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Messages - raffite33

#16
The Kalinnikov symphonies are some of my very favorite music, and I own several recordings (and have given away some duds, too).  I'm still waiting for a recording that checks all the boxes.  These are the ones I've kept and what I see as their shortcomings:

Jarvi 1& 2 (Chandos)  great performance, but way too much reverb
Kuchar 1 & 2 (Naxos)  gets the phrasing right, but some pretty scruffy playing in places
Bakels 1 & 2 (Bis)   the phrasing is not right, but very good playing & sound
Ashkenazy 1 & 2 (Exton)  The Iceland SO have a very dark sound here that doesn't really fit the music very well.  (Totally bizarre cover photo;  looks like a Martian landscape.)
Yamada 1 (Exton)  Better played than the Bakels, better sound than all the others, but still not quite up to Jarvi's tempos and phrasing.

Oh well, I guess it is like with Raff's 5th.  Somebody's bound to get it spot on eventually. 
#17
Having listened to it a couple of times, I'm extremely pleased with it.  The Langgaard parts, anyway.  As a rule, I try not to criticize filler choices, but I find Gade's Tango Jalousie to be totally out of place here.  The notes on the back even point out that it "has become the absolutely most frequently played piece of Danish music for almost a century."  Well, then, why on Earth would they bother to include it here, of all places?  More Langgaard would have made far more sense to me.  Knowing how relatively infrequent Langgaard orchestral recordings are and how he felt about the rest of the Danish music establishment, it seems like a total slap in his face.  Baffling pointlessness...
#18
If you are considering buying the recent BIS SACD of Stenhammar's 2nd Symphony by Christian Lindberg & The Antwerp SO, you might want to hold off a month.  Coming in October, there will be a competing version by Herbert Blomstedt & The Gothenburg Symphony.  For filler, the Antwerp disc has eleven and a half minutes of music written for a Strindberg play, while the Gothenberg disc gives you the Serenade, which usually runs around 36 minutes or so.  The somewhat odd thing here is that the Blomstedt SACD is also on BIS.  Anyway, it is listed on the HMV Japan site with a release date of October 20.
#19
From a skimpy listing in the Naxos USA preorders section, it looks like the filler will be "Suite Moderne."  Catalog number is CHAN 10994, so that's a regular CD, not a SACD.
#20
All five issues of Neschling's Respighi cycle (on BIS SACDs) are excellent.  I'm just hoping the next installment will include his Concerto in Modo Misolidio.
#21
The last time I searched, the closest thing I could find to a review of the Sanderling set was a short comment buried within a longer customer review of one of the CPO discs on Amazon UK.  The reviewer indicated that the (live) performances were very good, but the sound was not.  JPC Klassik has sound clips, not that they are always good indicators.
#22
Got my copy in the mail a few days ago.  I have both the CPO CDs by Goritzki & the NDR Radiophilharmonie, which have all three symphonies and two short overtures.  I'm no music critic, but, to my ears, the CPO recordings are decidedly superior to this new Naxos disc.  You can hear clips from both on the JPC Klassik website.  I've had the CPO discs for years and think fairly highly of them.  On the Naxos disc, the ensemble playing is not nearly as crisp.  Maybe they were under-rehearsed.
#23
A fair number of single layer SACDs still appear regularly in Japan, though I only buy hybrids for fear that SACD players will cease being made.  As for the viable playing time of a regular CD, my experience over the decades has been that the ones with over 73 minutes are a little more likely to have tracking problems, especially near the end of the last selection.  In fact, I threw a Dutton CD (Julius Harrison, "Bredon Hill") in the trash last week after discovering the sound vanished when it got 30 seconds from the end of the program, and the disc only contained 68'26" of music.  Also, I can't help but wonder if there may be differences between a regular CD and the hybrid layer on a SACD that might shorten the reliable space on the latter.

I guess I can sympathize with your frustrations at not being able to play the "bonus" track, but I'm trying to imagine what the discussion on this will be like in the comments on HRAudio.net when this disc is listed there.  I suspect some will praise it as a factor that might even help SACDs stay on the market a bit longer, and others as a reward for those who've stayed the course with the format. 

Then, there is the matter that SACDs are more expensive to produce.  Besides what the technical production involves, I believe there is a fee that must be paid to Sony or somebody for using the format & logo.  While I agree that making the bonus track available as a download for folks without SACD capability would be a nice thing to do, I can also imagine that a specialist label like Dutton has a relatively small profit margin compared to a lot of other labels and could be justified in not doing so.  As far as I know, their website doesn't have sample clips for any of their releases, so how likely are they to want to set themselves up with one more technical thing to look after just for the odd bonus track.

At any rate, I've already ordered the Boyle disc.  Those who want to boycott it can probably rest assured that we'll be seeing more releases of her music before long on other labels like Chandos, Hyperion and Naxos. 
#24
Piano Classics, who re-issued the Bortkiewicz concertos, is owned by Brilliant Classics who issued the "Russian" concertos box set.  They did the same thing with their Alkan box;  two of the discs from that were issued separately, although I think those were new recordings.
#25
Recordings & Broadcasts / Re: Florence Price VCs 1 & 2
Tuesday 13 March 2018, 17:57
In 2011, Albany also released a CD of her Symphony in E (mentioned above) along with a one movement piano concerto. Very enjoyable.  Be warned though, Albany is another label who sometimes supply CD-Rs when the real CDs are sold out. 

As for the 3rd Symphony, also mentioned above, it was on the Koch label.  I've been looking for a while, and have been unable to find a clean copy for anything less than an arm and two legs.
#26
I generally listen to discs from start to finish, so I couldn't say about the programming issues one way or the other, but I'd second (or third) the suggestion that you check out the Oppo.  I've been extremely happy with the Oppo BDP-93 I bought 6 years ago.  When the time comes to replace it, I'll be getting the Oppo UDP-203 to replace it.  At $550, you're unlikely to get anything nearly as versatile.  If you have any of those wonderful BIS or Chandos hybrid SACDs, you might as well hear them in a higher resolution.  Plus, you'll have a great DVD/Blu-ray player in it as well.  My only minor gripe is that the new one doesn't appear to have HDCD decoding (useful for HDCD encoded CDs from Linn, Reference Recordings & some others).

One thing to keep in mind:  if you opt for a universal player or a CD/SACD player, you're probably going to want a receiver (or amp) new enough that it can handle HDMI or Optical patch cords.
#27
Even one who has no knowledge of Raff could easily spot that review as a dud.  To carp about an instrumental piece being included as a filler?  He must have a very small CD collection, as this is a common practice.  After all, the word "complete" does not precede "works for piano and orchestra" on the cover.  Also, there's nothing more annoying than reviewers who criticize a recording for what's not on it, instead of focusing on what is.

Anyway, I found the CD to be quite excellent.  What would really make me happy, though, would be for Ms. Nguyen to find another pianist and have a crack at the piano 4 hands version of Raff's 5th Symphony.
#28
Yep, it played with no problems on my Oppo BDP-93.  That, of course, doesn't mean it would necessarily do so on whatever machine I may own in the future.  I've been collecting CDs for over thirty years, and, at my age, that's going to be the format I stick with until I'm deaf or dead.  There seem to a be a lot of varying opinions and very little convincing scientific evidence on the durability of CD-Rs.  The CDs in my main collection never leave my man cave, but I do keep some duplicates and things weeded from my main collection in my car.  I can say for sure the CD-Rs in my car eventually started to skip badly and some took on a brownish hue, while the CDs held up just fine.  I'd guess it is the heat or the humidity, but I suppose the cold might also have something to do with it.  Admittedly, extreme conditions, but it leads me to worry that simple age might have the same effect on them over time, even when well kept.
#29
I'd be curious to know, when anyone gets this, if it is a pressed CD or a CD-R, as was the last thing on Piano Classics I ordered, an Alkan CD by Vincenzo Maltempo.
#30
From MDG, in a few days, there'll be a competing issue of Schmidt's 2nd from the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, under Blunier.  Not quite the same caliber as the VPO, I'd guess, but this one will be on SACD, as was their issue of the 4th some years back, should anyone care.