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Sound quality is quite good to my ears. Very good actually.
Admittedly I have only listed to the first track but if they are all this good I will probably buy both box sets (looks like QOBUZ has seperated the original complete set into two).
. I judge any sound system by how tiring it is to listen to.
Linkwitz
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I owned a few Decca/London analog Lps in the late 70s but didn't really dive deep until re-acquiring a turntable in the 00s.
Routinely excellent, often remarkable sound engineering, and artistry never less than good, IIRC.
Off the top of my head, Maazel's Cleveland years is worth investigating for at least the engineering. They turn in the best-recorded Berlioz Requiem of the era, IMHO, (though the interpretation didn't grab me). Other perhaps overlooked standouts include Rimsky Korsakov's Russian Easter Overture and one of my favorite Prokofiev 5th: very grim, dark, and built from the bottom up. Then there are the more popular TAS-listers, Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet and Respighi's Festivals/Pines.
The Bloch Cello works are indeed very well-recorded. I remember dropping the needle on that Lp. I didn't know the music at all but was struck by the engineering, above average even for Decca.
On to Mehta in LA: skip the famous (and IMHO sleepy Holst Planets) and try Mahler's 3rd, the Varese works, and Elgar's Enigma. Above-average artistry and enveloping, sometimes explosive sound that routinely put a smile on this listener's face.
Solti looms large, but there's so much already written about him elsewhere.
Again, off the top of my head while I sip coffee and wake up:
Weller and Kletski with the Suisse Romande.... I really liked Weller's Rach 2nd Symphony, (and hope HDTT will digitize it soon!) and Kletski's Lutoslawski Concerto for Orchestra caught my ear for the astonishing immediacy of the delicate opening of the 2nd mov't. Weller's Prokofiev is fine, but really didn't do much for me.
Abaddo with the LSO recorded some Prokofiev. I've mentioned being impressed with his Chout.
Fun! I hope the remastering is decent.
An engineering problem with many of the Maazel/Cleveland recordings is excessive multi-miking. Then there is the matter of perverse, wayward interpretations, with the Berlioz Requiem heading the list. OTOH there are some wonderful recordings, including the best-ever Respighi Roman Festivals, complete Prokofiev Romeo & Juliet, and Porgy & Bess.
A lot of the Maazel/CLE discs are just ho-hum; I listened through the entire box set of these recordings a few years ago and found just a handful of keepers. Yes, the Prok 5 is fine, but Szell's is just so much better.
Lorin Maazel's Rimsky/Korsakov "Scheherazade," which is on the Decca/London label, was IMO the best performance of this work to make recording.....
In retrospect, I think Maazel wanted to sustain George Szell's "precision" with the Cleveland Orchestra (the concertgoers were a lot more demanding then than they are now), and ended up putting out a lot of "stiff" and "cramped" readings of the works performed..... The performances often came off as "robotic"..... Maazel didn't seem to have this problem after leaving Cleveland, his reads became more "relaxed" in his later years.
I don't claim to know what Maazel had in mind, even though I'm a clinical psychologist:) and I don't know how you reached that opinion. I've heard a number of his post-Cleveland recordings and broadcasts, and I thought they were willful and sometimes perverse, with some stellar exceptions (e.g., his Vienna Mahler 3 and 4).
The Maazel/CLE Scheherazade recording? I think it's fine, but others surpass it (IMO), including Beecham, Monteux/Vienna, Muti, Reiner, Stokowski/LSO, Kondrashin/Amsterdam. And I'm listening to it right now--the spot-miking is really obvious (well, not as bad as the Stoky Phase 4).
BTW, Alice Chalifoux, longtime harpist of the Cleveland Orchestra, told me that Maazel told her not to perform a certain harp flourish in Scheherazade; she disregarded his instruction during the performance, and he glared at her. She'd had enough, and retired from the orchestra not long afterwards.
The first year I attended concerts at Severance Hall in 1980, Maazel was the music director, in his final season..... It was then basically "music director by committee" the few years after that, before Christoph von Dohnanyi became MD in I believe 1984...... (I thought the Orchestra performed some phenomenal concerts between the Maazel and Dohnanyi eras.) That first year, I believe I saw him for about ten concerts..... Aside from a phenomenal Beethoven Seven, none of them were memorable.
When I saw him conduct live in Cleveland, I was struck by how "hyper" he was at the time..... (He made Gustavo Dudamel look "relaxed".... ) It almost looked like he was on speed or something.... I remember one moment where he almost knocked over the music stand in front of cellist Stephen Geber, who then had to get the music back in order..... Concertgoers told me Maazel in previous years sent his baton flying into the orchestra or audience on a few occasions......
The post-Cleveland Maazel didn't have any semblance of this hyper behavior..... (He seemed "sedated" in his later years.) I sometimes wonder if he had a medical condition, that was maybe addressed.
"The first year I attended concerts at Severance Hall in 1980, Maazel was the music director, in his final season..... "This was not accurate...... It was Maazel's next-to-last season......
I spent my sophomore year of college at UC Santa Barbara, in what would have been the 1981-82 season... Which was Lorin Maazel's last season as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra. (I remember the Cleveland Orchestra broadcasts, which at the time were nationally syndicated, host Robert Conrad stated that Maazel was leaving the Cleveland Orchestra to become the music director of the Vienna State Opera.... Which even now I thought was a curious move.... Unless his contract as Cleveland Orchestra music director was finished and not extended... But I never knew anything in regard to that.... But the Cleveland Orchestra was not ready to court a successor.) So in actuality, I missed Maazel's final season with the Cleveland Orchestra altogether.
I returned to Cleveland (Case Western Reserve Univ.) the following year, and I once again attended concerts at Severance Hall. Until I graduated in May of 1985 (Witnessed Christoph von Dohnanyi's first season as Cleveland Orchestra Music Director).
Edits: 04/25/21
That's where one of my kids graduated, having transferred there from the University of Texas, San Antonio. Some of those classes were practically on the beach!
OTOH, I thought the Decca/London recordings were MUCH less objectionable than the Szell/Columbia (CBS) recordings in terms of multi-microphoning. (The Szell/Epic releases were generally fine IMHO.)
Regarding the Maazel Respighi Festivals and Pines, it's always been a mystery to me how the Cleveland performances and engineering can sound so good, while Maazel's later recordings of these works in Pittsburgh (on CBS/Sony) sounded so wan in comparison - from both the interpretive and engineering perspectives. And that's DESPITE the fact that the Pittsburgh recordings were made with a minimalist microphone technique. My theory is that the microphones were simply too far away, and there was just no slam or impact to the orchestral climaxes. The Pittsburgh recordings also seemed a bit bass deficient in comparison. I wonder if it would be worthwhile for Sony to try to remaster that Pittsburgh Roman Trilogy.
Not sure where the Pittsburgh Respighi recordings were made. Heinz Hall was a little bass deficient before a renovation that happened post-Maazel (I remember seeing some concerts there led by Previn ca. 1980).
The Heinz Hall renovation was in 1995, according to the orchestra's website. My last visit there was to hear a fabulous Honeck-conducted Mahler 2 about 3-4 years ago. The hall is rather dry (like some of the other halls that were originally movie houses); clearly some reverb has been added on the Reference and Exton recordings. Who cares? They sound great!
Maazel is one of those conductors who if you listened to two performances of the same work several years apart, you would have thought it was done by two different conductors..... He once did a Beethoven Seven in Cleveland that I thought was for the ages..... I recently heard his studio performance of the B-7 with Cleveland, it had no semblance whatsoever to the performance I heard live back in 1980......
It's been hard for me to get a consistent "read" on Maazel over the years.
"It's been hard for me to get a consistent 'read' on Maazel over the years."
It's interesting that Maazel never returned to Cleveland in his later years..... I guess the falling out between conductor and orchestra was a rather bitter one..... (I talked with the musicians before concerts during the 1982 to 1985 seasons, they all had a very negative opinion of him. There was a rather large turnover of musicians between 1985 and 2000, Maazel would have conducted what was seemingly a totally different orchestra.) But I would have liked to have seen what the "non hyper" Maazel would have done with Cleveland. (I think the "non hyper" Maazel would have been just fine in Cleveland.)
I didn't anticipate Maazel mellowing out so much when he worked with the New York Philharmonic..... I thought that would going to be a powder keg over there, but not the case. (There were some YouTube videos of him conducting the NHK Symphony [link], which I think may have brought him memories of when he conducted what was the world's top orchestra in Cleveland. The NHK copyright police has taken almost all of them down, however.)
But he's gone now..... RIP.
Totally agree on most of your points.
Some really questionable tempo changes in the Requiem! But iirc, nice job recording the off stage brass.
As for the Prokofiev 5th, I'm not too picky. I had the Szell on lap, (along with his Mahler 4) and just couldn't get into them.
As for spot mic'ing, I don't recall being particularly distracted by instruments popping in and out of overall texture, but it's been awhile. (For instance, the soft gong taps in Solti's digital Mahler 2nd are ridiculously larger than life.) In the end, I just recall being generally impressed: illusion of an orchestral spread, depth, heft and sense of space.
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