bearac blog

Chopin 19 Nocturnes - the Connoisseur Society LPs mystery

2009-12-09T14:02:00.003+02:00

There are very few things perfect in this world. Moravec’ Chopin Nocturnes recorded in 1965 for the Connoisseur Society must be one of them. You may wonder: so many great pianists having tackled these works in concert and at the studio – in fact everyone! – how can you say that? Well, hearing is believing. I had remained for decades attached to my two Rubinsteins (pre-stereo & stereo), Guiomar Novaes (on Vox – thankfully available still), Samson Francois and Moura Lympany, and a host of others (Harasiewicz also a great favorite) and came very late to the shivers sent down my spine from Moravec. Dr. Duffy, an American friend, sent me his own transfers he made direct from the CS LPs and I was hooked. I acquired the set from ebay and wallowed in the sound of the Boesendorfer Imperial Grand (8 full octaves, 97 keys! manufactured at Busoni’s behest by the German piano makers) and the unbelievably realistic – and atmospheric – recording by E. Alan Silver’s team.

A few years after the set sold handsomely and earned the pianist adulatory reviews and the Connoisseur Society a good turnover, it was withdrawn! Dr. John L. Duffy, is a psychiatrist, whose violon d’Ingres is to make transfers from 78s, piano rolls and LPs. He knew a close friend of Alan Silver’s and had the story – allegedly explaining why the precious LPs were withdrawn.

The set of 19 was recorded in 1965 – the first batch in April, at St Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University, N.Y. and the second with the company’s personnel moving to Vienna, at the Konzerthaus, during November. Now rumor has it that just before moving to the studio set up at St Paul’s, that day in New York, the pianist and the producer had partaken in company of some "elegant wine”, and Moravec found himself a little more disinhibited than his usual.

Rumor has it also that this was the reason he later pressed Alan J. Silver to withdraw the records. This done, the recording continued selling in the form of chrome Dolby C tapes, which were, it seems, stocked in profusion (in those days this format reigned supreme in the market). Then they disappeared completely. A CD transfer done by a commercial company was found unsatisfactory to many collectors who knew the vinyl discs. The unique 30"/sec tape recorded from E. Alan Silver proved a tough nut to crack. Whether this was due to the absence of Connoisseur Society’s hardware to run them on or whether it has been a recording engineer’s decision to trim the sound – the result for some was disappointing. The only way then to get closer to the sound of Silver’s tape would be the commercial LPs, guarded by collectors like the Holy Grail.

Dr Duffy (himself deeply dissatisfied with the available commercial CD transfer) grappled for years with the LPs of the Nocturnes. His latest effort, of May 2009, was entrusted to bearac_reissues for making this treasure available more generally.

We thankfully accepted the offer. We have respected the huge trouble he undertook to restore the magnificent piano sound and so we left tape hiss (and some mild surface noise) intact in order to let the extreme bass and highs free from any interference. We cleaned a few clandestine clicks left on the matrix files and secured some seconds of absolute silence between tracks. If you do get them, it is recommended that the CDs are played at realistically high volume settings to experience the terrific sound reproduced.

P.S. A friend sent a comment to point that Connoisseur Society is still going strong under its founder E. Alan Silver and have issued a set of the Beethoven Sonatas in their usual exalted tradition. The comment was discarded by my mistake and I apologize to its sender. I hasten to repeat his points and thank him. (HL)

A Fantastique revived

2009-12-06T19:16:00.007+02:00

I have a thing about those "lesser" names. True, discography spoils the minds of music lovers: we sometimes think like "he's not on CD, so he's not at all". And yet how many great artists were studio-shy, not to mention men like Mitropoulos and Celibidache who enjoyed only live music making, on the podium, with people attending the event, or Volkmar Andre who definitely hated recording (and recordings) calling them "canned music". Well Golschmann wasn't either studio-shy or snubbed recording. And he made quite a few in his time, chiefly when he became permanent principal conductor of the St Louis SO. Very active when still in his native Paris he did not became more "provincialized" staying for over 25 years in Saint Louis; instead he toured the world and got side-work all around it. Why the "lesser" names prologue then? Because somehow I had pigeon-holed Vladimir Golschmann as one of them ... when all his recordings I have prove quite the opposite. This Fantastique was done in Vienna and I hadn't listened to it for ages. I did recently and although I must say I've heard till now a surfeit of Fantastiques, this one bowled me over. And being so well recorder too! The decision to make a transfer was taken on the spot.

Now the bed-fellow I chose for this Berlioz, was another rarity. Franz Litschauer must have recorded the Trittico Botticelliano for the first time on LP. This was an original American Vanguard, pressed on noble and pure vinyl which withstood the passage of six decades and an assortment of not always very gentle styluses. A miracle! And what a lively recording it was. I had actually to tune it down to match the sonics of the Golschmann, otherwise the stereo Fantastique would sound almost dated by the side of this effervescent sound. I hope everybody enjoys this as much as the Berlioz. Of course Respighi wasn't betting on the right horse. Both Mussorgsky and Reger saw that their picture-to-sound metaphors were in their own advantage, basically dealing with rather second tier painters (only Ravel seems to have elevated the trite pictures of that exhibition to Chagall level!) Respighi chose Botticelli - at his own risk: his work in fact appears less poetic and colorful than the paintings from which it draws inspiration. His Botticelli is more a Pre-Raphaelite study on the Italian master than a reproduction of the original. No matter; he remains a great orchestrator and the artists involved in this recording made him proud. MSE Processing makes this a very balanced CD from the sound point of view.

Ivan Moravec

2009-12-02T18:21:00.012+02:00

Hot after the heels of Steinberg's Rach 2 and Kaufman's Milhaud cum Poulenc cum Hindemith (the closest Germany came to Les Six, come to think of it!) here comes a glorious twofer: Ivan Moravec in two CDs with the full contents of three Connoisseur Society LPs. Here is the blurb I prepared for the backside of the jewel-box:

IVAN MORAVEC AND THE CELEBRATED CONNOISSEUR SOCIETY RECORDINGS

There are the piano-buffs pianists and there are the pianists' pianists. The second very select category includes most certainly Arturo Benedetti - Michelangeli and Ivan Moravec. They are the pianists to whom their colleagues listen to in awe and get object lessons of the great art. Moravec is very little represented in today's CD catalog and even less so are his legendary recordings for the extinct Connoisseur Society, a short-lived enterprise which graced the catalogs with audiophile recordings of great caliber artists. Moravec recorded for CS (whose founder E. Alan Silver was a personal friend of his) a number of unforgettable discs some of which have surfaced transferred to CD on various labels. Collectors owning or remembering the originals never found these reincarnations up to the standard set by the Connoisseur Society vinyls. We have in the past tried to restore some of the rarest of this series (BRC-2846 with Debussy works). Today we offer a double CD set compiled from three separate LPs and comprising the unforgettable Chopin Preludes Op.28. Moravec recorded again the Preludes for Supraphon in 1976, a glorious recording -- but this one, from 1966 and probably recorded in New York is very special - if nothing else for the remarkable piano sound. Also there is a collection of 5 Mazurkas, the First Scherzo and the beautiful Barcarole. Beethoven is represented by two sonatas recorded in 1967: the terrific Appassionata and the delectable Op.90, together with the set of 32 variations composed at the time the Appassionata was.

Moravec displays a very high intellect and an unparalleled musicality as well as a phenomenal technique (his use of the pedals is legendary among pianists who know that such mastery shows the greatness of a keyboardist more than anything else). His touch, by times ethereal, unreal, reminiscent of a stringed instrument, and then crashing torrentially with immense power, sends the listener to heaven (or hell) and back. He usually recorded on a Boesendorfer Imperial Grand (with its full 8 octaves, suggested to the makers by Busoni) in preference to Steinways. This is an essential part of the magic in Moravec sound. Also part of the magic of these discs was the recording equipment (custom made) used by Connoisseur Society's engineers.

Printed on high quality virgin vinyl the LPs were a treasure-chest of sound finesse and dynamics. Listeners will get very quickly used to slight tape hiss which was left intact in order to transcribe onto CD the full spectrum from deepest bass (impressive Imperial Grand here) to ethereal and transparent highs - exactly the main defect of all commercial transfers till now in the catalog.

The source material of this compilation are three original Connoisseur Society LPs: The 24 Preludes come from CS 1366 [Matrix Nos 1366A & 1366B] recorded in New York City 1966; the remaining Chopin works come from CS 2019 [Matrix Nos 2019A & 2019B] also recorded in New York City 1969; and the Beethoven comes from CS 2000 [Matrix Nos 2000 A-4 & 2000 B-4] and were recorded in New York City 1967 except the 32 Variations which were recorded in Prague by the Connoisseur Society team and machinery. The instrument used in all recordings was a Boesendorfer Imperial Grand.

For the restoration at bearac_reissues Click Repair and Cool Edit programs were used.

I just finished listening the my "test pressings" and I must say I am bowled over by the result. What composers! What a pianist! What a piano! What a set!

Here is a sample for you. A higher quality flac file of the Beethoven 32 Variations on an original theme, in C minor from CD1 of the set. You can download it and know what you are about to receive in the complete set. Enjoy!
YOUR LINK FOR THE DOWNLOAD (copy-paste on browser) IS:
http://rapidshare.com/files/315320041/-_Beethoven_32_Variations_in_C_minor.zip

Welcome to the new site

2009-11-20T12:54:00.004+02:00

bearac_reissues have made it to a new site after the demise of Geocities, where, admittedly the interphase was quite amateurish – the best I could do with html language. After a deadline was given by Yahoo! for the closure of their free hosting service, I had to employ a professional guy to set up the site anew. The task was daunting for me and it proved only a bit less so for him too. The catalog had grown to very much near the 400 mark (amazing come to think that this is a private enterprise) and I would be otherwise pleasantly occupied till October 26, 2009, when Geocities would go down.

The result as you can see (at http://www.bearacreissues.com) is rather good. There are still some minor problems Alex and I are addressing now and which should very soon be solved. One is the ID of random comments on the welcome page. I asked him to find a way to show which number it corresponds to so that visitors may click on it – if they find the praises intriguing – and go see what it’s all about.

The contents are now arranged by BRC-*number* order rather than chronologically (as till now, following the availability of a new number in the catalog). Although few new items were produced these last months, I trust the almost 400 strong catalog still has some fine surprises for the serious and knowledgeable collector. Witness our being happily kept very busy all this while.

Still here is an opportunity to announce some interesting additions soon to grace our catalog.

One is William Steinberg’s Rachmaninoff Symphony No.2 in Pittsburgh – a stereo 1961 recording from a Command Classics LP. Collectors will know his mono recording of the 1950s that went on an EMI/Capitol CD. This one hasn’t been transferred on the medium and I found the recording quite like his older one but with airier sound captured at the Syria Mosque, Pittsburgh by the engineers. The EMI/Capitol housed a rendition considered to be a classic, along with Sanderling/Leningrad PO mono recording for DG. I found the later one equally worthy.

Another set will be of violin works played by Louis Kaufman. Milhaud concertos, Honneger and Poulenc Violin & Piano Sonatas (with Artur Balsam), all taken from very early Capitol LPs of the late 1940s and early 1950s. I think they will fill handsomely an 80 minute CDR – and if they don’t there will be a twofer which will be offered for the price of one CD. As Kaufman was a legendary fiddler and a staunch supporter of “moderns” and Milhaud himself conducts the orchestra, this will be a pioneering set well worth resurrection and a place in the catalog.

Keep an eye : I will be announcing new numbers here, so you can get more information about those – although the feature of a scrolling marquee with the newbies has been very successfully incorporated in our welcome page.

P.S. (23.11.09) Both new CDs are now available. The Steinberg Rach 2 was coupled with a very rare 1952 recording of Borodin Symphony 2 by Issay Dobrowen and the French National Radio Orchestra and the Kaufman two LPs went easily into a 70 minute CD remastered lovingly. Go to http://www.bearacreissues.com to read about them.

The younger the better?

2008-11-20T18:50:00.004+02:00

The thought came when mentally jotting down some introductory phrases for Corboz' 1972 Hohe Messe appearing this week as BRC-2309. I had the LPs and when CD came along I bought the conductor's newer effort, with the same choral and orchestral forces but different singers and (perhaps) a DDD recording. I was never thrilled by this as I was with the older one and later gave it to a friend for his birthday. I did and still do prefer the 1972 recording: it is warmer, better sung and totally convincing, a marvelous performance that was left out of the CD catalog because a newer one was available. The basic interpretation is not that different; but the earlier recording had an elan rather missing from the later one and the voices were much fresher and involved in the proceedings. Maybe not much, but that small margin that makes a world of difference.

So why is it that so often older recordings are musically more satisfying? Examples there are myriad. From Rubinstein's earlier mono Chopin cycles, to Serkin's earlier Mozart and Beethoven concertos and sonatas, to any Klemperer's earlier mono recording (e.g. his 1957 Beethoven 7 instead of the 1962 remake), to Bruno Walter's Mozart with the NYPO (SONY mono - who knows if it can still be found) against his 1962 Columbia SO remakes, to Callas/De Sabata 1953 Tosca against her stereo version with Pretre, to Karajan's Philharmonia era against his Berlin reign - and so on and so forth.

Is there some conclusion to be drawn from this? Can it just be nostalgia that sends music loving collectors to the older recordings - perhaps their first loves with the music played/sung? Or is it that we should after all logically reverse the saying that the older one gets the wiser he becomes, as regards performers? Because there is no doubt that creative artists do become wiser, deeper and better as they age. No need to bring forth examples. There are some exceptions of course in all art: the younger the better as far as Walton or Rossini are concerned; some others who didn't have time to grow old because they left early this world. Also (mysteriously more often the case with writers) a number of creators remembered for their very first effort and condescended upon by both critics and their public for what came after.

So where is the difference between performing and creative artist? Performers need bodily and mental agility, a quickness of grasp for the text to be rendered, also a sense of enjoyment in what they do and a whiff of self consciousness in the display of their prowess. What as they grow older? Apart from losing their sveltezza they become self conscious (adulation plays a part) in a different way: they pride themselves for "knowing better" than the composer; they will shed light on "hidden" meanings, aspects, facets of the work; they will invariably try to cover their loss of "schutzpah" or "duente" lingering, catching their breath here and there, trying to pass it as an interpretational point/notion. Yeah? Certainly no.

Interpreters must be fit. Old guys (and girls) can't be. Creators don't need fitness, they don't perform - theirs is another class of work. They thrive as they grow older; and like a good wine they mature while interpreters disintegrate.

Critics too: they need age. Just don't read any review by anyone who's not well past his 50th birthday. They are dogmatic, absolute and dismissive of anything they haven't yet encountered in their way... and they have a long way to go and lots of things to encounter.

That perhaps explains why record buyers will prefer older recordings - not to mention performers of an older era. Because the performer's age is one thing. The relevance of the time of a recording with the world to which most music listened to today belongs is another. And that's another subject we might take up sometime later.

Thinning down my collection

2006-11-27T01:16:00.000+02:00

Appraising one’s records over the years brings a bulimic collector to the point where he has to restrain his diet to the essential or burst. Essential being something else for me and something else for you. Of course. Then let me see: which are mine. Look at the batches of repeated items on your shelves: how many Eroicas, how many Middle and Last quartets, how many Bruckner 7ths are there. Pick the best of them all! No? Refuse to?

Then pick the worse.

In a bunch of bests there is at least one that’s worst. It’ s a law of nature. Thrice happy harem owners must face the same dilema. Which for now – which for never again. Say you have to select at gunpoint. Your life or your worse Eroica ever. Don’t start chanting «all have something to say in such a work». So pick one, the oldest, the scratchiest, noisest, impossible to hear again. Vocally dated, orchestrally shallow, uninvolving, chorally compromised by a small body of singers who try too hard and never ever take off with the music, blah blah blah... who’s to blame. But pick that one bedeviling your nights with economical reappraisals of what you might have gotten in its place for the amount you paid for it.

Now. Which Rosenkavalier you could do without. Which Verdi Requiem? Which Eroicas? Think on them once equals listen briefly through your mind’s ear and give the verdict.

I remember gnashing my teeth when I read (surprised - so innocent was I then…) Gramophone’s dismissal of Verdi Requiem with Reiner/VPO – my best. “A non starter I am afraid” wrote the sage; and my heart stopped. A non starter?

Yes, boy. There was the glorious EMI Giulini with the Philharmonia, with Schwartzkopf, Gedda, Ludwig, Giaourov and the Philharmonia Chorus directed by Wilhelm Pitz. How to resist? A pure English bred recording that stood for everything the English public (or Gramophone’s reviewers) stood for – always. I swallowed my shattered pride as a listener. I almost swallowed it completely so went out and got the EMI. And even thought I liked it. For some time. Proud owner of a perennial classic if there was one. Who wouldn’t be?

Then after years I listened again to my fallen from grace non-starter. But years had passed, I had given Gramophone up for many reasons (explained earlier below) and I was a free man – a free listener.

What a recording!

Point by point it stands head over shoulders above the Giulini. It is better conducted, it is better played, it is better sung AND it is better recorded.

A non-starter indeed. How deaf can you be?

Schwarzkopf totally out of her depth – the less Italian sounding soprano that ever sang the Requiem (she even DID Liu in a hapless – Legge produced! – Turandot otherwise graced by Maria Callas and Eugenio Fernandi!). Totally unconvincing. AND unpleasant. Scratch.

Then, Christa Ludwig – an alto alter ego to Mme Schwarzkopf: cold and uninvolving, as always singinging vowels only.

Then Gedda – well, a Swede against Decca’s other Swede… Bjoerling! Who would have thought? Next he should tackle Radames, poor Nicolai. Scratch.

And then the Bulgarian Giaourov, insensitive and imposing. The reviewer likedhimalot.

Then measure the Philharmonia with the VPO. Smile.

Then measure Giulini with Reiner. Oh my!

Are all Italians Toscaninis, De Sabatas, Serafins? I don’t think so. Guilini is one of the most overrated conductors of last century. A man with very good posts and contracts, replaced Klemperer for a Don Giovanni that remains a classic and was Our Man in Italy for the Requiem when Legge decided he had to get one for EMI.

Then listen to the EMI recording. Messy, congested. Go to the DECCA. Sofiensaal or Grosses Musikvereinsaal – whichever. And the orchestra, the sections, the instrumentalists, their sound – brass, percussion, strings, woodwind, the works. Crystal clear. Tender, sensitive, shrieking in terror or pounding thunderbolts on the head of the damned. And then…. Leontyne Price, a dream, Rosalind Elias, a stunner, Jussi Bjoerling, a legendary voice giving the most heart-rending Ingemisco ever recorded. And Tozzi – a true Italian basso who can also SING.

A non starter my foot. For, how would EMI sell, and how would Gramophone get their adds and survive? And how would the public be aware that Britain still ruled the waives?

Analogue or digital?

2006-09-07T20:30:00.000+03:00

Mind boggling, isn’it. I mean all that fuss in the specialized press about digital versus analogue and vice versa. I’ve been an ardent digitalian myself, having replaced the bulk of my LPs collection with their CD reissues. And yet… and yet. For one thing there is a proposition I’ve never happened to see aired by the specialists: sound is analogue, right? In a modern recording today (digital of course) voices are analogue, musical instruments are analogue, ambient sound in the recording venue is analogue; even mikes feeding the digital monster are analogue. So where does digital enter in real life? In storing. Not reproduction. Reproduction reverts to analogue through your amp and loudspeakers. Right? And your ears are analogously transmitting sound into your head. So analogue is the word, analogue is the real situation here. As it usually happens with technical people (who are seldom musical too) admiration and hype of a new medium (or method) is lopsided. The two work together. Because analogue – as a means of sound storage – proved disastrous. Here digital wins hand down. Yes, LPs were dearer things to hold in your hand, to look and to read on their backside. And the LP itself, all alive with its grooves giving a visual idea of what was on it, was nicer to look at too. But then, to think of all these old LPs, getting worse year after year, no matter how much attention you paid to their handling and storing… sad indeed. Let’s recapitulate. Analogue for recording and listening – will you or won’t you. And digital for the safe storage. Yep. That’s it. All else is gaslight, as that horrible man said. (And then, no matter how high tech decks, amps & speakers you listen with, reproduction - digital or analogue - is reproduction, i.e. a substitute for the real thing.)

Win some, lose all?

2006-08-28T11:39:00.000+03:00

The thriving second hand market for vinyl LPs and the equally strong surge of official and unofficial reissues of past recordings, bring to mind the storm that blew over a huge heritage of recorded music with the advent of stereo.

As we all know, although not a novelty technically speaking by that time, wide production of stereo recordings started from 1956 onwards to become the standard by 1960. Companies rushed to replace what was recorded in mono with new stereophonic versions. In a way it was a disaster. The result was that a huge and irreplaceable legacy had been locked in the companies’ vaults, only to reappear timidly as budget reissues, often in electronic mock-stereo – to cater for the needs of impecunious stereophiles. Home listeners having spent small fortunes on stereo equipment needed new recordings to enjoy their spendings and show off to admiring guests. You wouldn’t pick anymore the early mono Walter’s Mozart C minor of early 50s; you'd spin on your turntable his brand new stereo version with the Columbia SO, the version that’s become a yardstick for years next, the one that was lucky to get a CD incarnation right after the new digital medium replaced vinyl.

Walter was not the only one. Klemperer returned to the Abbey Road EMI studio for a complete survey of his repertoire with the Philharmonia & the New Philharmonia. Serkin, Szell, Steinberg, Rodzinsky, Reiner, Ormandy and a whole cohort of soloists – ditto in USA. In Europe the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra knew its peak during the mono era. The same applies to the Berlin PO – then under Furtwangler and later recording also under Lehmann, van Kempen, Kempe, Jochum and Bohm. Lehmann and van Kempen didn’t survive the advent of stereo. Jochum’s 9 Beethoven symphonies with the Berliners and his own Bayerische Rundfunks, most recorded in mono, remains unsurpassed by his later effort in London (LSO); and his mono Bruckners in Berlin and Hamburg (Staatsphilharmonie) – were not matched by his stereo remakes. (For the great German orchestra the advent of stereo coincided with the advent of Karajan at its helm and it’s gradual transformation into a thick and homogeneous sounding instrument implementing it’s conductor’s sonic ideals, which pleased Gramophone’s cashier more than that publication’s reviewers.)

And yet – Walter’s Mozart symphonies in the stereo remakes for CBS (later SONY) don’t hold a candle either interpretatively or musically against their mono predecessors with the Philharmonic-Symphony of New York! The Columbia SO was a thirt rate orchestra, CBS engineers gave it a bass heavy sound image very munch at loggerheads with the fleeting, dramatic music, and Dr Walter was too old and bored to try and get better results. Neither did Klemperer’s stereo legacy had anything to do with his earlier self with the less exalted orchestras he guest conducted. Nor were Serkin’s mono Mozart, Beethoven or Brahms concertos with Szell and Ormandy equaled by his stereo remakes with the same conductors. The same applies to Rubinstein’s mono recordings for RCA – later remade in stereo. The same still to Claudio Arrau. Etc etc etc.

All these men were younger and more eager during the mono period – too old to cut the mustard when stereo arrived. And they were the last representatives of a school much nearer the traditions set by the master composers of past centuries, whose works formed the major part of classical music we listened to then as we do now. Younger stars of the purely stereo era were evidently far removed from this tradition. The uniformity of their interpretations has lessened the appetite of record buyers for repeated listening to their recordings as well as concerto goers to pay dearly to get to know them.

Not that there aren’t very good musicians today. But the sense of miracle seems to be gone for ever, as it was with Hollywood’s golden era – cinema is not what it was then, and so it is with music.

If one should need proof, just consider the number of reissues made today from that period. Consider the asked first bidding price at ebay for Mainardi’s Bach Cello solo sonatas ($1.000 for one LP with only the first three of them on it) as opposed to a huge number of technically skilled cellists recording today who don’t get to sell 200 CDs worldwide; or for that matter the evergreen presence in the catalogue of Alfred Cortot’s Chopin, a pianist legendary for his interpretations of Chopin as well as for his too many wrong notes and smudged passages, along the existence of today’s technically perfect young lions of the keyboard, such as Marc Andre Hamelin or Howard Shelley.

But this is a topic to which one should return again and again.

Vinyl hunting - where and how

2006-08-27T11:50:00.000+03:00

It’s dawned on me rather late: I could have saved myself hours of hard toil over some LPs in very bad shape, had I ventured a visit to the ebay flee market. I did it this summer and was amazed by the number of records I could have rebought in finer condition than some few of mine.

Well, it was interesting anyway. If you are patient enough you can find real bargains. The vast majority of course is of recent issues collectors have dumped after having replaced them with their CD incarnations (I can hear the gnashing of teeth by vinyl fans!) Most of them are sold for a fraction of their shipping cost.

But there are some surprises too. I haven’t yet found a good explanation of this mystery – there must be one. Perhaps later. For the time being let me put it on record: the most expensive LPs in today’s market are by women violinists! Johanna Martzy, Erica Morini, Ida Handel – artists that used to have a low or medium box office (and have charged analogous fees) share top box office in today’s used LPs market! I mean… hundreds of bucks. Ginette Neveu is expensive too, but nowhere like Martzy! Then second come women pianists: another surprise here - Ingrid Haebler sells for $$$s! Can't fathom why, for the life of me. Perhaps collectors grew weary of Uchida’s tres sec Mozart and need to breath fresher air – even though sanitized-filtered, like with Mme Haebler. Monique Haas is running high fees too, and so are Guyomar Novaes and Maria Tipo. Male stars like Glenn Gould, Horowitz, Sofronitzky, Gilels and Richter go for nothing. Males in general are a dime a dozen. Only Enrico Mainardi’s unaccompanied Bach cello suites reach such hights. And Ludwig Hoelscher runs him close.

As to labels – some Wenstminster sets get high prices, the majority goes for cheap. Same with some Remington’s. Mercuries are high runners too.

There is an artist-fetish in the vinyl buyer, today, but there’s also a brand/label fetish: LPs once famous for their sonic excellence (Mercuries, DECCA ffrr/ffss and LXTs, some Wenstminsters) are sold at very high prices. Added to these now -and rightfully so- you have East German LPs - Eterna etc -. They have always been better recorded and pressed on higher grade vinyl than their competitors of DGG - to say nothing of the much better orchestras active in the eastern sector. And there is of course the pure vinyl-fetish – and here more modern issues give place to older products, when vinyl was high grade, resisted stylus damage and wasn’t dished or misshaped and the like, as later products used to be.

In all these, there still are treasures that go for nothing – you get them cheap. All you need is read carefully the sellers small print as regards LP condition/gradings and chiefly shipping charges. Some sell cheap but rob you by way of postage. East-coast USA sellers charge you more than their West-coast colleagues – nobody knows why. And German/Austrian sellers prefer being paid by bank transfers which is cumbersome and dangerous. Not all of course. And the English insist on selling in English Pounds – of course.

Orchestras and their sound

2006-06-20T01:07:00.000+03:00

You can tell an old hand by one's ability to recognize the particular sound – of an orchestra, of a pianist, of a violinist. The task is easier whith singers. Even the most inexperienced opera lover can tell Pavarotti from Carreras and Bruson from Bastiannini (though it is not exactly that simple with ladies from a certain register upwards). But who can tell today the Oslo Philharmonic from the Philharmonia? Or the Saarbruecken RSO from the Rotterdam Philharmonic? Very few indeed. And this hard test has become even harder by the homogenization of orchestral sound around the world. Could any of you tell the New Zealand SO from the Royal Scottish SO in the Tintner Bruckner cycle (NAXOS) – except that New Zealanders sounded more at ease with the idiom than the Scottish?

It was not at all like this a few decades back. Telling the NBC SO from the PSO of New York was relatively essential for collectors with a decent amount of LPs on their shelves, as it was to tell the Berliner Philharmoniker from the Concertgebouw or from the Czech PO. Each of the known orchestras of the world, big and small, famous and obscure, first, second or third class, had their own sound. (Much younger I could immediately tell – in medias res, as it were – that the Athens State Orchestra were playing, from the different tuning among instrument families – but that was more like… cheating.) The Chicago had its own unmistakable sound; so did the Cleveland and Boston, so did Philadelphia, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh (and had Indianapolis been as lucky to have signed a good fat contract with some of the major producers, they too would have been easily recognizable). In Europe it was impossible to take the VPO for the BPO or the Paris Conservatoire for Lamoureux, the Gewandhaus for the Saechsische Staatskapelle (later Dresden State Orchestra), the Vienna SO for the London Symphony and the Philharmonia for the Royal Philharmonic. Well… try to tell any of these today. Chances are you are in for some major blunders.

So what’s happened to orchestras worldwide? Is it the stereo that has corrupted our listening tastes or is it merely the absence of great conductors that caused the expansion of such homogenous sound like a pandemic? I think both, but mostly the second. You see orchestras do have their own sound – very much the combination of the musicians that form them and the characteristics of the hall they play in – but great conductors too had their own sound and this was imposed over that other composite subtotal and produced the unmistakable sound total of each orchestra, either live in their hall or recorded at location. But Toscanini sounded the same conducting his NBC or the RSO of N.Y. or at La Scala in Milan. And Munch produced in Paris the same sound he produced on the podium of New York or later Boston – as Reiner did in Pittsburgh and Chicago, Mitropoulos in New York, at the Metro or in Vienna, as Stokowski did in Philadelphia or in New York or any other orchestra he conducted. I even heard him in Athens with our horror of an orchestra during the early 60s and didn’t believe my ears. It was little short than if the Philadelphians were playing. And so on and so forth. Of course an essential element was that conductors stayed for years in their posts and rarely flew to other cities or even continents there to conduct their “second orchestra”.

So those were the symbiotic times of orchestras, halls and conductors, and the outcome of this synergy can be heard today on their reissued recordings that corner such a big part of the market today, even the big names have noticed. DG Originals, SONY Legacy, Testament, various Philips back editions (and of course Naxos and a score of lesser producers) have made once more money from the great musical tradition of the “radio times”. This cohesive bond between orchestras and their leaders (not the American sense of leader, but true leaders of orchestras) seems to be one of the basic reasons a vast part of the record buying public has turned to “historic” recordings (the term used nowadays for recordings spanning from at least the 30s to the late 60s). In a sense they were really historic: the sense of past perfect…

What is a great conductor?

2006-06-10T11:40:00.000+03:00

Well, let’s define great. For me a great conductor is one who like the older Hollywood directors could do anything: a Western, a musical, a noir, a cloak-and-dagger and a melodrama with the same ease and the same professionalism. How many conductors could do this? Well, it's an area not surprisingly occupied by a great number of names – but surprisingly not numbered with the “Great”: Kletzki, Kurtz, Galliera, Ackerman, Monteux, Leinsdorf, Ormandy, Rodzinski and Beinum – to name but very few of them. These are my heroes.

Of the conductors categorized under “Great” most were great in something, not everything. Some area of the repertory only. Take Toscanini. Beethoven, Brahms, Respighi, Mendelssohn, Mussorgsky and Wagner bleeding-chunks. Verdi and Puccini. OK. Of course you cant’ say “and that was all” – for that was quite a lot. Take Klemperer. Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Mozart, Wagner, Mahler, Bruckner. Not the best for all, not always, but music making that was never indifferent. Take Furtwangler. Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Wagner. And backwards again. Each has his fervent admirers and his equally fervent detractors; less famous men had fewer of both.

So the crux of the matter is simply the definition of greatness – and there lies the rub. A matter of priorities and a matter of values.

Some will call “great” a conductor who makes interesting, even enjoyable, second rate works. Such is the domain of sir Thomas Beecham. Of course the English wouldn’t agree. For them sir Thomas is the peer of Toscanini, Furtwangler and who else. Only – we can’t tell. We don’t have his central European repertoire, his Wagner, his Schubert-Schumann-Wagner. He didn’t put them on record, if he ever grappled with them. Talk of overpraised men. But – Great? Depends on the nationality of the audience I am afraid.

Others will call “great” a conductor who devotes all his energy to propagate the new, the experimental, the researching, the ground breaking. There, first and foremost, you have Mitropoulos, but also Rosbaud, Scherchen, Monteux, Markevitch, Maderna, Boulez, Gielen, Rowicki, Zagrosek, Bertini.

And then there’s the “great” conductor who’s acting great… E. g. Karajan. “Der Mann K.” as Furtwangler referred to him in horror, didn’t revolutionize anything; he played everything because he was selling everything, like a Mercedes is the car to get over a certain income level. But then so did Ormandy, who never enjoyed such adulation or publicity and – although unacknowledged by the critics, at least in Europe – practically did a much better show of it. Karajan almost wrecked the Philharmonia. He definitely destroyed the Berliners. And became rich by spinning a web all over the World (bar the USA, where he wasn’t welcome by the pre-and post-WW II refugees) which secured him royalties from everything he’d be involved in. Having been advertised as Das Wunder Karajan when he was spotted by Walter Legge, he later perpetuated the blurb single handed. The only Wunder about him was his egotism, his despotism, his deep rooted Nazism and his insensitive music making. Few were his peers in that. (Ever wondered why a man who played literally everything, never played Mahler?)

Stokowski has been an early prototype of that kind – but there the analogy ends. If the man was conceited at a certain stage of his long career, it was about his ability as an orchestra builder and a genial interpreter of music he liked, which he was. After all he lived in the Americas when music wasn’t yet such a hot potato as was elsewhere and during a time when there were too many other great musicians active around (Walter, Mitropoulos, Szell, Reiner, Munch, Ormandy); so his tendency to over hyped greatness was kept in relative check. Lenny did better. His times offered more for the act. The old-school Great had passed away, Karajan secure in his Prussian citadel didn’t care: he had written off Vienna and the old capital returned the feeling. New York had gently ousted Lenny and the Wiener Philharmoniker waited him to make their peace with God for their collective Nazi past (some say and present) through the mediation of a Jew. Whilst his ample New York recorded output can be called serviceable, the recordings that followed with the Viennese is mostly suspicious. But who cared? He was Lenny, so full of love for all, so full of New World simplicity and outgoingness. And after all he sweated so profusely, it couldn’t but be great. He was (and he remained) at his best on TV.

There is another category. The “Kapellmeisters”. Bohm, Krips, Keilberth, Krauss, Konwitschny, Sanderling, Swarowsky, and scores of others, musicians who uphold a great tradition, who don’t “take chances” (i.e. impose their ego on the music) and who trust the Urtext to give to the public the shivers by the means of its musical content. You can never go wrong with them and oftener than not you discover that force allargandos and accelerandos aren’t the only recipe to keep the public sitting at the edge of the chair. Over-interpretation is as bad as indifference and routine. Stressing the obvious is a mortal sin in performing arts. And the once snubbed “Kapellmeisters” are very useful today in reminding us that whatever needed be stressed in a musical text, it was stressed by the composer.

In Art being smart never pays much dividends.

You also have the “mavericks”. Those individualistic interpreters who manage to turn their huge egos to an equivalent of the creative artist and get away with it – often with honors. Mengelberg, Koussevitzky, Stokowski and Knappertschbusch (in his gemutlich Viennese manner), were important, imposing personalities that overrode the text and imprinted their will on it, at all times convincingly. (Karajan may have been the wrong kind of the species.)

Then there is a way you can tell the great from the less great: they have a sound of their own which you can tell no matter what orchestra they lead. But orchestras have their sound too – big and small, good and not always good . We’ll come to that later.

How it all started

2006-06-08T20:05:00.000+03:00

When I was a kid there was no music, no singing at home. We were not gloomy people. Just nobody particularly liked music. My pa used to quote Tolstoy: "music and artillery are the most expensive of noises". Dear pa! An intellectual, he felt he should ratify his likes or dislikes with a theory. His or someone else's. Anyway I was different. I loved music since the day I remember myself. I listened to the radio: songs of course. What we call today pop. But with a difference. All my attention was captured by what was going on behind the voice, the instruments, the orchestra. Then came the radio Third Program. They played records. Some so badly used you heard the persistent clicks and pops. I still expect the big scratch to come in the middle of the Respighi Concerto Gregoriano played by German violinist Stiller (?) and conducted by Ernst Borsamsky. (Anyone remember those names?) Then came record buying, the beginning of a lifelong addiction. Rudimentary pickup connected to radio set up, the ancient predecessors of today's (yesterday's actually) hi-end wherewithal. I still have my first Philips deck, playing 78s, 45s and 33 rpms, safely hidden behind a record cabinet in my listening room. You changed the needle with a lever, at the side of the head, a thick one for the 78s, a thinner for the rest. 78s I never had. Nor wished to have. Long playing was the pinnacle of sound recording technology, no record collection of my elders at home to cherish and learn to love - only some light music 78s I can't recall where were they found and ended up on my shelves: Victor Sylvester's orchestra playing tangos, some songs. That was all.

LPs were expensive. All were imported. The most consistent of importers were Philips, and my father had a friend of his in some important post there. We bought with a 25% discount. But we bought once or twice a year. My father must have felt this was the most unreasonably spent money he ever paid for anything. But he had to oblige me in Christmas and on my birthday.

So Philips was instrumental in shaping my tastes. We bought whatever was on the catalogue irrespective of the names of the performers. DGG (a separate producer then) was not so well distributed. As for Columbia, they came from England - later to become HMV and later EMI. RCA was scarce. You found German pressings and American pressings in various outlets. Decca had an individual representative who imported minimal classical numbers. My friends and I read the catalogue and our mouths watered - but there was nothing to be found. The man either hated classical music or he didn't bother to order any numbers that weren't guaranteed to sell. VOX was present much later and by then the market had opened for classical music. The guys who imported them from the U.S. and from France brought virtually everything on the VOX catalogue. The difference was audible both recording-wise and interpretation-wise, I must say. But young, avid collectors on a budget didn't have the luxury to pick. VOX was the equivalent of paperback novels. You bought them and got the gist of the work at least. Sometimes you'd be pleasantly surprised by major interpretations who beat the great names of the "big" brands. Like Horenstein's Ninth. (There still is ONE Ninth, eh?) Who'd beat the hell out of Bruno Walter's New York record on Columbia. Or Grischkat's Vespro who stressed the romantic-epic character of this masterpiece in a way the more stylish Lewis on Oiseau-Lyre (which cost three times the price of the double VOX album) wasn't able to for all the Ritchies of the world.

Decca ffrr s made from the very start a great impression. A friend of mine had at home a modest library. In this Rach2 with Katchen/Fistoulari and the so-styled New Symphony Orchestra of London left indelible memories. And on another ffrr at my friend’s, there was the Concertgbouw / Kleiber Beethoven 7 – this one never removed from its throne! There I fell in love with Ravel’s Ma Mere l’ Oie played by the Bostoners and Koussevitzky. The flip side housed Bolero. Their Ninth was Bruno Walter on two Columbias – but I always preferred mine: Otterloo with The Residency Orchestra (The Hague) and the impressive “Toonkunst” Choir on a Philips twofer which also accommodated on side 4 Egmont and Coriolan Overtures. I have been missing this 9th for decades now, till recently thanks to the advise of my Dutch friend Rolf’s I bought from Amsterdam a 10-CD box with many of the mono Otterloos of the 50s. Among which this one: Still THE Ninth, for me from the 29 in my collection.

Which brings me to another topic – the indelible mark that a first hearing leaves us each time we first come across a composition. But I shall deal with this at another instance.

Back to first experiences and first loves. The Callas/Gobbi Rigoletto was a great favorite. My friend's parents had only two complete opera sets: that one and the Toscanini/Traviata. I can claim solid fundaments as an opera lover. His father did for a spell import some Remingtons. He was an electrical appliances dealer, had split from his partners and tried to survive on his own. I inherited these Remingtons and I love them. I love their jackets artwork, I love their piercing highs and the scrappy but enthusiastic playing of the so-called Austrian Symphony Orchestra which was a pseudonym serving, as it seems, both the Vienna Volksoperorchester and the Tonkuenstlerorchester, Niederoesterreich who played the New World Symphony (still #5 that time) under George Singer, the Tchaikovsky Pathetique under H. Arthur Brown, accompanied Friedrich Wuhrer in Beethoven no.4 under Karl Randolph (two sides for this!) and the Fritz Busch Eroica. My friend didn’t care at all for any of them, so I got them when I asked. I have given innumerable hours reconstructing the sound, for all were in bad condition. But I am very proud of the results and now they are in the bearac_reissues catalogue for anyone willing to explore them.

These were the times the Viennese knew hunger ( I should know, as my nick here in this blog vouchsafes) and their orchestras played for a handful of dollars for the Remington and the Vox engineers & producers who rushed to get the European flavor back to their public in the States. For years I also thought the conductors were under aliases too. Frizt Busch was the only one I knew. It’s a very recent discovered that both George Singer and H. Arthur Brown existed, the first an opera conductor, active mainly in Israel, the second a very important personality who did much to promote music in his area, El Paso. You can look up H. Arthur Brown at the site devoted to him. His Remington Pathetique is an exemplary rendition, he manages to build tension and drama without hysteria – a really classical reading.

And the years went by and LPs accumulated asking for more room. CD arrived just in time. Where 65 LPs were housed I now could accommodate 88 CDs dividing horizontally the space in two. Like everyone else I started buying new DDD recordings to enjoy the sound. But I had for some decades before been listening to such great artists – the younger generation didn’t cut any mustard. Pollini is one instance. I gaped at the technique and the leanness of his renditions but little by little I started getting rather tired of an ever so imperceptible degree of heartlessness on his part. Too clinical. A keyboard Boulez. I no longer listen to his CDs. There’s always someone plays them equally “perfectly” but does so infusing his (her) reading with a more humane streak.

And as I had started looking nostalgically back to my LPs which I didn’t play any longer, reissues started coming. I gradually replaced most of them; new issues were bought rarely and sometimes returned to the dealers. I had a subscription to Gramophone since 1969. Gramophone proved to be a very frustrating experience after all. I read their high brow reviews chewing my lips each time Charles Munch and Markevitch were simply ignored as Berliozeans of the first order and the unimaginative and soft cored Colin Davis got the crown – compared only, where possible – to sir Thomas Beecham. I marvelled at the temerity of these guys to argue about the New Philharmonia being a world class orchestra (which they weren’t) and their unashamed promoting of the old and unsteady Klemperer’s Beethoven, Brahms and Mozart (even the operas got an A) or Karajan’s homogenized sound over the complete orchestral repertoire from DG and Berlin. Even the Berliners pale and whining first oboe sound was praised. One could see why all this. The ads – my god – the ads. Who paid for the “esteemed publication”? The ads did. That is, the big companies, EMI and Polygram, later swallowing Philips, Mercury, Decca and the biggest part of their antagonists. I kept on reading Gramophone though. For one thing, it was a way of knowing what was new. I read it more as a Swann Catalogue in small instalments. Never the reviews. There were exceptions of course. Robert Layton was an excellent critic and so were Ivan March and Trevor Harvey (not always this last one, but most of the time). There was also someone very good writing the Opera section - very good indeed, but I forget his name. The majority gave the unfortunate impression of mercenary writers. You could sometimes understand how bad a new recording was by reading between the lines (even behind some carefully selected words – because, well, most of them were knowledgeable and they couldn’t leave all of their good taste at home). But «payroll oblige», as the French might put it.

And speaking of French, I also read Diapason, though not systematically. The French had their soft spots too. But for the most part were (somewhat surprisingly) less chauvinistic than their English counterparts and never shy to mention much older recordings, even of the mono era, in comparison – ending naturally with far less *stars* for the new arrivals. Best of all I found to be the American reviewers. Some even wrote for English publications, e.g. Hi-Fi News & Record Review a.o. I found Americans the most consistent, informed and knowledgeable of all. Germans too of course. And Italians, it must be said. Of course how you read criticism is also a matter of taste.

And so LP came to pass on CD transfers. Not always successfully. There were horrendous jobs done there, there were also very successful ones. All in all I could now have on the convenient new carrier my music. And bought most of my collection back. There was no discount for me from either Philips or Decca or RCA or CBS (now Sony). I couldn’t do otherwise.

Some though I didn’t. Not all my LPs were worthy of replacement. And many never appeared on the new format; till, recently, I discovered some pages in the Internet that offered exactly what was missing. “Private LPs to CD transfers”. Pierre Paquin, John Wilson, Lahni Spar (an oboist) on his own site and David Gideon on his, all offered excellent digitizations of rare LPs. Not only of those I had on my shelves, waiting in vain their resurrection in the new format, but even many LPs I wasn’t able to buy when they still were out (years ago!) and sorely wanted. These were the luminaries that set me on the warpath. Most of all Pierre was instrumental in this. Here is how.

Like myself Pierre is a Munch fan. I got the virus during the early 60s when our radio rented from the US tapes of live concerts at Symphony Hall, transmitting them with 3-4 weeks delay, on Sunday mornings. I was ready with my tape recorder and recorded them. I remember great Berlioz of course, but also a beautiful Brahms 1st Serenade for orchestra, a near ideal Mozart K.466 with Monique Haas and modern American music by Piston and William Schuman. And from the guests a white hot Sibelius 2 with Schippers and an Elizabethan Suite by – and under – John Barbirolli. I learned all the first desk names of the orchestra, I knew Irwing Firth from his inimitable battery, Berj Zamkochian from his dexterity and verve in both Saint-Saens Organ Symphony and Poulenc’s Organ Conerto, Roger Voisin for his clear and sometimes overenthusiastic trumpet, James Stagliano from his lusty horn, their leader Richard Burgin in various solos often doubling as a conductor, Joseph de Pasquale as soloist in Harold and Richard Mayes for many delectable cello solos.

I bought as many records of Boston/Munch I could lay hands on. Yet at some point, Pierre refused to mail any more CDs to Greece. Was it the mailing cost? Was it that once or twice I asked for a replacement for a jitterish copy? I never knew. He wrote me that henceforth he would only ship his goods to (civilized) countries like the US and Japan – fulstop. The fact is I now had to do without his digitizations; ergo I had to try do them myself. And so it all started. Took me over three years and I did twice the catalogue you see at the site as “Under preparation” plus the ones already available – first overenthusiastically taking out all noise, the second time leaving some and the third (there was a third for many of my compilations) as I had to universally apply my patent for the mono recordings to become true mono. And now we are ready to sail.

Offering the digitizations to the public for me is not so much a commercial enterprise as it is the joy of the collector to share with others his love for the material at hand. This is the way I see it. And being a collector – it couldn’t have been different.

The Emil Passani mystery

2006-06-07T00:37:00.000+03:00

As I was searching various links in the Internet, I stumbled on the Berlioz Page of a fan, Mr.Matthew B. Tepper. Berliozeans should visit the site he's set with commendable erudition. On the article he devotes to the Requiem discography you will notice he mentions enthusiastically the Fournet recording. He apparently has inside information about the forces involved, which then should not be the "Orchestre et Chorale Emil Passani" but the Grand Orchestra of Radio-Paris and the Emile Passani Choir. Yet the French Columbia label of the LP reissue doesn't mention this. A mystery. Buyers of this transfer should not worry very much. But it is good to know. Truth to tell an "Emil Passani" orchestra has never been mentioned anywhere ever - as far as I can tell.

Brands and trends

2006-06-05T20:40:00.000+03:00

When the LP started, vinyl was real good. The best preserved in my collection are early 50s and 60s LPs. Later things went awry at production plants. Companies needed more copies, more profits - quality dropped till it became a nightmare. You'd never ever come across a "dished" LP during the 50s and 60s unless you really treated it so badly it could become it. But late 60s and 70s they came "factory-dished", all wrapped up in their "protective" celluloid panties, sealed and all. Protect against what? The damage was done in the factory.

The first signs of the big crisis came with the deletion catalogues. Records that didn't sell what the companies thought they should succumbed to the axe. Later some cheaper reissues started coming along. The public demanded certain numbers to be reinstated. Many did. More didn't. And then came the CD revolution. And with it a new lease of life for recordings once thought lost forever. People were crazed with dBs, with no noise, no clicks and pops - demanded highest fidelity and thought a mono recording an anathema. Who cared? And yet, it came that CD made almost the entire back catalogue surface again. Be it by the rights-owning companies themselves, be it by thirds that loaned the masters and published under license, be it bootlegs or private reissuers of forgotten LPs, it cannot be denied that digital brought back recordings that would have never appeared again on vinyl.

Purists complained of course. Vinyl was god, sacrosanct for the happy few who could afford the exorbitant prices prime vinyl issues are sold today and the high cost of quality playback components. But not only high-enders raved. Everyone did – it became a trend: Oh! the sweetness of vinyl, the naturalness of the sound, the pure harmonics. You never knew whether they couldn't hear all this on CD or if it was the surface noise, the tape hiss and the ubiquitous clicks that gave them their kicks. I still don't know which.

Then SACD and 20-bit processing tamed some of the purists. "Vinyl" quality sound they said. Maybe so. But companies took their ounce of flesh: prices are steep for these goodies and who can re-upgrade to SACD players or hybrids?

But assuming you pay the price, let's look at the CD today. The last 10 years there’s a surging wave of reissues of old recordings. And a huge market for them. So why? Why turning to the past, when all-new, brand-new recordings, in surround, in 20-bit, in realistic, amazing sound are available? Want a clue? I have one. Recording is nearing perfection. But recorded artists... far from it. Do you want a Beethoven cycle by sir Simon Rattle and the BPO? The Gramophone does. Do you? No, thanks. I'd be much much happier to have as my n-th Beethoven cycle the Naxos Weingartner. Really. Ever heard any of the series? Do. You are in for a life enhancing experience and a big surprise: how modern is classical.

I'll be back on the subject perhaps later.

Avis au lecteur

2006-06-04T20:53:00.000+03:00

Mind, this is not my mother language. You must have guessed. I write in it 'cause I have to. My mother language would be Greek to you; so I had to chose yours which isn't Greek to me, being Greek. Heh heh heh. Perplexing? Maybe. I note it because you shall have to bear with my mistakes, my orthograph (which is Greek for all of you too ;)) and awkward syntax. Although truth to tell I have visited too many angloamerican chat rooms by now to know that these issues are no longer important; and that sometimes, as G.B.Shaw said, English is spoken much better by... Hungarians. Right? So never mind that sloppy English here. Just go to the gist of the meaning. Easy.

Starting a blog

2006-06-03T16:08:00.000+03:00

Thought i'd better do this. Here there'll be rants & musings, musical both (some perhaps not), about the LPs I decided to digitalize; and how and why. About tem and me. About losing some gaining some - in CD format. About how dearly does one love these inanimate but so lively objects. About collecting. About recording and recordings. And recording artists. About companies and their policies, the tastes of the public and the trends in production. All in good time. For now I close the prologue and later I shall come back for the first movement exposition. See you folks.