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Herb Belkin wept... .
The usual disclaimers about the ineffable "moi" and Arkivmusic.com apply.
JM
Follow Ups:
I've been enjoying this set now for several days. As much as I thought I knew some of these recordings, I did not know as much as I thought I knew.
My playback system has changed drastically in the last twenty years. It has evolved and improved and I now see that many of my previous prejudices concerning the Mercury recordings stemmed almost entirely from the quality of the playback system that I was using at the time and from a faulty memory. Listening to these recordings anew has set the record straight.
I said earlier that recording technology has improved a lot in fifty years. I was entirely wrong. Based on this set, recording technology has not improved at all in fifty years. These recordings embarrass current recordings. The Mercury recordings sound miraculous.
Perhaps the superb sound quality of these recordings stems from the use of the legendary tube-based Telefunken U-47 mics or perhaps the superb sound quality of these recordings reflects the skills of recording engineers Bob Fine and Wilma Cozart Fine but whatever the case may be, the music quality and sound quality of these recordings HAS NEVER BEEN EQUALED and probably never will be equaled. These recordings represent the high water mark, the absolute best that sound recording has ever achieved.
I consider this set an absolute must buy for all audiophiles. Do not hesitate!
I find many of the Living Presence recordidngs are shrill/bright in their various CD and SACD issues. Whether this was true of the original LPs, I have no idea--the only one I have (Prokofiev Suites/Skrowaczewski) is too worn out to evaluate. The small number of mics Mercury used on many of those recordings did produce good imaging in the right halls. But the idea that recording technology hasn't advanced in fifty years is absurd. There are plenty of modern recordings with recorded sound better than those Mercury had.
I'm as astonished as the next person.
The recordings sound subtly freshened for this release (like the Beatles re-masters). If I did not know better, I would think that I was listening to the SACD versions (they sound 95% as good).
Does anyone know if these recordings have been re-mastered again from the original masters?
If so, the restorers have done a remarkable job.
I have the SACD reissue of the Starker recording of the Bach cello suites. The CD and 2-channel SACD tracks sound very different from each other. The SACD layer has much more tape hiss, which suggests to me that its remastering must have been equalized differently from the CD layer. The SACD layer also offers more room ambience and "air," more audible placement of fingers on strings, and clearer differentiation of the harmonic overtones in the cello's sound. The multichannel SACD layers adds a "you are there" sense of realism to the 2-channel SACD layer, but the basic sound quality is the same.
Oh, and IMO it's a great performance, no matter which layer... Surprised to see this set selling on amazon used for $138-185; I think I paid $40 new...
I'd gladly pay $125 if they put them out on SACD!
But I ordered a set anyway.
John, you must have caused a stampede!
Happy listening,
Jim
nt
I too am "classically ignorant" but willing to expand my horizons. I've been satisfied with the audio quality of the few Decca recordings already in my collection. Is the recording quality up to par with the Mercury? Is the music offerred in the Decca box set as worthy as the Mercury?
.
So the quality of performances is higher. You also get some more recent recordings.
Though the Mercury recordings *are* classics, many of them wouldn't be my first choices for those pieces, and the sonics are not always to my taste. Also some of the music is probably not immediately of interest to the beginning collector. I think Decca's selection of works is more interesting.
I much prefer Decca's sonics, and the selection there is of some of their best recordings as recordings.
I like solo classical piano and guitar (for the most part anyway), but
have never been a far of orchestral pieces (for the most part, anyway),
and am almost abysmally ignorant of classical orchestral works. But I
am an audiophile (mostly) who likes well recorded and well played music.
Is this box going to be a good introduction to orchestral classical works
for someone like me? The purported audiophile sound quality appeals to
me greatly.
Your thoughts appreciated.
MK
Buy it. What you will get for the money is ridiculous.
This one is a no brainer.
The quality of substance at an average cost of $2 bucks a disc. Absolutely. I own five classical box sets and the Mercury is my favorite of the lot.
I never thought you would confess to being classically ignorant!
If you want to take the big box approach. I think that approach takes some of the fun out of collecting, but not everyone is into spending a lot of time on that.
I'm a novice, too.
I hesitated to take the shot-gun approach. So, I started with instrumental sounds I liked and that led me to composers and that led me to other instruments and types of classical music and so on.
I guess what I am saying is that I started at a small number of specific points, which were known and appreciated by me, and, based on that, I branched out into a whole network of music, composers, etc in which I have wandered around, searching for sounds I like. It's just a different way of searching.
The nicest thing about it is that you are in more control to aim your preferences at the musical universe, rather than starting with someone else's idea of what is representative of the universe and trying to find your preferences along the way.
Does that make sense?
Good luck.
Don't miss Charles Ives, the best American composer ever! That's an "inside" ironic comment.
"You don't need to be a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
and that's what I've been trying, with some success.
But I'm wondering whether it makes sense to spend the $100 for 50
discs of - shall we say - miscellaneous classical music and see/hear
which ones appeal. The "blind hog finds an acorn" approach, in other
words.
MK
I wouldn't and didn't do it. But I'm me (a real revelation). I don't know why I like the music I do, and I've stopped analyzing this topic. I have absolutely no intellectual connection with music. That doesn't limit my horizons: I'm always searching for music I can connect with, and it doesn't all sound the same, or come from same period (although I seem to favor romantic and early modern composers).What's the connection between Bach's cello suites, Bartok's Six String Quartets and Sibelius' various tone poems? I like them.
If you like guitar music, pick up almost anything by Julian Breame. "Baroque Guitar" is a good place to start.
If you like french horns, Dennis Brain is the artist to listen to.
If you like the clarinet, try the artist Sabine Meyer.
If you like the violin, Nathan Millstein's album of Bach's sonatas and partitas is incredible, as are Bartok's Six String Quartets played by the Emerson String Quartet.
Anyway, that's my approach. I started with instruments and that led to artists and composers and that led to...., and so on.
"You don't need to be a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Edits: 03/09/12
There's some solo piano in this collection (Moussorgsky) and I noticed guitar as well (the Romeros) which might stimulate your interest until you get aquainted with some of the orchestral works.
Years ago, I started my interest in recorded classical music listening to a boxed set of Classical LPs. Box sets are great value and serve as a nice way to get acquainted with music that you are unfamiliar with.
With that said, I am not sure these Mercury discs would be the best place to start. As has been mentioned, the recorded quality has long been somewhat controversial. One man's "immediate" and "front-row" is another man's "fierce" and "fatiguing."
These are all "classic" recordings from fifty years ago (or more). Some performances have never been equalled but recording quality has certainly improved a lot in fifty years.
I wish this was a box set of 50 Mercury SACDs (there were never that many SACDs to start with) because I found that the SACD-iterations of these recordings sounded miraculously good and had greatly improved sonics compared to these CD versions.
Moreover, many (if not most) of the SACD versions feature the original three channel recordings (never issued before), so if ever there was an "audiophile" version of the Mercury catalog it was the SACD releases. Alas, the SACDs are now almost impossible to find.
I wish Mercury would do a box set of SACDs.
Yes! I agree with you about the Mercury SACD's and I like them better than the CD's too. And you're right on about the three channels!
It's funny, though - I've read some opinions which are just the opposite of ours. I think some listeners were bothered by the fact that the 35mm magnetic film recordings were converted to 24/176 PCM (if I remember correctly) before being converted to SACD, and thus were not "pure" analogue to DSD efforts that the normal magnetic tape to SACD productions were. In any case, there weren't that many 35mm magnetic film recordings included among the 50 discs (11 or so out of 50).
I got the Chandos box set (below) for a broad introduction and am quite happy with it. I will probably get this one as well.
*
"We are as gods and might as well get good at it." - Stewart Brand
As Chris points out in his post below the recording engineers took a different approach to recording the performances. The music is more forward, i.e. in your face, than in most other label's recordings. The net result is that it can be more exciting on initial exposure, especially for folks who care more about 'audio' than performance. Some of the performances are excellent for sure.
There really is no down side to getting this set. It is cheap and even if you graduate from it and go on to getting different performances and more relaxed recording styles you can still haul out these records on occasions and thoroughly enjoy them. I do. From what you have said, it is possible that they may be all you ever need. :-)
d
Do you highly recommend buying this or just kind of?
Buy the Decca boxset instead.
Better yet get both sets.
Half of these recordings are now out of print (except in these boxed versions).
The hifi pundits and magazine writers have been telling us for the last six months that the days of physical media are coming to an end. They say that now is the time to get those recordings that you may have missed. All the signs point to these assertions being correct.
(a) It's a great way to get a lot of repertoire with older but star names, at prices below Naxos.
(b) Like any individual recording or not (I am not wowed by the Starker Bach, but I have a dog in that fight), there are lots of audiophiles and music lovers who will know what you are talking about.
Bottom line: it depends on where you are as a classical collector. I wouldn't buy that set, but I would buy the 18-CD Delius set on EMI for $60, in that I want to cover that waterfront.
JM
I have 41 of these 50 discs on individually issued CD's/SACD's. It's hard to know how other listeners might react to these discs if they haven't heard them before. They're classic "Golden Age" recordings, almost all of them stereo - and what sets them apart from more modern recordings is their minmalist microphone techniques (1 microphone for mono, 3 for stereo), which results in a coherency to the sound only matched by other minimalist microphoned recordings from about the same time (with just a few exceptions from later eras). If you're not used to these recordings, you may feel that the microphones are uncomfortably close - I don't mind this a bit. It's a real "conductor's ear" presentation of the music. Some of the earlier recordings used microphones which did not have an ideally smooth response. OTOH, many of these recordings have a magnificent clarity to the bass line, as well as the aforementioned coherency that really makes you sit up and notice!
As for the performances, some of them have, IMHO, never been surpassed. In this category, I would include
- Suppe Overtures with Paray
- Berlioz Symphonie fantastique with Paray
- Sousa Marches with Fennel
- Rachmaninoff First Piano Concerto with Janis/Kondrashin
- Tchaikovsky Nutcracker with Dorati
- Bach Cello Suites with Starker
- Brahms and Mendelssohn Sonatas with Starker/Sebok
- Kreisler favorites with Szeryng
Even the performances I haven't mentioned are all more than worthy. Years ago, I had a conversation with Harold Lawrence, who, when I mentioned that Dorati seemed like a less interesting conductor when he wasn't recording for Mercury, told me that Dorati himself agreed with that assessment! IOW, he was aware that there was something, a special quality, that was present in his Mercury recordings, which was missing from his own non-Mercury recordings. IMHO, there really is just something special about these Mercury recordings, even though I warn you that they're not for everyone.
and I do like the way they sound.
For $2 a copy I've got to go for it.
How the mighty have fallen!I was shocked last month when Classic FM magazine included a double set of the Dorati/Minneapolis 1812/Capriccio Italien, as well as the Cliburn/Kondrashin Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 - iconic recordings indeed! - as the FREE supplement CD attached to the magazine. PLUS, they threw in the Ferras/Silvestri Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto for good measure - but this interesting performance includes more cuts than even the normal Auer cuts we sometimes hear (certainly, this is the most cut performance I've ever heard!). As one of the posters on Amazon states, the performance "is all over the place & hacked up"!
Edits: 03/06/12 03/06/12
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