What download have you bought?

[jayne lee wilson]

Kancheli symphonies on Olympia from Qobuz - only £1.44 for 4/5 and 3/6

Can't link as on a US VPN!

Same recordings (of 4,5 & 6), better (2014) remastered sound....with Bashmet's definitive Mourned by the Wind...

https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/giya-kancheli-mourned-by-the-wind-yuri-bashmet-jansug-kakhidze-state-symphony-orchestra-of-georgia/0888831674566

(The Melodiya CDs are in a lovely fold-out presentation case, should you want them...)

[mathias broucek]

Salonen sale at Qobuz. His Bernard Herrmann album is wonderful!

[mathias broucek]

String Quartets by Gustave Samazeuilh and Franck. If you love the Debussy and Ravel quartets, you’ll love the Samazeuilh for sure.

96p from Qobuz and VERY highly recommended. (Haven’t heard the Franck yet but anyone who likes early 20th French music needs to hear the Samazeuilh. (The disc got a good review in Gramo.)

https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/franck-quatuor-joachim-quatuor-joachim/0794881758821

[Beef Oven!]

String Quartets by Gustave Samazeuilh and Franck. If you love the Debussy and Ravel quartets, you’ll love the Samazeuilh for sure.

96p from Qobuz and VERY highly recommended. (Haven’t heard the Franck yet bu anyone who likes early 20th C Franck music needs to hear the Samazeuilh. (The disc got a good review in Gramo.)

https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/fr.../0794881758821

Thanks for the heads up on this, great bargain!

[Beef Oven!]

[HighlandDougie]

Schubert: String Quartets in G minor D173 and in D minor D810 ("Death and the Maiden")

Chiaroscuro Quartet

24/96 version currently at e-classical.com on offer for about £7.50. For me, self-recommending. Lovely recording, too (WDR Cologne, produced by Andrew Keener). Notes by none other than Mr Ibragimova.

[Beppe]

I got this back in June. A 24 disk set for $9.99 in mp3 download? HERE IS THE LINK
You get three download choices: Java Downloader, Direct Download, and Dropbox.
I used direct which is painstaking as you have to separately download each track, but it goes quickly.
As it is, I already had half the content, so only had to download six operas.
Based on the file sizes I got from it, it must be around 256 kbps and it is MP3 files.
The other problem is the tracks are not numbered, so you have to sort your folder by download time and manually number them.


Here is what you get (you don't get disk 25 which is a DVD perhaps of librettos, I don't know).
there are two Sonnambula and two Norma performances to fill out the 24 disks as Bellini only has ten operas.

Bellini: Adelson & Salvini 2:22:20
Catania Teatro Massimo Bellini Chorus, Catania Teatro Massimo Bellini Orchestra
Andrea Licata
Fabio Previati (baritone), Alicia Nafé (mezzo-soprano), Bradley Williams (tenor), Roberto Coviello (bass), Giancarlo Tosi (bass), Aurio Tomicich (bass), Lucia Rizzi (contralto), Eleonora Jankovic (mezzo-soprano)

Bellini: Bianca e Fernando (2nd version) 2:14:35
Catania Teatro Massimo Bellini Chorus, Catania Teatro Massimo Bellini Orchestra
Andrea Licata
Emily Manhart (mezzo-soprano), Gregory Kunde (tenor), Aurio Tomicich (bass), Youngok Shin (soprano), Haijing Fu (bass), Armando Caforio (bass), Sonia Nigoghossian (mezzo-soprano), Walter Coppola (tenor)

Bellini: Il Pirata 2:24:01
Berlin Deutsches Staatopera Orchestra, Berlin Deutsches Staatopera Chorus
Marcello Viotti
Roberto Frontali (baritone), Lucia Aliberti (soprano), Hermine May (mezzo-soprano), Jose Guadalupe Reyes (tenor), Kelly Anderson (baritone), Stuart Neill (tenor)

Bellini: La straniera 2:00:00
Palermo Orchestra Sinfonica del Teatro Massimo, Palermo Teatro Massimo Chorus
Nino Sanzogno
Domenico Trimarchi (baritone), Enrico Campi (bass), Renata Scotto (soprano), Elena Zilio (mezzo-soprano), Renato Cioni (tenor), Maurizio Mazzieri (baritone), Glauco Scarlini (baritone)

Bellini: Zaira 2:32:22
Catania Teatro Massimo Bellini Chorus, Catania Teatro Massimo Bellini Orchestra
Paolo Olmi
Ramón Vargas (tenor), Simone Alaimo (baritone), Roberto de Candia (baritone), Luigi Roni (bass), Katia Ricciarelli (soprano), Alexandra Papadjakou (mezzo-soprano), Giovanni Battista Palmieri (bass), Silvana Silbano (mezzo-soprano)

Bellini: I Capuleti e I Montecchi 2:08:50
Orchestra Internazionale d'Italia, Bratislava Slovak Chorus
Luciano Acocella
Patrizia Ciofi (soprano), Federico Sacchi (bass-baritone), Nicola Amodio (tenor), Clara Polito (soprano), Danilo Formaggia (tenor)

Bellini: La Sonnambula 2:30:55
Bratislava Chamber Choir, Orchestra Internazionale d'Italia
Giuliano Carella
Giovanni Furlanetto (bass), Patrizia Ciofi (soprano), Maria Costanza Nocentini (soprano), Etienne Ligot (vocals), Giuseppe Morino (tenor), Vitalba Mosca (soprano), Walter Mikus (vocals)

La sonnambula 2:20:37
Milan Teatro alla Scala Chorus, Milan Teatro alla Scala Orchestra
Leonard Bernstein
Giuseppe Nessi (tenor), Maria Callas (soprano), Giuseppe Modesti (bass), Eugenia Ratti (soprano), Pier Luigi Latinucci (bass), Cesare Valletti (tenor), Gabriella Carturan (mezzo-soprano)
Recorded: 5 March 1955
Recording Venue: Milan

Bellini: Norma 2:34:53
Coro Lirico Marchigiano 'V. Bellini', Fondazione Orchestra Regionale delle Marche
Paolo Arrivabeni
Carlo Ventre (tenor), Simon Orfila (baritone), Daniela Barcellona (mezzo-soprano), Dimitra Theodossiou (soprano), Roberta Minnucci (soprano), Giancarlo Pavan (tenor)

Bellini: Norma 2:25:20
Torino della RAI Sinfonica Orchestra, Torino della RAI Choir
Georges Prêtre
Montserrat Caballé (soprano), Ivo Vinco (bass), Fiorenza Cossotto (mezzo-soprano), Robleto Merolla (tenor), Anna Maria Balboni (soprano), Mino Venturini (tenor)

Bellini: Beatrice di Tenda 2:28:46
Deutsche Oper Berlin, Berlin Deutsche Opera Chorus
Fabio Luisi
Camille Capasso (vocals), John De Haan (tenor), Lucia Aliberti (soprano), Martin Thompson (tenor), Paolo Gavanelli (baritone), Raemond Martin (tenor)

Bellini: I Puritani 2:30:02
Catania Teatro Massimo Bellini Chorus, Catania Teatro Massimo Bellini Orchestra
Richard Bonynge
Mariella Devia (soprano), Christopher Robertson (baritone), William Matteuzzi (tenor), Eleonora Jankovic (mezzo-soprano), Paolo Washington (bass), Franco Federici (bass)

[Bryn]

Satie: Vexations the full 840 repetitions (Jerone Van Veen). I purchased the FLAC option from 7Digital UK for £6.99. They also offer a 320kbps mp3 option for a somewhat lower outlay. Alternatively, you could pay rather more for lower data rate mp3s from Amazon.

[Beef Oven!]

Thanks Bryn, I've just bought the 16 bits FLAC from 7Digital UK. I have another Jeroen Van Veen Satie release on Brilliant - the 'Complete Piano Music'.

If I'm not wrong, Vexations should take around 10 hours, but JVV takes 23 hours! I don't look forward to downloading this zip file (started as I type!)

For those not familiar, here's a short article from The Guardian.

[Bryn]

Most full performances of Vexations take between 18 and 24 hours, tending more towards the latter. I recorded one such to C120 cassettes at an Almeda Festival back in the 1980s. Sadly all but one or two of the cassettes have been lost or destryed over the intervening decades. That was a fund-raising relay involving around 20 pianist closely associated with experimentsl music. I also attended 2 other complete performaces, both given by Gavin Bryars and Christopher Hobbs, back in the '70s.

The unzipped FLACs total around 3.6GB and fit neatly on a 4GB USB stick.

[Beef Oven!]

Most full performances of Vexations take between 18 and 24 hours, tending more towards the latter. I recorded one such to C120 cassettes at an Almeda Festival back in the 1980s. Sadly all but one or two of the cassettes have been lost or destryed over the intervening decades. That was a fund-raising relay involving around 20 pianist cosely associated with experimentsl music. I also attended 2 other complete perfromaces, both given by Gavin Bryars and Christopher Hobbs, back in the '70s.

You're crazy!

[Richard Barrett]

If I'm not wrong, Vexations should take around 10 hours, but JVV takes 23 hours!

Not sure how you calculate the 10 hours... the tempo making is only "Très lent" which could be interpreted quite variously.

[Bryn]

Not sure how you calculate the 10 hours... the tempo making is only "Très lent" which could be interpreted quite variously.

If we take an extreme to be Alan Marks's September 1987 recording of just the one cycle of the four statements of the theme, 840 repetitions would take around 37 hours!

[To clarify, Marks made two recordings of Vexations in September 1987. For the CD "Collected Items from a Silent Dream" he recorded the one cycle. For the CD "Vexations", he recorded 40 cycles at a rather quicker tempo. At the latter tempo the total duration would have been a little over 24 hours.]

[Bryn]

Thanks Bryn, I've just bought the 16 bits FLAC from 7Digital UK. I have another Jeroen Van Veen Satie release on Brilliant - the 'Complete Piano Music'.

If I'm not wrong, Vexations should take around 10 hours, but JVV takes 23 hours! I don't look forward to downloading this zip file (started as I type!)

For those not familiar, here's a short article from The Guardian.

If you find the Van Veen too slow for you, you could try:



A snip at only £108.99 for the mp3s at amazon.co.uk.

[Beef Oven!]

It's only £87.89 on Qobuz for the 16 bit. Bargains everywhere today!