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In Reply to: RE: So, a question from a classically ignorant music lover posted by Mike K on March 07, 2012 at 08:03:55
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.
Follow Ups:
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).
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