Classical Corner Classical Music Corner (thread #19)

Ummmm YES compared to Mozart....Beethoven.....Shostakovitch....ect ect

 

Oh yeah it's SACD.....I thought it was a pretty good deal for NEW $10 shipped!
Dunno if I'd got it on standard CD.

 

Neeme Jarvi seems to do a lot with lesser known Composers...you notice that?

 

Favorite purchases of 2010

OK - as the end of the year approaches, I thought I would ask - what is your favorite purchase of 2010? My choice is pictured. I had some physical problems in the spring (fully recovered, I say with gratitude), and the Huelgas set was a great comfort at the time.

Post-Gregorian - pre-Baroque music holds a special appeal for me. This set will provide a great deal of pleasure for many years to come.

 

Really really hard to slim down the VERY favorite!!

But I'd hafta say it's a tie tween these 2 that were recommended to me (us) here on the forum.
Both absolutely stunning....Piano titles believe it or not!

 

First of all, I don't have the CD, I only have heard the vinyl. As far as I remember, I wasn't bothered by heavy distortion.
But it is a DG disc. Such deterioration is well possible.
Better not expect sonic goodies from a DG recording, IMO.

 

Damn! If I'd known this would happen, I would have picked up another five or six copies and kept them sealed...

 

I confirm. I have three versions of CB and this is far the best, however, Fischer-Dieskau is overloading the mics at several points and pronounces the word 'Sum' in Ego sum abbas as 'Zoom' which is the German (wrong) pronunciation. SHould be 'Soom' abbas...

 

Now Playing...



Suites 4-6

 

Easy. The LB Symphony Edition.

 

A Century of Romantic Chopin
54001-2 (4 CDs for the price of 3)
A Century of Romantic Chopin is a four CD-compilation commemorating the Chopin bicentennial year. The set will include some 65 pianists, going back to Francis Planté and Vladimir de Pachmann who were born when Chopin was still alive. Other pianists in the set include Josef Hofmann, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ferruccio Busoni, Moritz Rosenthal, Ignace Jan Paderewski, Ignaz Friedman, Alfred Cortot, Jan Smeterlin, Rosita Renard, Claudio Arrau, Guiomar Novaes, Benno Moiseiwitsch, Solomon, Arthur Rubinstein, Emil Gilels, Earl Wild, Jorge Bolet, and others. All of Chopin’s etudes will be represented, as well as a selection of preludes, mazurkas, waltzes, nocturnes, ballades, and scherzi, each performance conveying a personal approach to the music. Some of the recordings will already be familiar to pianophiles because of their legendary status, while many others will be delightful surprises, as they are taken from concert performances and out-of-print recordings.

Liner notes - http://www.marstonrecords.com/chopin/chopin_liner.htm
Complete Track listing - http://www.marstonrecords.com/chopin/chopin_tracks.htm
Classics Today Review - http://www.classicstoday.com/review.asp?ReviewNum=12942

 

Thank you all; I appreciate your help and comments a lot!
Ok: despite that flaw the Jochum is one of the two or three Carmina Burana discs I am going to buy.
Stokowski, Runnicles, Shaw: have to choose two out of this trio.
The Previn and Muti were candidates as well but I've read that the current available EMI classic discs are not of the highest quality

 

Seems like my best "purchases" this year were gifts. My friend Allen gave me a copy of this soul-rattling set of Bruckner symphonies as conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler:



My wife picked up Natalie Merchant's Leave Your Sleep. I realize that many of you would question the inclusion of a "Pop" selection in a classical thread, but this polystylistic song cycle of poems for the young and curious is the best mash-up of the classical and the popular since the heyday of Cathy Berberian.



And my Stepbrother handed this wonderful sounding—50 year old!—H.H. Scott 299b integrated amp. Suddenly my LPs are sounding good as new.

 

My favourites seem to be these two:

 

How nice, Robin.

 

I also sold some gear...I guess gifts for others, and am picking up today this Luxman L100...now I will be able to have both stereo and mono TT's and both tape machines (R2R and Cassette connected)!!! I am simplifying so I can buy myself a Lute!!

 

Both very appealing.

By the way Amazon has a review of the O'Dette by the Toronto Glove (sic) and Mail.

I thought that was a most appropriate source for music from the age of knights in armor.

 

portability my friend!!!

 

Now listening to this collection of pieces by Bruno Maderna. The second movement of his Composizione in tre tempi (1954) is a high-frequency hearing-loss test.

 

I was going to duck the 2010 favorite question, but then remembered this disc, which I will nominate for best of the year. It's too bad Amazon isn't offering the opening track, the Fantasia in c minor, K.475, for download by itself (it's "album only"). Otherwise I'd shower 99-cent gifts among followers of this thread. In any event I encourage everyone to listen to it, if you have even the slightest interest in Mozart on fortepiano.

 

Eh?

 

But--but--but--the year's not over yet. There's still time to buy more records! More records! More records! One of them might be The One!

Need more records...



Ahem.

First off, let me offer my congratulations at your recovery. Glad to hear that the issues were temporary.

Now, on to the question presented.

On the hardware front, that's an easy one: the Graham Slee Jazz Club phono preamp that has gotten me back into playing my 78s in a way that I haven't in years and years. All those presets for different recording characteristics are a real godsend, a huge convenience relative to painstakingly setting up curves by ear with an equalizer, and the audio quality even with plain vanilla RIAA LPs is a noticeable step up from what I had (and that wasn't by any stretch of the imagination *bad*--a nice Adcom tuner preamp that had given me good service for at least a decade). Runner up is the Victor Orthophonic Credenza that came my way at a bargain price less than a month later.

On the music front, it's a much harder question. Of new acquisitions, I'd probably go with the set of Friedrich Wuhrer performing the complete Beethoven piano concerti on Tahra; it's not the set to which I have returned most often, and it doesn't even contain what I consider the pianist's best recordings, but it does represent the reissue gods' long-delayed recognition of an artist capable of--dare I say it?--unmatched artistry when at the top of his form. In terms of new *music*, however, the great discovery came from records that I bought 8 years ago but had never played until this month: Ravel's sonata for violin and cello, something whose appeal was totally unexpected (not my favorite composer, not from my favorite compositional period). That discovery, of course, happened because I got back into playing 78s in a big way courtesy of the Graham Slee. What goes around comes around--which surely should be the motto of every dedicated record collector.

 

Post pics please!

 

This is a family forum, we can't have folks posting that pornography!

 

See post no. 83 in this thread:

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=235671&highlight=slee&page=5