The Classical Music Guide Forums

bigshot

I got my Handel box. And I even got a dollar refunded because the price went even lower than when I ordered it.

bigshot

The Czech Dvorak set was the same as this... super low price, then it fell into limbo, but eventually I got my order. Make sure you keep your Amazon email receipt, and screen cap it to document the cover image. I bought a DVD set once where they tried to change a six disk box into a one disk box aft...

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I have a very nice autographed photo of Stokowski from 1927. It's a photo I've never seen anywhere else too.

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Some of it works, in strange ways. I still play the first movement of Gould's Appassionata and marvel at the way he has been able to deconstruct the music and put it back together to make credible musical sense and play it with 'passion'. if you hadn't heard the Appassionata before you would probab...

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I have over a dozen Brilliant Classics box sets and they are almost always good, very often quite great. The idea that box sets are assembled from scraps off the cutting room floor of obscure Eastern European orchestras just plain doesn't apply any more. Recordings that were full price just ten year...

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If it was given to him by HMV, it was probably a Victor Credenza, which looked like this... http://www.victor-victrola.com/Credenza143.jpg The Brunswick Panatrope Cortez was the phonograph that British royalty owned. I feel royal whenever I play it! The Credenza was the most popular phonograph desig...

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Never tried them, but I'm told they are pretty much the same thing as fiber or bamboo.

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It all depends on the age of the recording. Acoustic records usually sound better on acoustic phonographs. Early electricals are good on either kind of player. By 1940, the bass was recorded well enough that electrical transcription has a clear advantage. The introduction of hifi around 1950 blew ac...

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I love 78s, but the acoustic and early electrical ones sound MUCH better on an acoustic phonograph than in modern electrical transcription. I owned a CD company releasing historical recordings and I would slave away at the computer trying to recreate the great sound I got from my acoustic phonograph...

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Horowitz was a pianist who had a considerable amount of spontaneity. Live performances, even of the same work, would still be interesting to me.

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There is more to Heaven and Earth...

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I was talking specifically about Rings on blu-ray and DVD. With an HD projection system and good 5.1 sound, blu-rays can offer an entirely new way of enjoying opera. The Ring is the perfect candidate for blu-ray release, because it requires such vast resources to stage. I thought you had seen the Va...

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Mehta's Rhinegold is a million times better than the first Levine one. That was the most lugubrious performance I've ever suffered through. The only thing about the Mehta Ring that I don't like are the costumes. They are pretty ugly, particularly in the first act of Walkure. But the music and singin...

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This is a great Ring. The singing is solid without any obvious miscasting... try to find that in a modern Ring! Mehta's conducting is fantastic and the orchestra gives it their all. Listen to the overture to Walkure. I haven't heard it conducted that well since Walter. The sets and cherry pickers ar...

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There is a very good Wand cycle on DVD. It's fun to be able to watch classical performances as well as listen to them. It gives you added respect for Wand too. He is in total control.

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When I think of the typical straightforward kappelmeister conductors... Sawallisch, Bohm, Wand... Sawallisch is a little different, because he is more no nonsense. Bohm and Wand had a little bit of a lilt to their conducting. The music danced a little more. Sawallisch is good, but the music rarely c...

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The best I can muster for him as a description is "sturdy". His Wagner is OK. His Mendelssohn symphonies (which I keep ending up with in box sets) are not. He managed to sap all the fun out of Stokowski transcriptions, even when he was playing them with the PO. I consider him a "placeholder conducto...

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I got a good one once... The cover was Myron Floren's Polka Classics and the CD inside was the Sex Pistols. I'm probably the only person in the world that likes both Myron Floren AND the Sex Pistols, so I wasn't disappointed.

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The only thing I've spent a lot on was a multichannel SACD of Donald Fagen's The Nightfly from Japan. I think that was about $65. But I don't pay big prices for classical music. There's too many great legacy releases at a couple of dollars a disk in box sets, and I really am not that interested in m...

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because autism.

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I can understand the value of correct tempo and rhythmic precision, but Mahler isn't the place that I demand that. The music requires a certain freedom to open up the emotional level of the music. Emotional phrasing isn't the same thing as undisciplined at all. I don't have any ideal for Mahler perf...

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I've been waiting for this one! Classic Archive: Voices http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51N6c434kHL.jpg 14 hours of recitals and television broadcasts featuring Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Gundula Janowitz, Regine Crespin, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Rita Streich, Julia Varady Boris Christoff, Theres...

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I was watching the compilation of opera clips from the Ed Sullivan Show on Hulu last night. It's a who's who of singers... Nilsson, Callas, Pons, Price, Sutherland, etc. But the two that impressed me the most were Anna Moffo and Robert Merrill. Wonderful singing and acting. If you have Hulu, check i...

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Subjectivism partnered with elitism are a great way to never really understand the world around you. Home audio works in predictable and consistent ways. Human perception is also pretty well understood. If you know how that cable works, and you know what the limitations of your hearing are, you can ...

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I'll vote Miakovsky. I think he was hugely influential on classic movie soundtracks. His symphonies are prototypes for the great music you hear in movies from the 40s and 50s.

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This is his forum. You're in his house enjoying his hospitality. You don't go over to someone's house and drink their booze and eat their food and call them a Nazi. If you do, you deserve to be booted to the curb.

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John plays the organ Heck the bassoon Diego is musician Joe Patris, Donald Isler, Harris all play piano. Karl Henning is a Composer, so is Iced Note. Guitarist is, I wonder what? Maestro is a Conductor John F knows more than anyone I know about classical music, seriously, he does. Lance has tuned m...

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Personally, I have no objection to the Admin delete button being hit in extreme cases, and the ban tool being used if someone can't restrain themselves enough to keep simple conversations from spinning out of control. This is just an internet forum. It isn't the Supreme Court. People need to keep it...

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My pop used to jokingly say his favorite composer was Wolfgang von Beethoven. But he was just being cute.

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The one I want is the 1946 Ravel. Great performance and fine mono sound on that one.

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I thought he was loved in New York and got more criticism later. I wasn't paying attention to classical music back then though. Shrug.

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Man! I don't know enough about baseball to interpret that one! I hear *more* emotion in Bernstein's later recordings rather than less. Very interesting that someone perceives it as the other way around. But whichever way around it is, criticizing Bernstein for being emotional is like criticizing the...

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I would avoid the DGG box: Bernstein's later recordings were under-rehearsed compared to his earlier Columbia repertoire. I wouldn't attribute the difference to being under rehearsed. I think it is that later in his career, Bernstein had already hit all of the expected marks and wanted to branch ou...

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Bernstein is one of the greatest conductors who ever lived. The fact that he was also a composer and educator is just icing on the cake. I rank him on my short list up with Stokowski, Furtwangler and Toscanini as one of the most important conductors of the 20th century.

bigshot

I haven't had any problems with importcds. They list things that are on back order that they never are able to get in, but after a little wait, they always credit back my paypal. Sometimes I have to let them know I am no longer willing to wait. That doesn't bother me. And they respond? Yes. I log i...

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I haven't had any problems with importcds. They list things that are on back order that they never are able to get in, but after a little wait, they always credit back my paypal. Sometimes I have to let them know I am no longer willing to wait. That doesn't bother me.

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Perhaps an opera giving fair consideration to Charles Manson's point of view!

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Whether he was killed just because he was a Jew or because he spoke up for something he believed?

Killing someone for either of those reasons qualifies as murder in my book.

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The Pentatone Ring is different than the CD one we are talking about. I have both and the PentaTone was pretty disappointing. Sluggish. The older one on CD is better, particularly the Siegfried which is the best of his cycle. (One of the best Siegfried recordings in fact),uu

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Will the Ravel piano concerto be the mono version with him conducting from the piano? I believe that was Bernstein's first recording.

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They're all available at Amazon US too!

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OH GOOD GRIEF! There are three more in this series... Piano with Kempf, Brendel, Arrau, Michelangeli, Cziffra, Gould, Janis, Gillels, etc Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00HS7C0D8/ Track Listings: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71wUzun45qL._SL1500_.jpg Strings with Szeryng, Milstein...

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I ordered this blu-ray from Amazon.co.uk. It's unique, because it isn't in hidef. Instead, they used all the disk space to pack 14 hours of standard definition video on the disk. This one is orchestral music conducted by Stokowski, Munch, Jochum, Markevitch, Karajan, Klemperer, Giulini... A virtual ...

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The Mehta Ring has spoiled me for CD Ring cycles now. Before with Boulez, Barenboim and the Met, I could put up with a sound only Ring and console myself that the visuals weren't important. But that was because the visuals *weren't* important in those other video Rings. Mehta's Valencia Ring takes t...

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Jarvi is one of the rare cases where the offspring greatly exceeds the parent.

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My classical CDs are all ripped... well except for the complete Bach box I've been ripping a bit at a time. I always join tracks of symphonies and concertos to make them one single file. That way, the pieces are always together in the right order. Going to iTunes for my music instead of individual C...

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I really like Boutique Fantastique. Great piece!

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There's never room for more of the same. But there is always room for a different approach, even if that approach is wrong. The problem isn't that there are too many... it's that there are too many of the same thing.

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I've never liked this one. I've tried very hard to like it and I have six or eight different recordings, but it sounds coarse and fake to me. Maybe someday the light will go on in my head and I will get it. It's happened before.

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I'm not at all surprised that Deacon got fooled. He's an opinionated, surly guy with a huge ego.

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