Tír Na HiFi

^^ it's worth owning. A superb performance, although the sound quality is slightly muffled in places (althoug it is LIVE). The piece itself is a strange one... some wonderfully uplifting tunes in there, albeit a little disjointed and uneven as a whole. Rousing at times to the point of being bombastic, but I think that's Berlioz all over...

Joseph Haydn
String Quartet Op. 64 No 1.
Quatuor Mosaiques

This is really gorgeous music-making, highly recommended.

Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 5
New Philharmonia Orchestra
John Barbirolli - conducting.

I haven't listened to this particular recording of Mahler's Fifth symphony in quite awhile and so, this afternon, I sat through the entire performance by Barbirolli and the NPO of the Fifth. I do recall my being quite taken with this cd when I bought it a few years ago however now I find it a bit too ponderous, even the wonderful finale of the fifth movement didn't move me. I will have to listen to this performance once again to see how I really feel about it. It certainly doesn't compare well against the von Karajan, Abbado, Bernstein and Barshai recordings that I have listened to recently. I can't bring myself to listen to the Tennstedt: why waste an hour of one's life, I ask myself.

How do others feel about the Barbirolli CD?

Seán wrote:How do others feel about the Barbirolli CD?

It was the first recording of Mahler's 5th that clicked for me. Up until then I had some difficulties with this symphony notably with the first 2 movements. For me its still a great performance. The rest you mention above I have with the exception of the Abbado one.

Regarding the Karajan version, I thought it was well below par when I heard it first mainly for the lousy recording quality on CD. Very unbalanced I thought. But the vinyl version is terrific! The analogue sound that the DG guys got back then was something special. I hear it time after time whenever I listen to certain DG recordings on vinyl from that era.

on vinyl.

DaveF wrote:Regarding the Karajan version, I thought it was well below par when I heard it first mainly for the lousy recording quality on CD. Very unbalanced I thought. But the vinyl version is terrific! The analogue sound that the DG guys got back then was something special. I hear it time after time whenever I listen to certain DG recordings on vinyl from that era.

I remember my having a conversation with Ciaran a few years ago about the quality of the DG recordings available on vinyl in the seventies. In the late seventies, those of us who collected jazz LPS and who were customers of Noel Cloney used to envy the quality of the LPs available to Classical music fans at that time, and the one label that stood out from all the rest was DG. A lot of their recordings sound dated now, perhaps they have lost some of the quality in their remastering on to CD.

Seán wrote:

DaveF wrote:Regarding the Karajan version, I thought it was well below par when I heard it first mainly for the lousy recording quality on CD. Very unbalanced I thought. But the vinyl version is terrific! The analogue sound that the DG guys got back then was something special. I hear it time after time whenever I listen to certain DG recordings on vinyl from that era.

I remember my having a conversation with Ciaran a few years ago about the quality of the DG recordings available on vinyl in the seventies. In the late seventies, those of us who collected jazz LPS and who were customers of Noel Cloney used to envy the quality of the LPs available to Classical music fans at that time, and the one label that stood out from all the rest was DG. A lot of their recordings sound dated now, perhaps they have lost some of the quality in their remastering on to CD.

Recent DG remasters like this one:



are really excellent, but in the early days of CD they could be really poor, and a lot of things, such as Karajan's Mahler, has not been revisited by the remastering people since then. My DAC tells me that his M4 on Galleria



is only a 15 bit recording!

Dave, for sumptuous analogue sound you should try the Karajan Das Lied von der Erde. Utterly gorgeous!

Annees de pelerinage Books 1-3

Jared wrote:

Annees de pelerinage Books 1-3

There is some great music in there jared....I hope that you are enjoying it all!