What are you listening to now?

[aligreto]

Locatelli, Pietro (1695-1764) - continuing my listening from yesterday w/ Wallfisch & Wentz -   Dave

 

Having listened to much Locatelli recently I must investigate those two sets.

[king ubu]

Brahms: Violin Sonata No. 3 from this enjoyable set....

My order for this has shipped today ... curious about it!

New arrivals - earlier this one (violin concerto may be the one version I really need):



And now ending the day with a first glimpse of this:

[aligreto]

My order for this has shipped today ... curious about it!

I cannot remember who posted this one recently but I picked up on it and I did enjoy it. I will be curious to see how you get on with it.

[Kontrapunctus]

New Sorabji--oh yeah! Many of these would keep a piano duet busy, let alone one pianist, but Ullen prevails! Very good sound, if not quite as rich as Sudbin's SACDs. I do wish BIS used SACD technology, as Sorabji's music would benefit from the added clarity and dynamic range.

[Todd]

Delightful.

[Bogey]

The Ravel Rapsodie Espagnole was absolutely fantastic on this disc.  Made me feel as if I were watching one of the best films Hitchcock never made.  The von Weber and Listszt were winners as well.  The Rach Isle of the Dead was decent, but Ashkenazy covering that base.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Prokofiev, Chiu. Very effective transcriptions by Prokofiev himself. First, two quickies from Love For Three Oranges, then the main course, pieces from Cinderella.




[asin]B000026D48[/asin]

[The new erato]

I do wish BIS used SACD technology, as Sorabji's music would benefit from the added clarity and dynamic range.

It's the first time I've heard that the dynamic range of CDs need to be enhanced (whatever one may think about the Redbook standard) . The dynamic range of music as normally perceived in a concert hall doesn't exceed 80 dB, and human speech is normally perceived over a range of about 40 dB The CDs dynamic range is around 96 dB, in practice more with dithering.

I have two high end SACD players and a few hundred SACDs, and I suspect that SACDs perceived superiority has much to do with the fact that only the best recordings are considered for SACD release, and that they often may be more carefully mastered and prepared. Add the fact that there are many crappy CD players out there and that most SACD players are more carefully (and expensively) built. The surround sound aspect is of course valuable if you subscribe to that and are willing to eat up the extra cost, but on my very expensive two channel player SACD/CD (and also on my far cheaper Sony XA 5400 ES) you will be extremely challenged to detect any meaningful differences between the two channel SACD and CD layer on the same disc. 

[Que]

Morning listening - just in:

[asin]B00PRU691C[/asin]
Q

[king ubu]

I cannot remember who posted this one recently but I picked up on it and I did enjoy it. I will be curious to see how you get on with it.

Yeah, my order was triggered by that same mention, and it made me curious, even more so as I don't have any good recent recordings (I have the Grubert/Cherny one and find it pretty dull overall ... good piano, bad violin - if anyone wants it, I guess I pass it on for shipping costs).

Very often, for chamber music, I love old recordings ... those two Casals boxes on Music&Arts, Szymon Goldberg, the Heifetz/Piatigorsky recordings with and without Rubinstin (and of course the Heifetz/Feuerman/Rubinstein recordings), Rubinstein with Szeryng and Fournier, Fournier with Schnabel, Szgeti with Horszowski or Arrau ... you get the idea. Not quite sure what it is, but I hear things in these old recordings that more recent ones don't offer, and I guess I tend to prefer those things. But that's all too generalized of course, more like a general tendency, as I've got plenty of HIP chamber music, too, that I love (I guess that, really, is the general tendency: old or more recent/hip, not more recent/trad, or rarely so).

[jlaurson]

Sorry for the delayed response. Jens!  I hadn't listened to this for years, and found it quite enjoyable this time. Very French in outlook (I mean this as a complement, me being an avowed Francophile in music). While listening to it, I had this image in my mind of a boat securely moored at a Fauréan pier, with the ropes preventing it from being pulled by the current to a Debussyan shore on he oppsoite side of the river  . I particularly liked Sonorités, the three Études included in the CD  ("en sixtes", and No. 3 & 4 from the Quatre Études), and Rythmes (with some Spanish inflections). Dominique Merlot's pianisim sounds perfectly fine (but I have nothing to compare him to). I am tempted to eventually explore the complete Martin Jones set, and should revisit a CD of orchestral music by Roger-Ducasse I own, conducted by Leif Segerstam (how he found time for this, while composing all those symphonies, appears miraculous to me  ).

Thanks much for the reply, ritter. Obviously I can't compare the two accounts but I am very, very pleased with the Martin Jones. So much that I made a mental note not to look down my nose at his other "Everything By Everyone" omnibus recordings for Nimbus. I used to like what I had when I was a poor student but eventually thought: surely you can do better than that. Perhaps... but probably not nearly as obviously as one might think.

Current #morninglistening...


Franz Wilhelm Mozart, Complete Violin Concertos
Thomas Zehetmair / Frans Brüggen / Orchestra of the 18^th Century
Glossa
German link - UK link

[The new erato]

Very often, for chamber music, I love old recordings ... those two Casals boxes on Music&Arts, Szymon Goldberg, the Heifetz/Piatigorsky recordings with and without Rubinstin (and of course the Heifetz/Feuerman/Rubinstein recordings), Rubinstein with Szeryng and Fournier, Fournier with Schnabel, Szgeti with Horszowski or Arrau ... you get the idea.

Me too. Also for chamber music the dynamic limitations of older recordings aren't so important as in orchestral music.

[kishnevi]

Re Martin Jones:  I have his Granados omnibus, and felt quite satisfied with it.

TD
Actually, last night
[asin]B019MX8DFE[/asin]

The Violin Concerto impressed me highly.  Hints but only hints of minimalism, a certain chromatic lushness, and not afraid to let the violin strut its stuff.

The other works were less effective.  The quintet was merely a dullish chamber work that highlighted an instrument that in Western instrumental terms,  could not decide if it wanted to be a flute or a recorder.


Symphony in C, btw, is the name of the orchestra.

[Brian]

The Violin Concerto impressed me highly.  Hints but only hints of minimalism, a certain chromatic lushness, and not afraid to let the violin strut its stuff.

The other works were less effective.  The quintet was merely a dullish chamber work that highlighted an instrument that in Western instrumental terms,  could not decide if it wanted to be a flute or a recorder.

I liked the brief work written for somebody's wedding; it was sweet. But yeah, the violin concerto is the major work there.

TD first listen to this:



The Tarantula Galop isn't much, but it's better than real tarantulas.

[Kontrapunctus]

It's the first time I've heard that the dynamic range of CDs need to be enhanced (whatever one may think about the Redbook standard) . The dynamic range of music as normally perceived in a concert hall doesn't exceed 80 dB, and human speech is normally perceived over a range of about 40 dB The CDs dynamic range is around 96 dB, in practice more with dithering.

I have two high end SACD players and a few hundred SACDs, and I suspect that SACDs perceived superiority has much to do with the fact that only the best recordings are considered for SACD release, and that they often may be more carefully mastered and prepared. Add the fact that there are many crappy CD players out there and that most SACD players are more carefully (and expensively) built. The surround sound aspect is of course valuable if you subscribe to that and are willing to eat up the extra cost, but on my very expensive two channel player SACD/CD (and also on my far cheaper Sony XA 5400 ES) you will be extremely challenged to detect any meaningful differences between the two channel SACD and CD layer on the same disc.

1) Have you heard Sorabji's music? 
2) I, too, have a very expensive CD/SACD player (Esoteric K-03), and I can readily hear differences between RBCD and SACD audio. I attribute the differences to the vastly higher sampling rate of DSD recorders. Perhaps better mastering also plays a part.

[Brian]

TD first listen to this:



The Tarantula Galop isn't much, but it's better than real tarantulas.

BOOOOOOORRRRRRIIIIIIIINNNNNGGGGGG

Switching to one of the best Johann Strauss Jr. CDs ever.

[Maestro267]

Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C minor ("Resurrection")
Quivar (mezzo-soprano)/Greenberg (soprano)
Israel PO/Mehta

[The new erato]

1) Have you heard Sorabji's music?   

Oh yes!

2) I attribute the differences to the vastly higher sampling rate of DSD recorders.

But that's an attribute of the recording, not the playback, system. And whether sampling rate affects dynamics (which was your original claim I responded to) or other aspects, eg frequency response, is a system issue.

2) Perhaps better mastering also plays a part.

I suspect so.

[Cato]

With my 8th Graders, who translated the Latin text, and then had their faces distorted in assorted ways    when they heard Zimmermann's music:

[asin]B000003F9C[/asin] 

In the end, some of them said they found it fascinating, and would listen to it again.   0:)

Played again today for the rest of the 8th Graders: results were mixed.  One boy twitched throughout the performance, but he is prone to twitchiness anyway.      

One of the more talented girls said she liked it "actually."   

[Mandryka]

Mikkelsen/ sch. Gregoriana play Guilain.


The first thing to say that there's nothing Gregorian about Schola Gregoriana. There style is more like the singing you expect to hear in a Lully motet.

Then we have Sven Ingvart Mikkelsen's playing. There's no sense of the sort of mystical and hedonistic beauty that you hear in Christophe Mantoux's performance. Mikkelsen is more dramatic, urgent, tough: he packs no punches. It reflects the quasi operatic drama of the singing.

Mikkelsen and his singers are on to something completely fresh, a novel way of understanding French organ music. For them a mass, a hymn and a Magnificat are organ motets.

The result is something which is more like lavish courtly entertainment than prayer.