Rostropovich recordings - recommendations

[HighlandDougie]

Bang on, Caliban. The LP had only the Glazunov but the DG Galleria re-issue on CD had Tchaikovsky's Andante Cantabile chucked in for good measure. Kiril Kondrashin is one of my favourite conductors (his Beethoven a joy, as well as the usual suspects) and Isaac Stern in the Barber Concerto What a great memory

[jayne lee wilson]

For the curious...

over at HDTT, there's a 24/96 transfer from open-reel of Don Quixote live from Salzburg 27/08/75 with Berlin Phil/Karajan... well what d'you think it's like? Completely glorious! There's also a live Karajan Also Sprach, vintage Salzburg '79, if anything even finer... there's a little low-level tape distortion evident occasionally, but - the power (especially the power - turn it up!) and the glory are in rich abundance. Rostropovich, Karajan and THAT orchestra unsurpassably splendid.

Technical note: I had to convert the Don Quixote FLAC to WAV to re-order the tracks into the correct sequence; a rare and strange problem (which you may not encounter yourself of course), though HDTT do tend to the eccentric now and then...
...I just think of them as lovable rogues.

[LeMartinPecheur]

DP - yes, that all checks out. My box is 13 CDs though, and I won it in an EMI/ Gramophone cross'word' competition!

The odd thing was that I couldn't get the puzzle to come out. It was a cryptic-clue crossword grid, but what was entered was a CD-number for the composition flagged up by the clue, the number selected from the complete EMI classical CD catalogue kindly provided with the magazine. In some cases the indicated work had only one recording, in others many. But the last answer - one of the Tchaik ballets IIRC - only fitted if you transposed two of the digits! I sent in my answer pointing this out, and duly received the (only?) prize. No acknowledgement of the error though, and I don't think they ever published an official winners' announcement. Never mind, I treasure the box!

[Don Petter]

DP - yes, that all checks out. My box is 13 CDs though, and I won it in an EMI/ Gramophone cross'word' competition!

The odd thing was that I couldn't get the puzzle to come out. It was a cryptic-clue crossword grid, but what was entered was a CD-number for the composition flagged up by the clue, the number selected from the complete EMI classical CD catalogue kindly provided with the magazine. In some cases the indicated work had only one recording, in others many. But the last answer - one of the Tchaik ballets IIRC - only fitted if you transposed two of the digits! I sent in my answer pointing this out, and duly received the (only?) prize. No acknowledgement of the error though, and I don't think they ever published an official winners' announcement. Never mind, I treasure the box!

Hmm. Reminds me of a scurrilous episode long ago in Chemistry Analysis at college, when a flat mate and I altered the value of the sample in the not-very-well-hidden lecturer's notebook to be somewhat nearer our result. This ensured that not only did we get good marks, but everyone else got very poor ones.

[Rosie55]

The Milhaud/Honnegar/Hoddinott concertos with the LSO and Negano are a fine collection. Varied and worth exploring

[LeMartinPecheur]

Hmm. Reminds me of a scurrilous episode long ago in Chemistry Analysis at college, when a flat mate and I altered the value of the sample in the not-very-well-hidden lecturer's notebook to be somewhat nearer our result. This ensured that not only did we get good marks, but everyone else got very poor ones.

DP - I shall treasure my prize even more now that I've looked it up on river-people and find that used Marketplace prices for the box start at £125, rising to £199

I too have a chemistry 'fudge' to report. For a uni tutorial we had to calculate the colour of a carrot using a carbon-carbon bond-length in the carroteine(sp?) molecule provided by our tutor. This duly yielded a reasonable orange wavelength - hurrah. But when I used the average bond-length given in standard textbooks the answer came out in the UV! My tutorial-partner liked this so much that we invented an "Order of the Ultra-Violet Carrot", a prize secretly bestowed upon the most boring 1st-year chemistry lecturer.

A elderly chemistry fellow of Trinity College, Oxford has probably long since gone to his grave blissfully unaware that he held this award for life after 1973. I changed course after Prelims that year, and my tutorial partner failed and was sent down