On Thu, 07 Dec 2023 21:48:02 -0800, Andrew Clarke wrote:

> > Whether or not DH flourished or not, doesn't hide the fact that with the conductors of the past, we are the benificiaries of hindsight, and hence the reason why big boxes of Ormandy sell. For the Philly alone their strings were hardly matched even by today, as well as Ormandy being a far greater maestro than lazy minds want to accept. They would rather purchase an easy download from a Jack of All Trades and Master of None, especially when green around the ears. I won't name them, but the likes of Berglund, Vanska, Segerstam, Kamu, Blomstedt, let alone an even bigger multitude of non-Nordics who were/some still are, excellent in Sibelius, and who were all there before they let mere callow 'yoots' record great music for those who evidently cannot discern the difference.
> >
> > As for me I am searching all avenues for a new Temirkanov collection of stuff for my collection. It can be difficult, but well worth it. This way I can sleep at night.
>
> If you are interested in Temirkanov, why not start here?
>
> < https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/search?search_query=Temirkanov>
>
> You don't have to buy the easy downloads; if you don't mind waiting a while and paying extra for postage, you can by the discs instead.

Discs are ready to play as is in a CD player! With
downloads, or ripping CDs, that means a great deal of
time fixing bad metadata before even listening, though
I don't know about Presto. Amazon and Apple music
are evidently bad, though I wouldn't pay a cent from them
because of their policy to sell only lossy files.
I keep the bit rate displayed in all my digitized music,
and I know that it is mathematically impossible to
reduce a 500-1100 bit rate of Apple Lossless down to
256 bits without being cheated.

>
> Presto Music will also sell me just about every Sibelius cycle known to man, as an easy download or otherwise, including Berglund, Vanska, Segerstam etc. I bought the Matela to see what all the fuss was about. I already had the Iceland Symphony set from Naxos, which Bernie rather likes: it includes his favourite Seventh.
>
> Why is Mr Makela a jack of all trades?

You got confused between Makela and Ormandy.

What is Bernie? Is that a nickname for David Hurwitz?
I don't consume his youtube videos because they are at
best 20 seconds of information dumbed down to 30
minutes. All the relevant parts, the technical parts,
could be in the text description.

> His career has just got under way with composers about which he feels he has something to say. Some critics - generally on one side of the Atlantic - think he's terrible, while others, generally on the other side, think he's worth listening to. And like most people with a mental age greater than fifteen, I don't think he merits the level of personal abuse he gets from Bernie. Ditto John Wilson, who also gets a beautiful string sound btw.
>
> Do the big boxes of Ormandy sell? How many people under seventy are going to buy them? How many people under forty will even have heard of him?

I never heard of Paillard, before buying their 133 CD
box set. Am I lying? Am I wrong when I say there
are people who seek out the unfamiliar?

The record company strategy of quickly deleting their
box sets to "keep most of their stock out of print at
all times" make it so that hesitating means losing out.

I refuse the "anti-consumerist" notion that customers
are always at fault for the practices of business, so
don't blame me for buying CDs.

And with your "only old people like old music" diatribes
consider how old-fashioned you are to be even mentioning
downloads: haven't you heard the "hip" saying everything
must be streaming only, that only Luddites don't have
all their music tethered to the internet at all times?

>
> Have you heard Makela's Sibelius?
>
> Andrew Clarke
> Canberra

On Tue, 05 Dec 2023 11:03:29 -0800, Marc S wrote:

> Favorite mozart opera recordings update:
>
> Sorted out: Klemperer's Cosi (EMI/Warner) and also Figaro (EMI/Warner) for the singing (say Söderstrom)
> In reevaluation: Iván Fischer's Magic Flute (not sure who released it, DVD), Fricsay's DG (DG), Krips's Serail (EMI/Warner), Suitner's nozze (Berlin Classics)
>
> Serail: Beecham (EMI)
> Figaro: Fricsay (DG)
> DG: Klemperer (EMI/Warner), Krips (Decca), Mitropoulos (Sony)
> Cosi: Böhm (Decca), Böhm (EMI/Warner)
> Zauberflöte: Böhm (Decca), Klemperer (EMI/Warner, although I don't like Janowitz and Crass here)

In the Magic Flute, what about Rita Streich in the Fricsay?
Did you approve or denounce her yet?

On Fri, 08 Dec 2023 17:30:01 -0800, Dan Koren wrote:

> Nikolai Petrov.
> All the recordings I can find.

His recording of Liszt's early Paganini Etudes (Trans something)
sounds lifeless, just like every other recording I've heard of it.

But maybe the music is too good to be played.

The Mortons. Not the neighborss of Burns and Allen in the 1950's TV show,
but two CDs which showed up at Berkshire (the first only briefly). Very
different music from a similar era:

Feldman - a Hat Art CD recorded in 1997 by Lucas Vis with the Radio-Sinfonie
OrchesterFrankfurt with the Pellegrini Quartet and Hans de Vries (oboe).
The jacket says ""2018, 2nd edition", which I presume means a reprinting.
1) "String Quartet and Orchestra" (1973) - a haunting work, with a feeling
of statis, but not static or repetitive; in its way it "develops", at
its slow pace, with a varying soundscape.
2) "Oboe and Orchestra" (1976) - in the same universe, but with a quite
different tonal makeup, and less varied.
3) "Atlantis" (1959) - a much busier work, which made less of an impression
on me.

Gould - a Naxos CD of very-American music, recorded in 1997 by (of course!)
the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraibne under Theodore Kuchar.
1) American Ballads (1976) - the siz sections are not arrangements of
six songs of historical (or patriotic) significance (starting with
"The Star-Spangled Banner"; rather they are used as part of the fabric.
2) [Steven] Foster Gallery (1939, encouraged and premiered by Fritz Reiner) -
in part the same idea, but also cases of theme and variations. The
songs (which I don't particularly want to hear sung) mostly work well.
3) American Salute (1947) - a short rousing piece from a Civil War march.
A fun CD, effectively performed.
--
Al Eisner

On Sunday, December 10, 2023 at 7:41:06 PM, Al Eisner wrote:
>
> Feldman - a Hat Art CD recorded in 1997 by Lucas Vis with the Radio-Sinfonie
> OrchesterFrankfurt with the Pellegrini Quartet and Hans de Vries (oboe).
> The jacket says ""2018, 2nd edition", which I presume means a reprinting.

Love that String Quartet AndOrchestra (1973). Nice one.

Really enjoying ken Russell's Bruckner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHyFvYzZFoM&ab_channel=CageyCretins

On Mon, 11 Dec 2023 17:58:05 -0800, Andrew Clarke wrote:

> On Monday, December 11, 2023 at 1:52:45?PM UTC+11, Pluted Pup wrote:
> > On Thu, 07 Dec 2023 21:48:02 -0800, Andrew Clarke wrote:
>
> > > You don't have to buy the easy downloads; if you don't mind waiting a while and paying extra for postage, you can by the discs instead.
> > Discs are ready to play as is in a CD player! With
> > downloads, or ripping CDs, that means a great deal of
> > time fixing bad metadata before even listening, though
> > I don't know about Presto. Amazon and Apple music
> > are evidently bad, though I wouldn't pay a cent from them
> > because of their policy to sell only lossy files.
> > I keep the bit rate displayed in all my digitized music,
> > and I know that it is mathematically impossible to
> > reduce a 500-1100 bit rate of Apple Lossless down to
> > 256 bits without being cheated.
>
> We could have - and others have had - lots of fun arguing about what is and is not a lossy file. But your CD are of course FLAC files stored on a disc. I started off buying FLACs and still do,

In journalism "downloading" tends to mean from
Amazon or Apple, which is always lossy. So when
saying something like "downloading is great" it
comes across as an endorsement of lossy-ness.

> except I have discovered that only Charlotte can tell the difference between FLAC and AAC, AAC files are about a third the size of FLAC and are playable on my car radio which FLAC files are not. Charlotte is a dog.

Lossless means CD quality. AAC and mp3 is lossy.

It's hi-rez that is dog music, not CD. Vinyl
pushers and hi-rez salesmen like to say that
CDs are lossy like mp3 but they are mistaken.

> I don't bother much about metadata, to be honest. And so far, this hasn't caused me any problems, although if I had 106 Brahms cycles I might be more attentive.

The more variety, the more metadata is needed!
I like to know what track, composer, piece I am
playing rather than listen to anonymous music.

>
> > >
> > > Presto Music will also sell me just about every Sibelius cycle known to man, as an easy download or otherwise, including Berglund, Vanska, Segerstam etc. I bought the Matela to see what all the fuss was about. I already had the Iceland Symphony set from Naxos, which Bernie rather likes: it includes his favourite Seventh.
> > >
> > > Why is Mr Makela a jack of all trades?
> > You got confused between Makela and Ormandy.
>
> I've never owned an Ormandy recording, but I used to hear him on radio broadcasts back in the day.
>
> >
> > What is Bernie? Is that a nickname for David Hurwitz?
>
> Yup. Cf Big D, Mr Dallas, Big Dave, Dave the Dude (c.f. Damon Runyon).
>
> > > Do the big boxes of Ormandy sell? How many people under seventy are going to buy them? How many people under forty will even have heard of him?
> > I never heard of Paillard, before buying their 133 CD
> > box set. Am I lying? Am I wrong when I say there
> > are people who seek out the unfamiliar?
>
> My dear sir, if you think that Jean-Francois Paillard is unfamiliar to listeners of my generation, you are sadly mistaken.

Paillard is new to me. If I have heard it, I didn't know it.

> He was the Neville Marriner of the Baroque. No discerning household was complete without his set of Handel Organ Concertos with Marie-Claire Alain at the keyboard. I certainly owned the Handel and a fair amount of Vivaldi, but the discs wore out and I replaced them with more recent recordings. And Baroque performance practice has moved on since those days.
>
> > The record company strategy of quickly deleting their
> > box sets to "keep most of their stock out of print at
> > all times" make it so that hesitating means losing out.
>
> And as Forest Lawn gets fuller and fuller, a new generation of potential customers who can *just* remember Eugene Ormandy may be ready to part with hard-earned ...
>
> >
> > I refuse the "anti-consumerist" notion that customers
> > are always at fault for the practices of business, so
> > don't blame me for buying CDs.
>
> I'm not. Besides, with downloads you're more likely to find that what you want is still available from people like Presto, so if the CDs disappear, we're not affected. I don't relish the idea of downloading an entire boxed set, and the consequences of every retirement village in Florida downloading a 160 CD boxed set as high-res FLAC would probably be extremely severe.

Agreed, CDs are more efficient than downloading!
Too large to download, but easier to ship!

>
> >
> > And with your "only old people like old music" diatribes
> > consider how old-fashioned you are to be even mentioning
> > downloads: haven't you heard the "hip" saying everything
> > must be streaming only, that only Luddites don't have
> > all their music tethered to the internet at all times?
>
> I stick to downloads because:
>
> a) I still like the idea of ownership of recordings
> b) I think there's more chance of the artists getting a fair monetary reward for their efforts
> c) I can listen to my recordings if the internet is down, or in areas of poor connectivity
> d) I can easily move files around or back them up to The Cloud.
> e) It doesn't matter if the streaming services decide to delete the stuff I like.
> f) streaming services are ideal for pop music where recordings which are must-have works of high genius one week are utterly beneath contempt and worthy only to be cast into outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth the next. Not so good for the 1955 mono Klemperer recording of Beethoven 7 which I loved when I was eleven and still do.

But aren't you frightened to be called a Luddite?
TV and newspapers say only old people listen to
music in any format but streaming, vinyl or hi-rez.
Journalists say that whatever is being promoted
the most is the only thing that is relevant.

> > AAC files are about a third the size of FLAC and are playable on my car radio which FLAC files are not

I use Apple lossless, I'd like to use
something more universal but it appears
to be all there is for me.

Apple refuses to support FLAC.

Speaking of car maker stupidity, there's plenty of
car players that can't play both mp3 and AAC,
only mp3. Then there's the players that can
play either .wav or .aiff but not both, when they
are practically the same file!

On Wednesday 13 December 2023 at 04:34:02 UTC, Andrew Clarke wrote:
> We now have his and her television. Mine is a ten year old desktop computer plus a large HD monitor: TV is streamed the browser.
> Andrew Clarke > Canberra

Same here - I don't have a TV set. I have an Apple monitor attached to my Mac Pro, which is the one and only source of all my viewing and listening. CDs on external HD and TV online. Sound goes via my DAC to a state of the art audio system. Sound is the crucial thing, and you'd be surprised what a difference it makes to TV programmes and YouTube.

On Dec 12, 2023 at 6:33:50 PM EST, "Pluted Pup" <plutedpup@outlook.com> wrote:

>
> Lossless means CD quality. AAC and mp3 is lossy.
>
>

CD's are lossy, compared to SACD, or Blu-Ray.

And yes, I can hear the difference.

-Owen

On Wednesday, December 13, 2023 at 5:31:31 PM UTC+1, Owen Hartnett wrote:
> On Dec 12, 2023 at 6:33:50 PM EST, "Pluted Pup" <plut...@outlook.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Lossless means CD quality. AAC and mp3 is lossy.
> >
> >
> CD's are lossy, compared to SACD, or Blu-Ray.
>
Life is lossy.
Listening to Milhaud string quartets 12 and following.

On Wed, 13 Dec 2023 08:31:16 -0800, Owen Hartnett wrote:

> On Dec 12, 2023 at 6:33:50?PM EST, "Pluted Pup"<plutedpup@outlook.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Lossless means CD quality. AAC and mp3 is lossy.
>
> CD's are lossy, compared to SACD, or Blu-Ray.

CDs are lossless and lossless is CD quality.

To claim that .acc and .mp3 are in the same
class as CDs is to backhandedly advocate
lossy formats from Amazon and Apple which
have only been offered as lossy as a matter
of policy.

>
> And yes, I can hear the difference.

Not surprisingly, when hi-rez is mastered differently
than CDs, so as to sound different, just like how
two CDs that are mastered differently can sound
different.

It is industry practice to master CD, SACD, Blu-ray
and vinyl to sound different to each other
particularly in pop music where it is typical to
have *bad* masters of CDs of new music because of
brickwall compression. But it is inaccurate
to say that CDs are a compressed format because
the industry standard is the *bad engineering* of
popular music CDs by extreme compression of the dynamic
range.

There is plenty of *bad* hi-rez of older pop music,
loud notes muffled by dynamic compression, quiet
notes muffled by noise reduction, with the out of
print original CD being the best sounding choice.

But all journalists say that whatever is being
promoted the most is always the best. I'm
somewhat amused by older reviews of different
issues of the same music receiving what is
essentially the same review: newer is always
better.

On Thursday, December 14, 2023 at 10:28:22 AM UTC-8, Pluted Pup wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Dec 2023 08:31:16 -0800, Owen Hartnett wrote:
> > On Dec 12, 2023 at 6:33:50?PM EST, "Pluted Pup"<plut...@outlook.com> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Lossless means CD quality. AAC and mp3 is lossy.
> >
> > CD's are lossy, compared to SACD, or Blu-Ray.
>
> CDs are lossless and lossless is CD quality.

"Lossless" ia meaningless without specifying
the frequency range and the dynamic range of
the original signal, the sampling frequency and
the encoding width.

Standard CDs are recorded in 16 bit resolution
at 44.1 kHx sampling, which can accommodate
a 20 kHz frequency range, and a 96 dB dynamic
range -- far wider than LPs, and far wider than
most people's hearing abilities.

All digital recordings are lossy by definition
since they are made by discretely sampling
analog signals. The terms lossless or lossy
refer to the copies of the original recording
that are printed on CD/BD/DVD/SACD and
sold to the public. Recording studios now
use 24-bit encoding and 192 kHz sampling.
This makes all commercial recordings lossy,
unless one can somehow acquire digital
copies of the original unedited recording.

This is probably too much information to
grok for your pluted brain.

Cheers

Op. 105.

dk

Improvised string quartets, recorded this past June:

https://creativesources.bandcamp.com/album/m-nchen

Review will be posted on my site later today.

On Dec 14, 2023 at 1:28:08 PM EST, "Pluted Pup" <plutedpup@outlook.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 13 Dec 2023 08:31:16 -0800, Owen Hartnett wrote:
>
>> On Dec 12, 2023 at 6:33:50?PM EST, "Pluted Pup"<plutedpup@outlook.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Lossless means CD quality. AAC and mp3 is lossy.
>>
>> CD's are lossy, compared to SACD, or Blu-Ray.
>
> CDs are lossless and lossless is CD quality.

CD's are 16 bit tracks with 1980's state of the art technology, sampling only
at 44.1khz.

SACD's are DSD encoded with a sampling frequency of 2,822.4 khz.

Blu-Ray can do LPCM at 27.648 Mbit/s at samples of 48, 96 and 192 khz.

>
> To claim that .acc and .mp3 are in the same
> class as CDs is to backhandedly advocate
> lossy formats from Amazon and Apple which
> have only been offered as lossy as a matter
> of policy.
>

I didn't make that claim. Although I predict that AI will probably create a
new recording process which will make compressed sounds sound even better.

>>
>> And yes, I can hear the difference.
>
> Not surprisingly, when hi-rez is mastered differently
> than CDs, so as to sound different, just like how
> two CDs that are mastered differently can sound
> different.

All CD's have been mastered. Look at any of the early CD's from the mid 1980's
which just did a straight recording from the mike to the disc, and they were
all horrible, before they discovered how to make CD's sound better.
>
> It is industry practice to master CD, SACD, Blu-ray
> and vinyl to sound different to each other
> particularly in pop music where it is typical to
> have *bad* masters of CDs of new music because of
> brickwall compression. But it is inaccurate
> to say that CDs are a compressed format because
> the industry standard is the *bad engineering* of
> popular music CDs by extreme compression of the dynamic
> range.

I didn't say CDs are compressed. My position is that CDs leave a more bits on
the recording room floor that other formats will capture. It's discernable.
listen to an SACD of the same recording of a CD. Thus, they are a lossy
format. The word "lossless" is a misnomer. Every recording process leaves bits
on the floor. Pop music manufacture really isn't the issue here.
>
-Owen

Op. 97

dk

Had a tilt at Puccini's Fanciulla Del West while I was building a tube amp. About 80% drama and 20% music. Very un-memorable, as was Renata Tebaldi's top register and Mario Del Monaco's emoting.

I must confess that very little interests me in Italian culture except one or two Golden Age films, Fellini, Antonioni etc., and Monica Vitti.

Bought the two Klemperer boxes on Warner -- screw Krips' Mozart Symphonies.

So... I've sorted out quite a bit of the records I bought over the year; it's definitely the majority, especially when it comes to the numbers of cds (boxes) lol... and I tried to be cautious... but I learned a lot.

Only keeping the two Klemperer Boxes when they arrive, the aforementioned Mozart recordings (I think it is very important for Mozart to not sound driven - with Beethoven it is different; and Fricsay fails in this regard in his Zauberflöte, as well as in his two Serails), Pletnev's Mozart Sonatas and Beethoven PCs... some Mengelberg CDs... and Hans Hotter's Schubert Winterreise...

Marc S schrieb am Sonntag, 17. Dezember 2023 um 00:01:43 UTC+1:
> So... I've sorted out quite a bit of the records I bought over the year; it's definitely the majority, especially when it comes to the numbers of cds (boxes) lol... and I tried to be cautious... but I learned a lot.
>
> Only keeping the two Klemperer Boxes when they arrive, the aforementioned Mozart recordings (I think it is very important for Mozart to not sound driven - with Beethoven it is different; and Fricsay fails in this regard in his Zauberflöte, as well as in his two Serails), Pletnev's Mozart Sonatas and Beethoven PCs... some Mengelberg CDs... and Hans Hotter's Schubert Winterreise...

Add Beecham's Serail... but the rest is out...

Marc S schrieb am Sonntag, 17. Dezember 2023 um 00:09:47 UTC+1:
> Marc S schrieb am Sonntag, 17. Dezember 2023 um 00:01:43 UTC+1:
> > So... I've sorted out quite a bit of the records I bought over the year; it's definitely the majority, especially when it comes to the numbers of cds (boxes) lol... and I tried to be cautious... but I learned a lot.
> >
> > Only keeping the two Klemperer Boxes when they arrive, the aforementioned Mozart recordings (I think it is very important for Mozart to not sound driven - with Beethoven it is different; and Fricsay fails in this regard in his Zauberflöte, as well as in his two Serails), Pletnev's Mozart Sonatas and Beethoven PCs... some Mengelberg CDs... and Hans Hotter's Schubert Winterreise...
> Add Beecham's Serail... but the rest is out...

Except for Maag's Mozart Symphony 32 for the slow movement...

Listening to various performances of Haydn's two op. 77 string quartets in G and F major, from 1799.
It's interesting the first violin goes much higher than we're used to in Haydn; it's really 19th century violin writing.

I was just wondering what Gerard is up to these days? He was very vocal about Trump and his "SS" and very vocal about how racist Israel supposedly is, yet when it comes to today's real Nazis - say Hamas - he's surprisingly silent... hmmm...

Some antisemitic shit of our second favorite Dutch antisemite on this ng:

Gerard schrieb am Dienstag, 25. November 2014 um 21:38:51 UTC+1:
> The "democratic form of government" in Israel IS a form of racism.

And

Gerard schrieb am Samstag, 14. Mai 2011 um 16:26:25 UTC+2:
> It must be easy to find in orthodox Jewish circles, where all women without long
> black beards have been photoshopped out.

Gerard schrieb am Montag, 4. Dezember 2023 um 13:35:28 UTC+1:
> Op maandag 4 december 2023 om 00:23:42 UTC+1 schreef Andrew Clarke:
> > On Thursday, November 30, 2023 at 3:04:52 AM UTC+11, Andy Evans wrote:
> >
> > Saint-Saens. Tone Poems. F-X. Roth. Les Siecles. My attention was brought to this excellent recording by Boxed Set Bernie on his YouTube channel, and I now discover that having sailed 180 degrees away from Bernie, I am now in perfect agreement with The Gramophone, Presto Music and BBC Music Magazine. Could it be that Bernie reads these illustrious journals and automatically takes the opposite opinion, whilst I automatically order anything Bernie doesn't like and find myself in agreement with The Gramophone (et al.)? Oh, the irony ...
> I don't know who Bernie is. I have seen the video by Hurwitz, who knocked the Sait-Saens set by Roth completely. Do you mean that?
> Anyhow, it seems to me a a desirable set. On my wishlist!

Oh here you are ;D