Classical Corner Classical Music Corner (thread #32)

Have you found one for the Prokofiev yet?

 

I say Szell.

 

If I can find a good deal on this Historical set I'll be grabbing it too!
So far the price to beat is lil over $15 shipped.

 

Going for the suites. I wanted Muti, but he's not listed. Next choice is Jarvi.

For the Haydn, everone knows how big a Szell fan I am, but I have him with Fleisher on the Beethoven, and I'm trying to minimize repeats of performers.

 

That's fine, that would be a great introduction to Prokofiev's wonderful music (as it was for me at 13) and is more succinct whilst not sacrificing the drama and basic storyline of the original - don't get me wrong, the full ballet is a great work, but it's arguably a tad overlong and the last act is mostly reprised stuff.

 

I was only going to sample this CD set of Dvorak's Requiem with Ancerl and instead I ended up listening to both CDs.



The sound is good from 1959. The Dvorak Biblical Songs with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is from 1960 and the voice is well recorded.

Someday I will have to listen to the Kertesz version of the Requiem.

 

Guess she kept him goin' for quite a while ...

 

Does anyone have this CD and care to comment on it?

 

Yeah - I saw the ballet two years ago, and I'm seeing it again next month. Without dancing, I think the complete music might get a bit tedious.

 

I have a near mint copy for sale, but I wouldn't be able to go more than a few dollars lower than $15 shipped. PM me if you're interested.

 

PM sent!

Must be a URGENT post.....#911

 

Jochum and Bohm are top choices, Walter also has a performance I like very much.

 

I have the EMI Jochum. I know recorded a cycle on DG as well.

 

I have the DGG/Berlin recording of Jochum. Performance and sound are great.

 

Oops. DG isn't available, so I'll go with EMI.

 

Back to the Beethoven box ...

Beethoven

CD1
Symphony No. 1 in C. Op. 21
Symphony No. 3 in E flat Op. 55 “Eroica”

CD2
Symphony No. 2 in D, Op. 36
Symphony No. 4 in B flat, Op. 60

CD3
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67
Symphony No. 6 in F, Op. 68 “Pastoral”

CD4
Symphony No. 7 in A, Op. 92
Symphony No. 8 in F, Op. 93

CD5
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 “Choral”
Helena Döse soprano
Margo Schiml mezzo-soprano
Peter Schreier tenor
Theo Adam bass
Rundfunkchor Leipzig
Chor der Staatsoper Dresden

Staatskapelle Dresden
Herbert Blomstedt
(entire cycle recorded 1975-1980, Lucaskerche Dresden)



I'm not familiar with many Beethoven symphony cycles, so I can't offer any insight here.
I will say one can hear some very fine ensemble playing in an excellent acoustical environment.

 

Yes. Listening now to this through MOG.

 

Looking forward to this Remastered Marston from ya George.
You Guys are gonna get me spoiled on these old Mono recordings.
Esp ones re-done by Marston!!

 

Quintessence PMC-7151,remastered by Robert McNabb from a Harmonia
Mundi recording.this was Leonhardt's 3d recording of the Goldbergs,made at
Kirche Haarlem,8/76.engineersr.Th.Gallia & P.Dery.i have to admit that my
appetite for solo harpsichord is limited & i prefer the Goldbergs on piano.
that said,i think this is pretty good.

 

In memoriam, I am spinning the Rachmaninoff PC 3 from this set (so far, the first movement is incredible):

 

For anyone else who might be interested, the Naxos set is on MOG.

Just curious - if this recording were compressed using a lossless algorithm, what would be the bit rate. (i.e. how much are we losing as compared with the 320 KBPS that MOG purportedly offers.

 

If the recording is compressed with a lossless codec, you lose nothing of the original. In playback or when decompressed, the file is restored to exactly what it was before compression, bit for bit. That's why the codec is called "lossless," as opposed to the systems like .mp3 that discard data and hence that are known as "lossy." Bit rate is pertinent only to the latter.

Think of a lossless codec, like FLAC or Monkey's Audio, as being like WinZip for audio files (-philes?). If you compress, say, a word processing file with WinZip, you get back everything without exception when you decompress. All the words are there, all the characters are fully formed, all the formatting is intact. WinZip doesn't remove, say, the dot from each letter "i" as being so small that nobody would ever miss it. Same story with the lossless audio codecs, except that they play back the compressed files in real time instead of requiring that you manually decompress the files before playing them.

 

Sorry - I did not phrase my question well. How much real world information is lost when comparing streaming at MOG's lossy 320 KBPS as compared with say Apple Lossless at 500 KBPS. I often find that older classical recordings can compress (using lossless) to even lower rates than that.

 

anything lossless goes in and comes out 16bit, 44.1khz, 1411kbps with standard non HD specs

I don't know how 500kbps can be called lossless.

I think, especially with classical, what you want to do is find a site where you can download full quality, uncompressed WAV (or FLAC) and then do the lossless codec encode or decode yourself, with a (free) program like Trader's Little Helper.

 

FYI - when I look at the compression level in my 1 TB Apple Lossless library, I see compression rates ranging from under 500 KBPS (mostly for piano and older recordings) to above 1,100 KBPS (for the Red Hot Chili Peppers).