A little variety for starters. Mostly CDs on top of this page, and followed by various LPs. Go for sub-pages for periods and composers, and there you will find mostly vinyl.
listenings circa 2017-2018
These CD listenings were done on Onkyo SACD with Hagerman reverse RIAA filter feeding Hagerman Cornet phono stage. This is the most musical sounding digital setup I ever put together (- until 2018). Sounds much better than the modified Kavent CD player, which has a tube output stage. The Kavent sounds much more audiofile - more dynamic, more detailed, but sounds artificial, just like a pool filled with silicone instead of water. The Onkyo's signal squeezed through RIAA compression and restored by the Cornet is very musical, sounds quite analogue, just like coming from an analogue source. Less detail than Kavent, but musicality (=interpretative power) gets top scores! The RIAA conversion seems to put together the fallen apart digitalization. To me, the best thing digital can do is produce MUSIC. It's much more important than a mechanical representation with tons of details. When I have mechanical sound, regardless the high detail level, I notice that I just stop playing digital completely. Even though the Onkyo / RIAA compression / Cornet combo gives much less detail level than the turntable setup, I find myself playing it a LOT. It has the same sensation / feel to it as if I was listening to a record. (Note from 2019: Onkyo needs a transport change.... it's sadly off-duty. Note from 2025: sadly, attempts to fix it including some major parts changes did not work, it has been long retured, and replaced by a newer Onkyo CD changer - I think around Christmas 2023....)
L'Oiseau Lyre, Bach / Hogwood 433053 and 433181: Conducted as if it was Vivaldi. Horrific.
EMI Classics 7243 5 66954 29 Beethoven Triple Concerto, Brahms Double Concerto. Oistrakh / Rostopovich / Richter / Karajan / Szell. Big, full sound, very analogue for a CD. Very nice playing, recommended. Scratched, skips at track 2.
DG 447436-2 Mozart Piano concerts 17-23, 6. Géza Anda conducts and soloist. Camarata Academica des Salzburger Mozarteums. Excellent, big sound. Very scratched record, end skips.
HMA 1901105 Marin Marais: La Gamme. London Baroque / Charles Medlam. Very open sounding, a little light. Nice music, relaxing quiet listening, well presented. Nice chamber music.
Telarc CD-80190 Sir Charles Mackerras, Prague Chamber Orch. Mozart Symphony #31 (1-4), #33 (5-8), #34 (9-11). More sombre, reserved and controlled playing. Does not prance around. However, very nice interpretation, it is mature Mozart we are hearing. Recording sounds nice, with weight. You can feel the scale of the orchestra. Instruments feel organic and real, sounds like vinyl. Bass has that fleshy texture.
HMA 1901267 Lully / Kenneth Gilbert D'Anglebert's transcriptions of Lully for harpsichord. Nice for quiet listening.
HMA 1901083 Charpentier / Les Arts Florissants, William Christie. Very nice, lot of French singing. D&D background music.
DG 4474072 Brahms Piano quartet #, Ballades Op 10. Emil Gilels, Amadeus Quartet. Not bad, but nothing special.
AUDITE 95433 Pictures for Piano and Percussion. Duo Vivace. SACD. Very dynamic and fast, excellent sound, great test for dynamics and to demonstrate music floating in the air with remarkably little attachment to speakers. However, not much musical value. Barely more than elementary school kids having a go at piano and drums. Track 7 has some musicality. Tracks 8,9: perfect test for high end extension. Track 10: kettle drums. In short: use it as a record with audiofool test material, but do not expect to sit down and have an hour of quality entertainment. You won't get it. This is Art decoy for you.
DSD CD Sony SK89488 Eschenbach / NDR Sinfonie orchester / Midori / Nobuko Imai. Mozart Sinfonia Concertante E f maj, Concerto for Violin D maj. Spacious, super quiet and lean sound. Controlled, slow pace conducting. Midoris violin is very dry sounding. Helps to slow down and relax. Excellent for a refreshing nap.
Paul Simon: Songs of the Capemen. Vocal quality is stunning! Extremely well produced (by Paul himself). Very sad story though. Definitively a demo record for male vocal - invisible live person in your house type of sound. Recommended tracks: 1,5. It even fooled Mici to think there's someone in the house! It's harder to trick a cat than a human, and this CD can do it. ;
Telarc CD-80156 Sir Charles Mackerras, Orch of St Luke's. Haydn Symph #31 Hornsignal, #45 Farewell. Trumpets play key roles. Very good music, good conducting, authentic Haydn. Good recording.
Argo 433451-2 Trumpet Voluntary Michael Laird Brass Ensamble / Peter Hurford. Bach / Handel / Purcell / Charpentier, etc. Very nice recording. Good sound and good music. Trumpet and organ, with good acoustics. Track 10: quiet trumpet and organ. Track 11: loud T&O. Track 12: Bach, very nice playing!
Philip Glass, Einstein on the Beach, M438875 CBS Masterworks Holland. Very nice pressing, very good sound. Initially interesting music, gets boring repetitive by the end of side 2. After 15min, you heard it all, it's stuck on repeat.
LR-134 Laurel Records: Mischa Lefkowitz violinist. Bloch concero for violin & orchestra. Digital recording. Superb recording (despite digital-driven misgivings), very quiet and detailed, violinist is excellent. However, Bloch sucks. Music does not say anything meaningful. Violin sounds thin and castrated. It does not sound natural. Is it his violin, or the digital aspect of the recording? We might never know...
LSC-6094 RCA Victor Liv Stereo Red Seal. Albeniz - Ibéria and Ravel Rapsodie Espagnole. Dir: Jean Morel / Paris Conservatory Orchestra. Nice, spacious, credible orchestra. VG sounding record. Albeniz was a Spanish pianist, student of Liszt. This is the orchestral version of Ibéria. Generally, superb conducting and playing. Side 1 - very nice orchestrations. Side 2, track 1: orchestration sucks.
LSC-1900 RCA Victor Liv Stereo Red Seal. Berlioz - Symph. Fantastique. Munch / Boston SO. As quiet as if it was US cleaned. Best orchestral sonics so far from LSCs! Best bass! Superb clarity. Music is not so bad (first 5min listened only.)
LSC-2401 Aaron Copland: Appalachian spring. Sounds good, music is average film soundtrack. Not a keeper.
LDR-73005 London Digital Recording, 1981. London FFRR. Ponchinelli: La Gioconda. Thin sound, runs out of focus on dnamic peaks - gets messy. Music sucks: it climaxes 3 times in two minutes out of nowhere, resulting in premature ejection of the recording from collection.
OSA-13117 London FFRR. Donizetti: Maria Stuarda. Sutherland / Pavarotti, sung in Italian, 1976. Sharp contrast to previous digital FFRR: very fleshy, deep soundstage and substance. Great dynamic range, tons of detai. Stays clear at dynamic peaks. Superb! Music is also much, much better!
DG 2720029 Schoenberg/Berg/Weber - Die Streichquartette. 5LP set, superb booklet. Stellar sound, demo quality! Music-wise: it's a little weird, modern. Not bad.
Decca SXL2069-72 Black / silver FFSS label. Verdi: La Forza del destino. / F Molinari Pradelli. All Italian cast. Very quiet, big sound. Superb conducting! Very nice! (RCA White dog version: better sound than Decca, more live and dynamic, with better tone.)
Dvorzak - Slavonic Dances / Kubelik / Bavarian Radio Symphony. Superlative conducting and playing. Excellent recording. Goes very deep, dynamic, no compression at peaks. (Did not put down the label.... arrgh.)
OSA138 London FFRR: Rossini - Barber of Seville. Varviso / Ghiaurov. Superb recording quality!
OSA1508 LONDON FFRR Black/silver: Wagner - Siegfried / Solti. Conducting, playing, singing superb! F'in awesome sound!
LSC-2603 Heifetz / Bruch Scottish Fantasy: Superb playing, emotionality. Very nice. White dog Red Seals, 7S and 10S Indiana copies (2). Both copies sound nice.
MLP SR90017 Red/white sash. Chausson: symphony OP 20. Compressed at dynamic peaks. Not quiet, noisy vinyl. Film music, average kine'. Overdramatized. Out.
LSC-2435 Heiftez / Sibelius violin concerto. Living Stereo Red Seal / Miracle surface. 9S/10S Indiana: nice sound. 1S Indiana: bad pressing, R channel only!! tosser. (Did they mess up their first pressing?)
SXLP30257 EMI England / GB press. HMV COncerts Classics. Haydn Symphony #103 drum roll & 104 London. Beecham / Royal PO. Very nice conducting and playing. Hall ambiance, proper imaging, unedited tone and acoustics. Dynamic. Has some detail-loss, and background is higher than EMI in general. Wide soundstage. (with AT-F7 cartridge 6hrs break-in)
ABR1001 Chandos,BlochSacred Service, LSO / Geoffrey Simon & Zemel Choir. Very loud chorus. Big timpani. Shouts your head off! Great demo record, but definitively not my cup of beverage.
EMI SLS976 Elgar: The Apostles. Boult. God quality recording, but did not like music.
LSC-2601. Van Clinburn Rachmaninoff Concerto #2. Three 3S/3S copies compared. Pressing is so poor, cann't tell H or R in two cases. Third was H, but even that was a difficult read, parts of the letter missing. The orchestra is muddy, high background. Third copy (barely legible H) had way better bottom end. On all three the piano is clear, but orchestra is very muddy, on the 3rd copy a little less muddy.
MLP SR90260 Byron Jannis Rachmaninoff concerto #2. Dorati / MSO. Very narrow soundstage. Van Clinburn's interpretation is better, and Reiner is also better than Dorati.
LSC-2522: Schubert Symphony #2. Munch / BSO. 2S/3S Indiana, three identical copies, all sound very similar. L channel is more emphasized, way off center. Nice playing, but cloyingly sweet interpretation of Schubert.
MLP SR90300 35MM. Byron Jannis / Kyril Kondarashin / Moscow Phil Orch. Prokofjev piano concerto #3. Huge piano, superb orchestra. Stahanovist music.
VICS-1330(e) RCA Victrola Immortal Performances (4S). Mozart Symph #39,40. Toscanini. Listened to in mono. Screechy, recessed sound. Quite poor sound quality. Conducting is super intense, Beethoven plus levels. Es gibt keine Mozartkugeln hier... gehen wir schnell zu Goodwill!
MHS1001, JSBach - Cantatas Nos 68, 98, 53. Cond Fritz Werner
Very poor recording. Extremely noisy vinyl, sound is muffled and addled, as if a worn out tape cassette was used as a “master”, although I can’t remember ever listening to such a poor sounding cassette tape. Interpretation (conducting and singing) is very poor, more like Schönberg than Bach. Avoid in the future, red flag. Removed from collection.
Dohnányi plays Beethoven piano sonatas 30 and 31, Everest 3109 35MM
The last recording of Dohnányi, right before his death at the age of 82. The sound is generally clear and very dynamic. Appears to be mono, with occasional spatial disconnect in the high registers, as if it was a failed mono/stereo reprocessing, or recorded out of phase for the L/R channels. (I suspect that it was recorded with one of the three mikes out of phase, an it created a big mess when mixed down to 2 channels.) Definitively a disconnect in the tonality between low-mid and high keys. Interpretation: 100% Dohnányi, 0% Beethoven. Playing: he has excellent mastery of the piano, unique and sublime style of playing. Very touching, a true grand master of the instrument at the peak of his wisdom. If you like Dohnányi or want to explore this giant of musical history, this recording is a must have, despite the recording / mastering issues. If you want to hear Beethoven, look elsewhere, as you will be horrified. Even Beethoven himself would not recognize these as his own. (There are some advantages of being deaf, or dead...)
Arthur Schnabel: The Complete Beethoven Society Recordings, Vol II of 5, Sonatas Nos 11-17., 1932-1937 Seraphim, IC6064, Three records set
Sound quality wise, this is a huge surprise from the lowly regarded Seraphim! Excellent sound, imaging is spectacular. My goodness, they had this recording quality in the 30s!!! Truly jaw-dropping, if you never heard a proper transfer before from that era. You can hear coherent piano, not the discordant notes that do not form a unified instrument as in the case of the Dohnányi Everest 3109 - this recording absolutely wins in respect of imaging accuracy. There are lots of harmonic nuances, the soft passages are truly beautiful, and the hard strokes also come through. You have the impression that you are listening to a real piano - not an oversized ego-pumping Bösendorfer. A much smaller, but a real one, nonetheless. This piano’s strength is in the piano and pianissimo, it gets rough and strained at forte - I have to add, the piano strains, not the recording. The noise floor is surprisingly low for such an early recording, and it is surprisingly extended in frequency range as well. Compared to a live piano there is a little less top and bottom end, but not at a level where it would become bothersome.
Schnabel’s playing is not what I would have considered the standard of Beethoven interpretation. He is clearly representing himself - or the era he came from? He excels at the softest passages, the pianissimo are delightful and show absolute mastery over the keyboard and intimate knowledge of the structure of music. However, his forte is harsh. It contrasts a complete lack of refinement compared to the pianissimo which is meticulous and nuanced to absolute beauty.
Schnabel was a renowned educator, the teacher of the next generation of great musicians who feature on the 50s-60s recordings. At first, listening to his Beethoven recordings (previous listenings, his other sets) was very strange. I was compelled to discard his recordings because they do not express quintessential Beethoven. I kept them just for their age, of listening to interpretations which are almost a century old. Schnabel started to make sense to me with these sonatas. Instead of the usual Beethoven contrast between small scale and grand scale, Schnabel also adds the contrast between the delicate harmony of the small scale and the uncontrolled, rough nature of the large scale. This is something that no other interpreter portrayed since - well, none that I know of! That being said, there is depth to Schnabel that we start noticing after repeated listening. Even with that, I am not convinced that he is interpreting Beethoven as the composer would have thought it out, but his vision is valuable, and adds an extra layer to Beethoven's world. I’m glad I have additional recordings of Schnabel, to explore his world. After you have absorbed Beethoven from Ferencsik’s interpretation, I recommend to start down the Schnabel journey. Caution, it's highly addictive! I find myself that I instinctively reach for his Beethoven sonatas, I play them at least once a week.
Arthur Schnabel: Beethoven GM43368 mono, RCA Musique (French pressing, recorded in US, 1942). Sonatas Nos 30,32; Concertos Nos 4,5(Emperor) with CSO/Frederick Stock.
The sonatas are fabulously recorded, top notch sound quality and spatial integrity. Very strong foundation, extended highs, superb macro and microdynamics. A more modern Beethoven interpretation, quite different from his 1932 works.
Music für 2 und 3 Lauten, Archiv: Superb sonics. Very good dimensionality, superb dynamics. Demo disc quality! Nicely played, as well. Brand new record.