W.A.Mozart: Concertone for 2 violins, oboe & violoncello, K.190I: Allegro spirituoso ~ II: Andantino grazioso ~ III: Tempo di Menuetto - Vivace FLAC Mega Download
(Emanuel Hurwitz & Eli Goren, violins - Peter Graeme, oboe - Terence Weil, 'cello)
Josef Haydn: Symphony no.84 in E flat major
I: Largo - Allegro ~ II: Andante ~ III: Menuet - Allegretto ~ IV: Vivace FLAC Mega Download
English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Colin Davis
L'Oiseau-Lyre SOL 60030 Original 1961 LP/matrices: ZTT 551 -1D / ZTT 552 -1D. Recorded: 30 September-2 October 1960 - Decca West Hampstead Studios.
Haydn: NOT ON CD (Mozart: Decca Eloquence) Re-edited March 2014 EMG review + Sleeve-note >>>
Thank you for post this recording, specially for the beautiful Concertone, is a great way to remember Sir Colin.
ReplyDeleteHello Pablo.
DeleteThought you might be interested as it's also a 'companion' to the 'audiophile' Dumbarton Oaks, etc, LP (SOL 60050).
Unfortunately I don't have the Mozart mentioned on the sleeve (SOL 60029)- but this LP is almost an hour-long (and took far longer than that to edit!)...and chose it instead of the Beethoven Sym 6/Prometheus (LSO/Philips) as these works are a bit less 'well-known'.
Hello Frank:
ReplyDeleteWill be great if you have the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto and want to post it.
Thx.
I thought it was on another blog about 3 years back (?)- and is/was on CD.
DeleteSo as I hate doing these transfers - and don't wish to wet-clean my original copy - the answer must be 'no' (even though the CD apparently [Amazon comment] isn't as good as the LP..)
SOL 60050 isn't particularly 'valuable' (a copy recently sold for $37: 'velvetbelly' - (another) who is making a Fortune selling LP's on eBay - but I find Decca vinyl, pre 1975, to be mostly difficult to successfully clean using my 'method'.
i have never heard a single even slightly questionable recording/performance from Colin Davis (even with Boston S.O.), and these two (never before heard by me) works did not disappoint. Wonderful! Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThe EMG review was nice to read for it's entertainment value.
I happened to listen to parts of the Stravinsky, mentioned above, and it reminded me that British Orchestra's didn't, in those days, seem to 'get' the 'post R-K' Stravinsky: Davis also did the Mass (for Oiseau) + some for Philips with the LSO (a bit better). Only when Boulez came around did the BBC start playing it well (the live Petrushka 'suite', with Davis, (BBC R3) from about 1968, is far from good.
DeleteI had thought of scanning the EMG's (have a complete run (only missing July 1967) from 1947 to June/1986: the end) but, at the time, couldn't figure how to make .pdf's from .jpg files...and they are rarely offered on eBay - usually @ mad-money-grabbing cost per year (@ some 30x what I paid)..
Your knowledge on these topics seems downright encyclopedic. But i'm not at all sure i know when Stravinsky is conducted well or not - perhaps tomorrow i'll listen to Monteaux's Rite of Spring from your offerings.
DeleteHa Ha..when I was a teenager, reading the Gramophone reviews, I was a bit 'bemused' as to how they could compare/go into such interpretive detail: as you can see, EMG didn't; but it's similar to 'sensing' whether the sound is wrong (or has been 'fiddled with' - by you-know-who).
DeleteBut I don't believe anything fancy on the subject, as for any orchestral music, you can't, later, 'hear' any 'different' performance in your head than a sort of 'generic' interpretation.
As I think I mentioned re: the Monteux 'Rite' - he does 'make sense' of much of the quiet parts of the score; on LP there's always the temptation to 'skip' those bits!!
As I've just acquired a brand new/cheap Dell LCD monitor (more transportable than my huge Sony Trinitron CRT) I may now try some Direct to Hard Drive transfers - as haven't done any for over a month ('and why should I..')...though doubt 16/44 would be any better than my 16/44 CD-RW transfers..
Yeah, i have been listening to classical music for about four years now - and i think it certainly puts me at a disadvantage that i didn't become familiar with it as a child - and though i can usually hear what's good and not, and that even good performances often have a lot of differences, the analysis of the details of why and what makes it so generally still elude me altogether (well, apart from tempi...) But your offerings, and some comments here from you and others, have really helped educate me.
DeleteThe internet doesn't seem a particularly good place to 'get pointers', as people peddle the same old tripe...possibly 'Amazon' reviews are the best around, nowadays?
DeleteSo it's best to make use of all those CD Blogs to hear variant performances: this lot is basically 'old [dead] farts recordings' !!!
In the Britten line I would recommend for 'Les Illuminations' the 1954 Peter Pears and 1971 Heather Harper (just been listening to the latter, again - quite superb performance/LP (SXLP reissue - have also the original ASD) - which you can probably find (was going to upload the Pears - but it came out on CD) as Britten wanted to make it 'for Tenor' (or Pears...) - but originally it was for Sophie Weiss...but if you get the Britten book, it would be interesting to download the Michaelangelo/Donne song cycles (on HISTORICAL)- as they a) are magnificent..b) were recorded shortly after the first performances
Amazon has some good reviews but also those peddlers of tripe with agendas who write lots of reviews (like certain Santa Fe Listener) and then there's those who think Valentina Lisitsa, Lang Lang and Marc-Andre Hamelin make the definitive contemporary recordings. For newer stuff i mainly trust live recordings - lots of them legally and freely available - and most of them (but not all!) i discard after one listening. There's a lot of positive hyperbole (reason why i neglect monthly to buy even Gramophone) these days, whereas judging from EMG reviews the hype before was negative, ha-ha! On the other hand, mr. Porr...Pristine's work proves that there's some market/interest for these 'old dead fart recordings' today, too (as does the silent popularity of your blog).
DeleteAnd, some new CDs i've heard simply have a terribly artificial sound; for example, sometimes a fake-sounding canyon-inspired reverb seems to be added...no thanks! But many people seem to like such things.
Thanks a lot for the suggestions!
Britain was cash-strapped in the 50s-60's - still paying-off US War Loans (plus the LP's were very over-priced) - so that's why you find many now being valued (by Orientals) @ vast sums - due to almost nobody buying them due to bad reviews: "don't waste your money".
DeleteMr P now just flogs those 'important Dead Farts' (courtesy of Copyright CD's) to the mentally unhinged/plain gullible Twits; assisted by Bent Reviewers.
BTW: 'Hello to all you out there in silent internet-land who are reading this; I'll wager you are waiting for some Free Goodies'...click/bang/pop/splat ;~))
Thank you so much for sharing this Sir Colin Davis rarity. The transfer is just superb and I don't think remastering by Universal/Decca or Eloquence (if they plan to reissue Davis' recordings in bulk in future) from the analogue mastertapes could achieve better result than this.
ReplyDeleteNice of you to say that! - 2013 seems long-ago!
Delete