Classical Music for Aficionados
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Classical Aficionados: Which recording / version of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue do you recommend? I'm looking for two standout (and different) versions for system evaluation. Thanks! [I have searched online, but would love feedback from those active in the thread / knowledgeable about this composition] |
As we go into Christmas I would like to play what I consider one of the greatest Carols of modern time that is underplayed as are many pieces by this great composer . It's not easy to sing but the American choir does so very well . https://youtu.be/SE0aIQp9V4s?t=3 |
@jcazador Jeremy while I am listening to it I shall tell you what, it's Mariam Batsishvili and she is playing Liszt and Chopin pieces and she is mesmerising. I know it is no use mentioning to @Schubert and @rvpiano as they hate all things "Liszt" sorry guys just having a little fun. Now back to the recording it is the only recording I could find on Idagio but I'm quite sure that will be remedied soon. She can only be described as a true poet and she has a technical facility the equal of any. I was sold on the first track of her album ' it was the Liszt Benediction that got my mind made up. I could hear a technique truly the equal of Volodos but she uses her virtuosity solely at the service of the music. Her tone palate reminds me of Claudio Arrau and she plays Liszt's Consolation in D flat major as if Horowitz was on the piano stool. I have found a lot of videos on You Tube giving us a lot more examples of her art, she plays the Bach-Busoni Chaconne in D Minor with a virtuosity that is truly stunning. There is also an account of her Liszt Piano Concerto No 1 that focusses on her playing manner and there are shots from above of her hands and her octaves are stunning and so precise. This girl is going to go very far and she is only 25 years old. Oh one more thing her persona on stage is in no way flamboyant and she hasn't succumbed to manager tricks to sex her up , she wears a lovely tailored trouser suit which does not detract the listeners in any way ( what a breath of fresh air ). I also now have a recording she made of a recital she gave in Liverpool which BBC Radio 3 had recorded and very illuminating it is, she gives us a technically perfect Bach Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue then a beautifully balanced Mozart Piano Sonata and in the second half she gives us the Liszt Piano Sonata in B Minor . That particular piece I have many copies of with different pianists playing from all different eras and my favourite for as many years as I can remember is Arrau in his analogue set for Phillips which was digitised in the Eighties and Phillips did a retrospective of his career with them and did a lot of boxes of him playing different composers. Our little Georgian wunderkind is going to be up there now with Arrau. Oh and she has a wicked sense of humour also at the end of the Liverpool concer and B Minor Sonata she came on stage and announce that after the Liszt she would give us something mare simple and not so serious. She played The Paganini-Liszt transcription of La Campanella , she brought the house down. |
@jcazador Jeremy if you want to hear a really great guitarist then find on you tube Martin Taylor, I can only say what he does on a guitar defies belief. He plays jazz guitar but I got over that hurdle very quickly. I have seen him personally 5 times and he always leaves you wanting more. If you don't believe me then check out the stuff he plays on his Yamaha custom guitar. It has an autograph on it from Chet Atkins and it says "Martin you are the best, Chet Atkins" |
Keola Beamer is among the most sentimental Hawaiian guitarists. His most well known recordings are very prepared, e.g., Honolulu City Lights. My personal taste favors the more improvisational style, and my favorite today is Led Kaapani. I also love his voice, including that delicate "almost yodeling" popular in the old Hawaiian style. And he also plays uke. Here is a series of Led live performances (and it is not all Hawaiian music): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_6Tkab-L3c&list=PL429498FD3C9B3ACE&index=6 |
Jim et al here is Keola Beamer playing prototype "Beamer" model that Grimes named after him https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZEjLt9X9zY&list=PLUuz7DoKnenUt7o22xU4X7XP6kAcTRlUA http://www.grimesguitars.com/the-beamer-steel-string/ |
@jcazador Yes Jeremy they are indeed lovely guitars ( I would love to hear how the ones with sound holes at the front sound like ) As an aside I am this moment listening to a gorgeous Handel’s Messiah from Emmanuelle Haim and Le Concert D’Astre . It,s a facsimile of a performance Handel organised at Covent Garden in London. In it the Alto was a counter Tenor and I must admit I do like it though we are all more used to female altos but I do indeed think there is cause to put it beside the Dublin editions. |
Hi Jeremy, I had a few guitars in the years I was playing . I had two wonderful Lowden guitars , a jumbo one ( boy that thing could project and one that was the same size as the Martin D19 which was a lovely guitar to play. I also had a few nice classical guitars of which my favourite was a bespoke one made by William Kelday the man who makes guitars for Tony McManus the Scottish fingerstyle guitarist. In 1973 when I was taking lessons in classical style guitar I found out that I liked to play renaissance lute music and at the time to buy a lute was totally prohibitive as they could only be made as one offs and the cost was sky high. I did not let that deter me so I managed to get some plans and some tone woods and made my own seven course lute. It actually turned out not too bad and I then started playing William Byrd, Francis Cutting ,John Dowland and my idol JS Bach. I played those instruments for many years and I still have the lute lying unused in a cupboard for a good few years. I gave up some years ago when I was discovered to have diabetes and due to peripheral neuropathy I couldn't feel the strings beneath my fingers so I had to give up playing altogether.I now only listen to music but have to admit that it is piano music most of all that I am interested in. |
Jim please describe your guitars and lutes i play an old Guild F30 flat top steel string, have others, fancier, but the Guild plays so easy I seldom play any other i play simple stuff, dylan, beatles, fingerstyle (no pick) got a piano last year, an old Yamaha U1 learning to read! it would be wonderful to play classical music, but I started so late in life |
@phomchick Again I'm afraid I have to disagree with you because the direct Steam DAC still suffers from the Garbage in Garbage out principal. As an example my friend suffered from the principal that it did not matter what the digital source was you could not get better quality by giving it a better source and bits was bits syndrome. I told him to come down with his digital gear( a laptop and a desktop ) and we would play his gear against mine. We agreed to stream a piece and play also from a hard drive. As I had thought his laptop put up a dull uninvolving sound and his desktop was a little better. I then played my laptop and he was saying a see I told you so with his eyes . I then connected up my PC and it was a different ball game completely, my machine demonstrated much better dynamics and far more detail to the files. Now we were both musicians and we know how instruments sound and he was in complete agreement that my source sounded so much better. |
@jcazador Hi Jeremy those were interesting links you sent , I just wish I could buy a 4 Terabyte You asked what I have for listening to well I now only use my computer for music with streaming and hard drive music storage the two main things. My computer is a bespoke one I built myself and truth be told I am quite proud of it as it is a very powerful beast indeed. If you want something like it you have to be very fastidious indeed. Integral to the build is first of all a tower that is built for music first and foremost so you will need it to be acoustically damped and sound proofed. I have installed an ASUS gaming motherboard with Intel My motherboard runs from a linear power supply and I also have it running from it's own complete spur from the mains. I have A J Play USB card and a J Play network card and those run from another linear power supply. Inside the PC I only employ SSDs , one for my Windows system and two for my main interests of Orchestral music and Concertos and another one for solo Keyboard.. I Backup music to HDD hard drives and these are also backing up music which I do not listen to very often so it saves space on the SSDs. My software is quite novel in that my PC is built to have as little jitter as I can. My Windows system is a heavily trimmed 10 Pro build in the jitter producing stuff like Cortana, One Drive and a whole host of other things stripped away. My pal over in California installed a raft of his software on it . It was expensive but well worth it as before the software was installed I had a thread count of three and a half thousand and a process count of two hundred and twenty and it is down now to seven hundred and forty and seventy two, My other stuff is the PC goes straight to a PS Audio Direct Stream DAC and I listen via a pair of Sennheiser HD 800 phones and they are fed by a Sennheiser HDVD Phone Amp. The system is bare bones clean so it brings out some detail from the conductors and orchestra of which grunts ,page turning intakes of breath and the like are very much to the fore. I think I have said it before but when I built this beast I put it up against my CD player and it blew the CD Player out of the room. The CD player was a Gryphon Mikado Signature, No slouch itself. |
Vera Dulova She was the queen of harp in Russia, famous at Bolshoi. Exquisite. "Russian Performing School", Mozart, Donizetti, Saint-Saens, Ravel, Pascal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Dulova |
@phomchick Music stored on and retrieved from an SSD will sound exactly the same as music stored on and retrieved from an HDD. I am sorry but I beg to differ on your statement as I have found the complete opposite to be true. I think the difference is the amount of jitter each drive produces as the HDDs to my mind gives considerably more simply because of the platters and stators inside the drive. when I listen through Roon to each drive the SSD drive to my ears produces more detail and treble information. The HDDs produce to me a flatter less involving sound. |
@schubert Len , I am glad you like Volodos doing the late Brahms I love that Recording especially the Intermezzos. The gradations of colour he pulls out of a percussive device like a piano is nothing short of a miracle. His whole approach to piano playing reminds minds me of Horowitz but I say that under my breath as I know it can be very dangerous to say things like that. . |
I had not even considered SSD, interesting that you say they have better sound quality.Music stored on and retrieved from an SSD will sound exactly the same as music stored on and retrieved from an HDD. However, an SSD uses less electricity, and if you aren't doing a lot of writes, it should last longer than a HDD. I use an SSD for my music server, but not because it will should any different. |
thanks Jim I had not even considered SSD, interesting that you say they have better sound quality. I see Samsung makes a 4TB internal SSD that sells on Amazon for $450. And external SSD 4TB's start at $719. But presumably you do not need to buy a backup. And you do not have to deal with a failed HDD, which (for a simpleton such as me) also involves paying a computer tek for help. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L3CLM2B/?coliid=I5HJ3Y20YG83D&colid=2GO5XW7KH31YJ&psc=1&ref... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078TMW9PX/?coliid=I3AL1TYDZUEM5E&colid=2GO5XW7KH31YJ&psc=1&re... Btw, i also download movies and Attenborough nature programs, they take more space than just music. Movies I seldom keep, usually dump them after a few minutes trial. Atttenborough I save for my grandchildren (and myself). Also, the 8TB I bought at Costco for $120 sells on Amazon for $140. https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Desktop-External-Hard-Drive/dp/B07CQJBSQL/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=externa... If you have a minute, please describe your sound system -preamps, amps, speakers??? |
@jcazador 8Terrabyte !!!!!!!!!!!! Heaven's above Jeremy that's gargantuan and for only $119 , that's incredible, that size would cost a fortune over here in the UK. Yes you have to be very careful to make copy hard drives to double store your music. I use solid state hard drives inside my computer and regular platter drives for storage , that way I get away with the solid state for playing music of from the computer and the usual hard drives are for storing the music as a cheaper backup. The solid state also is a far better carrier with no physical movement inside and much better sound quallity |
Sibelius 4 and 5 with Karajan. I think I "get" 4 a little more with this version, but I can't say I really warm to it. I struggle to understand the progression, as I definitely like 1, 2 and 3, and 5 and 7 are firm favorites (6 is "up to the plate" tomorrow). BTW, this "old" EMI ADD sound is truly excellent! Either that, or one of the components in the system has finally broken in, way past the period when I thought all of them would be well done with that process. |
thanks Jim, thanks Schubert just a word about hard drives they definitely do self destruct in time last month, mine did. fortunately, i had made a copy onto another hard drive that is kept unplugged so i lost very little, only the most recent additions my computer tek wizard says an external drive might last 5 yearsif used frequently i just bought another XHD, 8Tb, for $119, at Costco |
@jcazador Yes Jeremy that is a good tip about the USB Hub and yes it does provide a stable platform for the digital stream to get to work. I also play all my music from a computer I have built myself. I use a powered USB card from J Play and I also use their Network card , they are powered by a Linear Power supply from HD Plex and the sound that comes from it is incredible actually. It was so good that after I built it I committed about three thousand CD's to hard drives and I then sold my Gryphon Mikado Signature CD Player and have never looked back. |
Pardon me, this could be considered off topic. I use a computer based sound system, with music on an external hard drive, going from computer to dac to preamps and amps.The sound quality was recently greatly enhanced by a very inexpensive simple addition: a POWERED USB hub between computer and dac. Evidently the computer was not providing the dac with a sufficient flow, so the sound would cut out and then the dac needed to be reset. I had consulted IT experts, including one with an advanced degree from MIT, and they could not fix my problem! A powered usb hub costs as little as $10 on Amazon, that was all that was needed. But it must be a powered usb hub, one that connects to your household ac. |
@twoleftears Yes Sibelius 3 that's my favourite of his and Rattle's performance with the Berlin Phil are my go to recording. Three or four years ago Rattle brought over the Berlin Phil to give a full Sibelius cycle and the BBC proms at the Albert Hall and BBC Radio 3 recorded each performance and each night I recorded them. I have thoroughly enjoyed them ever since but I have one small caveat, I do find them a tad refined in the brass section. I love the Scandinavian bands playing them as they tend to let their brass players a little more license but it is just a small grouch. I have watched and listened to Rattle's performances since he was first with the CBSO and I have to say he has illuminated a good few works for me. |
I don’t think that cut is on the Coopers 2009 . I will try to see what is what .I have all the Kempff vinyl myself, still love and play them . I’ve read several tomes lately by scholars who are coming to believe we have just begun to understand the genius that was/is Schubert. AYE , say I . Cooper was in St .Paul last year under the auspices of the Schubert Club which is old ladies with old money who bring the best artists to a 350 man Hall at Macalester College . ( Founded by Scots in 1800’s.)This is one of THE best private liberal college colleges in the USA .And millions have been spent on their Hall’s acoustics which are superb . Her program was mostly Haydn and Cooper really woke me up on that !She is a very powerful player , at times I thought the ghost of Arrau was in the house . P.S . The old girls brought us the pride of Scotland last spring , Nicola Benedetti . Sadly I was under the weather . |
