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It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes.

Speaking of Pentatone and Tchaikovsky. . .

. . . do you like Stokowski's performances? Mostly, they're pretty one-of-a-kind with unique tempos (and tempo fluctuations!), not to mention his patented re-orchestrations and "improvements" to the originals! ;-)

In any case, Pentatone reissued a couple of his Philips quad performances from the 70's which I really get a kick out of:

I used to have both of these on vinyl, and found them a bit diffusely recorded on that medium (perhaps because they tried to mix some of the rear channels with the fronts for two-channel playback?). These Pentatone remasterings seem to be real improvements IMHO, and one of the posters at Amazon made the same observation. (And, like you, he's a two-channel listener.)

I was just listening to the LPO album yesterday, and, as they say in the movie reviews, what a ride! If you haven't heard it, you'd never believe how fast Stokowski takes the March from the Nutcracker Suite! The LPO players are doing everything they can just to keep up with his insane tempo, especially in the middle section (the repeated notes are killing the wind players!) and in the decorative ascending scales heard in the reprise of the main theme. And in "Waltz of the Flowers", he adds this cheesey tympani part to the secondary section (as well as at the end) which will have you smiling long aftere the track is over!

Just remember what Celibidache said: "The three greatest conductors of the 20th century are Furtwangler, Stokowski, and me!"



Edits: 09/18/16

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