.amazon.com/10-Great-Vio...reat+violinists&qid=1598499130&s=music&sr=1-1 George, it is a hodge-podge of a set. Many of the works are short pieces and encores or not things usually considered for that artist. You might want to see the Music-Web review for more details about this. Ten Great Violinists of the Twentieth Century BIDDULPH LAB 8101 [RMas] Classical Music Reviews: October 2019 - MusicWeb-International
Has there ever been any kind of a complete Milstein set? I have some 78s and some lps but I do very much like him. And, on the topic of Max Bruch, If you like what you hear with his g min concerto no 1, the rest of his music is well worth getting. I have the thea king clarinet in concert on lp and cd and it gets played regularly, the lp especially! Bruch*, Mendelssohn*, Crusell*, Thea King, Georgina Dobrée, Nobuko Imai, The London Symphony Orchestra, Alun Francis - The Clarinet In Concert (Concerto For Clarinet And Viola,Op.88 / Two Concert Pieces For Clarinet And Basset Horn,Op.113/114 / Introduction And Variations On A Swedish Air,Op.12) a great hyperion record. Also worth finding is te philips duo set of Accardo playing his concertos and the scotish fantasy played by the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig with Masur, all that on 2 cds! I also have a Dynamic label lp of his quartets. Max Bruch, Cvartetul Academica - Quartetti Per Archi N.1-2 My wife who isn't a great lover of classical music said a while back that every time I play anything involving Bruch she thinks he is hugely underrated.
For sound quality and pressing quality you can’t beat Decca, Telefunken , Teldec, Philips, EMI, EMI/Angel, Supraphon, Eurodisc and DG. For quality of artists and performance you will find many of the greats on those labels. Additionally, for Russian performers and repertoire you will want to collect Melodiya. Some will diss the label’s recording and/or sound quality but I have generally found them to be good to excellent.
Let's not forget Lyrita, Chandos, Hyperion (they started with lps) and don't just automaticly decide that classics for pleasure are bad, it's a good way of getting some of the expencive columbia sax issues very cheaply indeed and some of their own recordings are excellent. Also some of the later emi greensleeves are incredible recordings. I wish I'd had your experience regarding Melodiya, most of mine are very noisy and I have a lot of them! also uk pressed turnabout are a different and much less noisy beast than the American issues.
Not sure if it was complete, but there was a DG/EMI set, but it appears to be out of print: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Emi-37CD-Box-Set/dp/B01MTL9QGG
Without having made a systematic study of them, I have the impression the East German Eterna LPs are probably the best (from a technical standpoint) emanating from the old Communist Bloc; at least some, in particular the Beethoven recordings by Kurt Masur and the Gewandhaus Or., were actually co-productions with Philips. Surfaces can be noisy, though. I'd probably give the Czech Supraphon a close second. Note that a good bit of Supraphon material got US release on the Crossroads label (I think it was a Columbia sublabel) and also received US release on Artia. Angel had a series derived from Melodiya, and any number of little US classical labels tried and failed to camp out on the Melodiya catalogue under license over the years (Colosseum is one example--in a bit of irony, the logo was a depiction of the Roman Colosseum's ruins with the inscription "Only Great Art Survives"; the label didn't). Some other Eastern European labels of which to be aware include Hungaroton (Hungary), Balkanton (Bulgaria), Muza (Poland), and Electrecord (Romania). George Georgescu's Beethoven symphony cycle on the last named is well worth having if you can find it; in my experience, the most readily available issue on LP is a box set on a German (budget, I think) label called Lingen Koln, catalogue no. 1124, and it has seen issue on CD (Electrecord-Tobu ERT 1004-2). My copy of the Lingen Koln set, the sole representative of that label in my collection, has one defective record, suggesting pressing quality there may have been questionable, but aside from the account of Sym. no. 1, I liked the cycle enough to chase out the CD reissue. I don't know if that's still in print; it wasn't easy to find even when first released. Coming back round to the original question giving rise to this discussion, I wouldn't say any of the labels from behind the old Iron Curtain consistently rise to the level of technical (pressing, recording, etc.) quality achieved by London/Decca, Philips, or the like, and the artists' names more often than not are relatively unfamiliar (and even unpronounceable) to Western listeners, but some real artistic treasures lurk in their catalogues. [edit] Worth noting for the French horn devotees among us: in the Georgescu Beethoven cycle, a particularly pronounced Eastern European horn sound is on display.
My noisy Melodiya are generally because they were “well” used except for a couple of late era vinyl which were bad. But 60’s, 70’s were pretty good in my experience. I have some of their new( last 2-4 years) reissues and new issues and they are quiet and well made/recorded.