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In Reply to: RE: What discs do you put on to show off your system? posted by mbnx01 on July 08, 2015 at 11:04:05
And I'd probably have wildly different answers to it, depending on what I've been listening to recently. ;-)For classic two-channel, I agree with a couple of the "golden age of stereo" selections mentioned in earlier posts on this thread (i.e., the RCA Living Stereo and the Mercury Living Presence albums). In fact, I was just listening to a couple of MLP's yesterday, and, geez, they were so good!
Lots more I could have picked of course. I'm consistently amazed by that Dorati/LSO CfO - in some ways, I even prefer it to Reiner's (heresy, I know!). It's one of those recordings that, to my ears, has just sounded better and better over the years as my equipment has gotten better. And that other Dorati Bartok album with the Philharmonia Hungarica benefits from a more spacious acoustic than Mercury often employed. That Eastman album was one of the later ones done at that locale and is magnificent in its combination of image specificity (sorry for the audio rag term!) and holistic rendering of the entire acoustic as well as it can be done with only two channels. I don't mean to impugn the other golden-age recrodings (Living Stereos, early Decca/Londons and EMI's, Command Classics, Sheffields, some Vox albums with Skrowaczewski, etc.) - these just happen to be a couple that, as I say, I listened to recently. BTW, I'm showing the LP covers for the two Bartok albums, but what I actually own and listen to is the CD incarnation - via computer AIFF's of course! (But I've always loved that LP album cover for the CfO, which was bumped on the CD reissue!)
More modern two-channel:
More modern "non-interventionist" Multi-channel:
Modern "interventionist" multi-channel:
There are so many more choices that could have been made - we're living in a golden age ourselves right now!
EDIT: I just couldn't resist adding a Naxos blu-ray audio disc in here too! ;-)
Edits: 07/08/15Follow Ups:
When I saw that cover for the Gould West Point Symphony, it unleashed a flood of memories about those MLP LPs. That piece is a lot of fun (and, at times, quite stirring). I'd never acquired the CD transfer, so I promptly ordered a used copy. I hope the CD can at least suggest how nice the LP sounded.
Thanks for the memory jog!
Hey, it's in the nature of the hobby!
BTW, my favorite piece on the album is the Hovhaness Symphony, but the Gould and Giannini symphonies are interesting and worthwhile too. I'm sure you won't regret the loss of your eight dollars - after all, Wilma herself was responsible for the CD transfers! ;-)
good recording to get is the civil war suites from Eastman. Not music I really like to listen to (Ken Burns used the for his documentary on the Civil War), but they have photos of the Eastman Theater and the ensemble on stage with recording gear. Until I saw that I was at a lost because I though the EWE had some anomaly in their recording set up....
Except for accessibility of the music, the Kavi Alexander recordings made for AQ are superb. He also did a recording for Vandersteen: very nice audiophile qualities. Kavi's recording of the Phily , well , let's just say he does better with small ensembles.
The music is probably a bit esoteric for some listeners, but, as you suggest, the SQ is great.
I don't know Kavi's recordings for AQ, but I did buy about 4 of the recordings he did for his own Water Lily label. The Sawallisch/Philadelphia album (Dvoark/Liszt) suffered from the bone dry Academy of Music acoustics. He and I had quite the "debate" here about his Russian recordings (mostly his Mahler Fifth) almost ten years ago. I agree that, by all accounts, he does do better with smaller ensembles.
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