That is an amazing album Geno, and you remind me I haven't listened to it for a while. And probably should upgrade my recording, which is pretty old. Also, don't sleep on Isle of the Dead.

Anyway, Happy New Year! and Happy New Page and next Beethoven symphony, No. 4.



DSD rip from Tower Japan SACD.

I've said before the 4th is probably my single favorite Beethoven symphony, and Andre Cluytens and the Berlin Philharmonic is probably my favorite symphony cycle. So there.

Inspired by watching the John Williams documentary on Disney+, I decided to stream some of his works under the Deutsche Grammaphon label.  Streaming in Hi Res through Qobuz.   While this is not traditional classical music and being torn between which place to post this album, I felt this was the better place to post his music as opposed to the “What’s Spinning”  section.  

I’ve also gone down the rabbit hole with looking for a good vinyl pressing of Star Wars.  So far it seems like the Polydor RSO label is preferred over the 20th Century Fox.  

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I dug through 7 pages on the Hoffman forum, and the Zubin Mehta album was mentioned as a highly recommended album.  In the Williams documentary on Disney, they briefly talk about the relationship between the two.  If you have access to Disney+, then I would highly recommend watching the documentary.  It’s in 4K Ultra HD, Dolby Vision, 5.1…. So needless to say I had to watch it through my Zen’s.  

Undecided if I’m going to buy the Zubin Mehta or the true Star Wars album.  I’ll keep you posted.  Thanks.

I really like Star Wars (the original trilogy, not the 21st century stuff) and not least because the music is so great and played such a big part in the movie. I almost forgot I had this one:



On CD.

It might have been the very first Telarc/Kunzel recording and while it is very good (but not as good as the LA Phil) it opens with a 2 minute synth bit that I find incredibly annoying. So I almost never listen to it.

A few days ago Geno posted The Reiner Sound, to which I had not listened in a long time. So I spun up my CD, and then one of my demonstration discs from way back in the day, my Chesky RC11. This is the record I'd play to astound my friends with how good analog sounded in the digital age.



On LP

I haven't listened to LPs in a while, and I guess it is because even though they still sound good they are no longer worth all the work compared to digital. Also I found I've become considerably less forgiving of pops and clicks than I was back in the day. YMMV.

Debussy's hauntingly beautiful Nocturnes in a hauntingly beautiful performance by Charles Dutoit and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal.



On CD from the Dutoit/OSM box

Just as an aside, I think most folks on the Decware forums understand dynamic range, compression and the "loudness war" so I can say that these recordings have an exceptional dynamic range. Which of course means you have to crank up the volume to be able to hear the quiet parts at all and that makes the fortissimos very loud indeed. Which sounds thrilling on a quality system but I've seen a huge number of online comments specifically about these recordings (including from guys who claims to be recording engineers) say how bad the recording is because you are constantly needing to adjust the volume.

Brahms and Schumann from the Ivan Moravec box set.



On CD

My favorite pianist.

Been listening to some Bartok orchestral music to start the new year.  

First up is the "Concerto for Orchestra" and "The Miraculous Mandarin" conducted by Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1962 and 1963.



The "plot" behind the Miraculous Mandarin seems pretty wild, and not the kind of topic that likely inspired music in earlier classical music eras - "Three pimps force a girl to entice men up to her room from the street; no sooner have they entered than they are robbed and thrown out again."

Followed by "Bartok - Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta" with Herbert Von Karajan conducting the Berliner Philharmonkier in 1962.



Liked this one a lot.  It seems similar to the "Concerto for Orchestra," but also reminded me at times of Stravinsky's "Ebony Concerto," particularly the piano parts playing with the Orchestra.  

Hope everyone's New Year is off to a good start.

Like a lot of composers, Bartok needed side hustles because he couldn't make a living writing music. Since he was one of the great virtuoso pianists of the first half of the 20th century, along with Prokofiev and Rachmaninov, he played concerts and made recordings but mostly he was a piano professor at his alma mater, the Liszt Academy in Budapest. He wrote a good amount of piano music (about 8 CDs worth), some of it among the most impenetrably difficult ever written (for his concerts) and some for pedagogical purposes (some of it so simple I could play it) but all of it very interesting. Among my favorites are For Children, 80ish very short pieces, each based on a Hungarian or Slovak folk melody.



On CD.

If you are interested in piano music and are looking for something new I highly recommend Zoltan Kocsis' Compete Solo Piano Works.

I'll have something to say about the string quartets anon...

Hello, James.  I had also read that the Juilliard Quartet were early champions of Bartok's quartets.  I think it will be a while before I am ready to listen to the Schoenberg quartets.

For me, all quartets seem challenging, but from the vantage of 2025, I think I am finding Bartok to feel less alien than I had expected.  My guess is that a lot of the innovations in this music (the quartets range from 1908 to 1939) have been incorporated into other music that I have been more exposed to (like movie music).  

Listening to the second Bartok string quartet this evening (a couple of times), and enjoying it.  

The best Eroica I've ever heard:



16/44 FLAC Download

I've been very clear no. 3 is far from my favorite Beethoven symphony, but thanks to Franz Liszt and Leslie Howard I've found a performance that I really enjoy.

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I agree. I've lived with the Beethoven Symphonies since I was a teenager, and know them inside out. So in one sense the Liszt arrangements are a fresh new look at something I've known and loved for a (very) long time. But they certainly stand on their own merits as music and performance. Of course now I need another version to compare and contrast with Leslie Howard...

Good call on Erik Satie Geno. I was enjoying some of his unique piano work myself. In addition to Je te veux other delightful pieces like Sonatine Bureaucratique and Heures séculaires et instantanées. The later apparently translates as Age-Old and Instantaneous Hours (I don't know enough French to order lunch safely so apologies to anyone who knows better). This is very different than the Gymnopédies for which Satie is (more or less) famous, but it is all delightful.



16/44 FLAC Download

Anne Queffélec plays everything from Scarlatti to... Satie with aplomb or a similar/better French word.

Listening to the piano music of Charles-Valentin Alkan, who may have ranked just behind Liszt in the late 19th century virtuoso pianist all-star voting. His Grande Sonate 'Les Quatre Ages' sure has a lot of notes!



16/44 FLAC download

Some people, way smarter than I, have called The Magic Flute (not the Requiem, which he never finished) Mozart's musical last will and testament. And I feel like there is something to it. Certainly the music is remarkable and one can only wonder what Mozart would have done given a few more years on earth. But it has a problem, at least for me: it has way too much talking as opposed to singing. So I tend to favor "highlights" rather than the complete opera.



16/44 FLAC download.

Rene Jacobs is not my favorite Magic Flute but it is very good and the recording, like virtually every recording from Harmonia Mundi, is top shelf.

A tail of two conductors, and one symphony, Tchaikovsky 4.

Claudio Abbado is unquestionably a great conductor, the Chicago Symphony is unquestionably a great orchestra and Tchaikovsky's 4th is unquestionably a great composition. Yet this performance leaves me, in a word, bored.



On CD. If caffeine could write music it would probably come up with something similar to Tchaik 4, but Abbado's performace, in spite of flawless playing by the CSO, is almost soothing.

Leonard Bernstein OTOH playing the piece like he, and the New York Phil, are on their second double espresso of the morning.



On CD.

Conductors can and do matter greatly, for good or ill. And while sometimes what they do is more or less technical: play louder or softer, staccato or legato etc. a lot of the time they are really about getting the orchestra to "feel" the music in a particular way. And Lenny's orchestra feels the heck of of this symphony, as they do most of the time he is conducting.