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What CD Are You Hearing Now?

Some ten years ago I was listening to a classical music radio station in the car. A really nice cello concerto was on, which I hadn't heard before. It sounded classical. But it had something hard to define, a certain quality, a sort of richness, that semeed to indicate a "heavyweight" composer, not one of the many "mainstream" ones that barely anyone remembers today. But who? It sounded a bit like a young Mozart, but I knew it couldn't be him, because he didn't write any cello concertos. I'm familiar with all his concertos, and a cello isn't among them. Could it be Haydn? To the best of my knowledge (though I would soon be proven wrong) Haydn didn't write cello concertos either. Could it be his brother, Michael? Could it be Hummel? In the end it turned out to be Joseph Haydn. I learned something new that day - that Haydn did indeed write two cello concertos.

Of course, once I got home I had to go search for a recording, and I found this one. I'm listening to it today.

Interestingly, the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields is not conducted by Neville Marriner this time, but by Iona Brown. I must confess I hadn't heard of her, and it was this CD that aroused my curiosity and made me look her up. It appears she was the orchestra's concertmaster at the time.

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I said here that Haitink's recording of the Second symphony by Brahms with the Royal Concertgebouw has become my absolute favourite by a huge margin.
Well, now I can say the same about the First symphony. This is by far the one I like best. I don't even know where to start describing what I love about it, because I love everything. The brisk (though perfectly controlled) tempo, the smooth crescendos and diminuendos that make the music feel alive, like a beating heart, the dynamics, the sound, the clarity, the warmth of the adagio... everything is just perfect.

If I wanted to be mean, I'd say that the brass "chorale" that comes immediately after the horn and flute solos in the final movement is a bit weak. And that at the end of the finale, at the peak of the coda, there's a moment when the brass and the strings are a bit out of sync.
But these are tiny drops in an ocean of perfection.

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Vlad Soare said:
One thing that's worth keeping in mind is that all in-car CD players are slot type. Which means they can, and eventually will, scratch your CDs. The interior of the car is exposed to dust and all kinds of other airborne stuff, which makes it next to impossible to keep the felt lining of the slot pristine. Sooner or later a piece of dirt will settle on it and will scratch your discs. This is why I would never use my good CDs in the car. Back when I listened to CDs in the car, until about ten years ago, I used to make copies specifically for this purpose.
But if you're going to rip the CDs anyway in order to make copies, then you might as well just put those ripped files on a USB memory stick and play that in the car. Does your Subaru come with a USB connection? I guess it should. Most contemporary cars do. A USB stick is incomparably more convenient while driving than a CD, while offering the same audio quality.
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Perhaps it depends on your driving environment, but my car is 15 years old and its factory head unit has never scratched a CD, nor did the aftermarket players I used in previous cars. Also note that some reputable home CD players such as Rotel use a slot-loading mechanism.

I used to burn CD-Rs for most of the music I would play in the car. These days I play a mix of CD-R and factory-pressed CDs. I've moved away from CD-Rs for environmental reasons since they don't last as long and would be headed for the waste stream.

USB playback probably won't work in my next car since my library is encoded as Ogg Vorbis and I don't know if any car stereos, factory or aftermarket, would understand them. Of course I'm in a tiny minority.
 
rf225 said:
Also note that some reputable home CD players such as Rotel use a slot-loading mechanism.
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Yes, and if you search for "CD player scratches discs", or something along those lines, you'll find lots of complaints, most (if not all) of which are related to slot-loading players. It may not be a frequent occurrence, but it does happen. Luckily the CD is a very resilient medium and will take a lot of abuse before refusing to play correctly, but still...

rf225 said:
USB playback probably won't work in my next car since my library is encoded as Ogg Vorbis and I don't know if any car stereos, factory or aftermarket, would understand them. Of course I'm in a tiny minority.
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OGG can be converted to MP3. On Linux there are free tools that can even convert an entire batch in one go. I believe ffmpeg is one of them, though I haven't used it myself.
But of course, if you're happy with CDs, there's no reason to change. Nothing wrong with that.
 
Vlad Soare said:
Yes, and if you search for "CD player scratches discs", or something along those lines, you'll find lots of complaints, most (if not all) of which are related to slot-loading players. It may not be a frequent occurrence, but it does happen. Luckily the CD is a very resilient medium and will take a lot of abuse before refusing to play correctly, but still...


OGG can be converted to MP3. On Linux there are free tools that can even convert an entire batch in one go. I believe ffmpeg is one of them, though I haven't used it myself.
But of course, if you're happy with CDs, there's no reason to change. Nothing wrong with that.
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Sure, ogg can be converted, but it's open source (mp3 is proprietary, even though it's "free") and the quality is better at a given bit rate, at least in my experience. I can't tell the difference between a 192K ogg file and the original CD or FLAC file. When I reach a point where I can't play CDs in the car, I can use my burner phone with Android Auto, BT, or analog input, in descending order of preference and convenience.
 
rf225 said:
Sure, ogg can be converted, but it's open source (mp3 is proprietary, even though it's "free") and the quality is better at a given bit rate, at least in my experience.
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That's true. I'm not suggesting you switch your existing library to MP3, though I now realize my statement could be read like that. I meant generating MP3 copies to put on a USB thumb drive. But Android Auto or bluetooth are good options, too. I've been using CarPlay exclusively for the past four years or so and couldn't be happier. Instant access to my own library, to internet radio stations, audiobooks, podcasts, you name it. Beats both the CD and the USB, hands down. :)
 
Vlad Soare said:
That's true. I'm not suggesting you switch your existing library to MP3, though I now realize my statement could be read like that. I meant generating MP3 copies to put on a USB thumb drive. But Android Auto or bluetooth are good options, too. I've been using CarPlay exclusively for the past four years or so and couldn't be happier. Instant access to my own library, to internet radio stations, audiobooks, podcasts, you name it. Beats both the CD and the USB, hands down. :)
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The #1 rule of road tunes is that with a few exceptions for recent obsessions, I never know what I will want to hear until the trip commences. So, if I were doing a conversion, I've have to process a lot of files I'd probably never use. A better use of my time is to plan routes and visits, and typically, to research any Indian restaurants that might be in my path, not to futz around with an IT project when all the important work has already been done.

Also, maybe newer cars are different, but older ones tend to be track-centric with USB and some don't like a structure with a lot of subfolders. That's a deal breaker for me.

Although my car doesn't have USB ports, it can play mp3's burned to CD. I've never tested it and don't have much reason to.
 
Since I was speaking of Jos van Immerseel recently, I thought I'd give his Beethoven piano concertos a listen today.

This is a "historically informed" performance, played on period instruments tuned to 430 Hz. Immerseel plays an early 19th century fortepiano.

It's a very good performance, crisp, technical, in a lively, youthful tempo. The fortepiano has an interesting sound, as does the orchestra, and Immerseel's technique is faultless. It isn't necessarily my favourite (that position is still shared by Mitsuko Uchida and Glenn Gould), but it is special in its own right, and I enjoy it very much. I'm glad to have it in my collection.

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Way Out West
Sonny Rollins
1957/2002 Analogue Productions CAPJ 7530 SA

My CD/LP/Tape Collection
 
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Danse Macabre · Phaéton · Le Rouet d'Omphale · La Jeunesse d'Hercule · Marche Héroique · (Bonus Tracks) Piano Concerto No.1 In D Major, Op.17
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Charles Dutoit
Pascal Rogé, p (Bonus Tracks)
Decca Sound | The Analogue Years 478 5437, 1981/2013 Decca 478 5953

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My CD/LP/Tape Collection
 
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I found this in a local shop recently and bought it for Mariss Jansons. His rendering of the Mahler First with the Royal Concertgebouw is one of the best I've ever heard, on par with Bernstein with the same orchestra. So I was pretty sure I couldn't go wrong with him. And indeed I didn't.
The only recordings of the Schumann First that I had in my collection were Karajan/BPO and John Eliot Gardiner/ORR, the latter being a HIP recording, neither of which I'm particularly enthusiastic about. This one, though, is really excellent. I wasn't too fond of the First, finding it heavy, thick, and kind of simplistic thematically, but now I see how wrong I was. Under Jansons' baton it makes perfect sense. Now I love it and feel the urge to listen to it on repeat.
I can't comment on his performance of Schubert's Third because, to my shame, I have to admit not having listened to any other. I am familiar with only a few of Schubert's symphonies, and the Third wasn't among them until now. I do love it, though, so I guess it can't be bad.

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Vlad Soare said:
Some ten years ago I was listening to a classical music radio station in the car. A really nice cello concerto was on, which I hadn't heard before. It sounded classical. But it had something hard to define, a certain quality, a sort of richness, that semeed to indicate a "heavyweight" composer, not one of the many "mainstream" ones that barely anyone remembers today. But who? It sounded a bit like a young Mozart, but I knew it couldn't be him, because he didn't write any cello concertos. I'm familiar with all his concertos, and a cello isn't among them. Could it be Haydn? To the best of my knowledge (though I would soon be proven wrong) Haydn didn't write cello concertos either. Could it be his brother, Michael? Could it be Hummel? In the end it turned out to be Joseph Haydn. I learned something new that day - that Haydn did indeed write two cello concertos.

Of course, once I got home I had to go search for a recording, and I found this one. I'm listening to it today.

Interestingly, the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields is not conducted by Neville Marriner this time, but by Iona Brown. I must confess I hadn't heard of her, and it was this CD that aroused my curiosity and made me look her up. It appears she was the orchestra's concertmaster at the time.

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One of my favorite recordings with the Academy features Iona Brown on the violin specifically The Lark Ascending.


Iona Brown Iona Brown - Wikipedia
 
I wanted to have this recording because it is mentioned in Murakami's book, "Absolutely on Music". I wanted to hear with my own ears what he and Ozawa were talking about. The trouble is, it seems to have been released exclusively for the Japanese market. It is not available anywhere else in the world. But thanks to Discogs I was able to find a mint copy (actually, new and sealed) and to order it from Japan.

Symphony 32 by Mozart, also known as the Overture in the Italian Style, was an unexpected bonus, and Ozawa's version of it is faultless.
I do find the association of Mozart with Mahler a bit odd, though. I tend to listen to them separately, not immediately one after the other.

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So, how do I find the Mahler 1?
While my overall favourite remains Bernstein's 1988 recording with the Royal Concertgebouw, followed closely by (or maybe not necessarily followed by, but quite on par with) Mariss Jansons with the same orchestra from 2006, I do like this one as well. I can't find anything wrong with it. It is a really competent performance, which does full justice to the piece. Nice and clear sound, with good layer separation, perfect tempo, and an overall lively feel. Nothing to complain about. As is the case with Ozawa in general, I can't quite put my finger on something specific, some specific character trait that defines it, that makes it stand out from the others. I can do that with Bernstein or Jansons, but somehow not with Ozawa. It's a technically competent performance; that's all I can say.
If I were trying hard to be picky, I would say that in the first three movements the dynamic range is a bit lower than Bernstein's or Jansons'. But the difference isn't big enough to hurt the music. And besides, this isn't true in the final movement, which is as dynamic and lively and powerful as you'd expect.

It's a good one. I'm glad to have it in my collection.
 
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Quick trip across the border today to Zap Records in Kingston, Ont. Small shop, but if often has really good blues/soul/r&b boxes. I've had this one on my want list for a while. In a perfect world, I suppose I'd buy the Bear Family version, but that's spendy and this is more than good enough. Nine CDs and a decent booklet.

We think of Sam Philips as the guy who discovered Elvis, but he was so much more. I can't think of anyone other than maybe John Hammond who had a better ear for talent.

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@Vlad Soare -

What do you think of the new Uchida Beethoven late sonatas? Haven't bought it yet, but streamed on Qobuz and it strikes me as VG. I know you like at least some Uchida.
 
To be honest, I wasn't aware of this release. I will check it out. Thanks for pointing it out to me.
Indeed, I am a great fan of hers.
 
This is interesting. For years I couldn't touch this set for less than $250 U.S. - in fact, the all-time high on Discogs is $650 - but in the last few months, good copies have started to turn up in the $90-$100 range. I have no idea why. One thought: a general exhaustion with big boxes and their endless alternate takes, false starts, bootleg quality live performances. I still very much like them, but I admit you have to be more than a little obsessive. (Plus, the move back to vinyl has no doubt cut into CD big box prices just as it has regular CDs.)

Anyway, a truly great collection.

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