Your Latest CD/DVD/Download Purchase

[Ferretfancy]

A disc which I've had in my LP shelf for a long time, now on CD, The Young Person's Guide, and Pictures at an Exhibition with the Chicago SO and Ozawa. This was originally an RCA recording cut onto vinyl using their so called Dynagroove technique intended to reduce tracing distortion. These are spacious performances in Chicago's Medina Temple, with superb playing and sound. It's sad to hear that Ozawa is in ill health.
Sony are also reissuing some of the RCA Living Sound recordings, including several Reiner compilations, Beethoven by Munch, plus his excellent La Mer, all worth looking out for.

[Jonathan]

Liszt - New Discoveries 3 (Hyperion) and Gade Overtures (CPO). Both are excellent!

[Tapiola]

My last few purchases have included the complete Walcha Bach mono organ recordings on Membran (Documents) - a steal at far less than a tenner, Walcha's Art of Fugue recording on Archiv and a four-disc Quadromania (Documents) set of Schubert song cycles sung by Husch, Hotter, Schiotz and Lehmann.

All indescribably wonderful. The Husch Winterreise is the finest I have ever heard.

[Basil]

I got a little carried away and blew January's and most of February’s budget on these:

Schubert Trios - Beaux Arts Trio

Beethoven Trios (complete) - Beaux Arts Trio

Schubert late quartets - Lindsays

Beethoven Piano sonatas & concerti & Choral Fantasia - Brendel, LPO, Haitink.

Ordered Wednesday 12th, usual free delivery, arrived this morning!

[LeMartinPecheur]

Two charity-shop purchases:
1) Messiaen Quattuor pour la fin du temps (DG - Shaham, Meyer, Wang, Chung);
2) rather more obscure, Prokofiev Alexander Nevsky and Shoster 9 (Dorian - Dallas SO/ Mata -1993).

I gather this Messiaen seriously split the critics. Penguin put it at the top of their list yet apparently Gramophone absolutely savaged it tho' I can't find the review online. Amazon reviews are 5-star except for one 1-star which says they can't tell quavers from semiquavers (or was it semi's from demi-semi's?).

I can't trace any 'professional' review of the Mata at all, tho' there's one 5-star on Amazon.

So help please: am I allowed to like these discs, or should I just sling them straight back to the shop unplayed?

Oh yes, some LPs too: a mint copy of the old Argo Hindemith organ sonatas signed by Simon Preston for £4.99 [sealed bids only please], and a tatty old 'Concert Hall' Schubert song recital by Seefried/Werba. Plus my second Cornwall charity-shop copy of Ben Luxon's Abbey recital of Songs of the Sea. The first proved to be nearly worn out: Cornwall loves its son Ben Luxon, as evidenced by a concert programme in the LP sleeve, Truro 29/1/78, 'A Cornish Feast of Music with Guest Artiste[sic] Benjamin Luxon'.

You can't preserve a concert programme in a CD box...

[maestro267]

I might buy that Liszt set mentioned by Spatny at some point. I see that it not only contains all the symphonic poems, but his two symphonies as well (Faust and Dante).

[Nachtigall]

Three new recordings: Vladimir Ashkenazy playing the Bach Partitas; the Pavel Haas Quartet playing Dvorák's 12th and 13th quartets; and Sergey Khachatryan playing Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin. The last of these is still on its way and I'm looking forward to it.

[gradus]

The Dino Ciani 3 cd set on Brilliant. The Schumann Novelettes are as good as promised but I am a little bemused by the Debussy Preludes. They are spectacularly played and the recording is quite good, they don't sound idiomatic somehow. Probably more a question of attuning my ear to the pianist's view of the pieces. Some in the second book are extraordinary under Ciani's hands, like something written by a more modern follower of Debussy.

[Il Grande Inquisitor]

Re the Real Chopin box, Amazon are also advertising the set (if the picture is anything to go by) for £160 and due for release on Jan 11 although the text further down describes it as a single disc!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Chopin-F/dp/B004EQAUZQ/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=I113PJGOXZRE55&colid=32NSDTQYUOGRI

Re the 'Real Chopin' box, I placed an order with an American marketplace seller, which arrived today. As I had suspected, it's not the 21 disc box, but a single disc (boxed, admittedly) of the complete Chopin songs from the Chopin Institute. I checked by typing the upc into Amazon's software and it does indeed come up with the so-called 21 disc set! I see that Amazon has revised the price of the 'other' Real Chopin box from £160 down to £71.99 and I suspect this is the real 'Real Chopin'... really (even though it's marked as a one disc set).

[pastoralguy]

the Pavel Haas Quartet playing Dvorák's 12th and 13th quartets

I bought this yesterday and am looking forward to it.

Lovely picture of the Charles Bridge on the cover.

[MickyD]

Re the 'Real Chopin' box, I placed an order with an American marketplace seller, which arrived today. As I had suspected, it's not the 21 disc box, but a single disc (boxed, admittedly) of the complete Chopin songs from the Chopin Institute. I checked by typing the upc into Amazon's software and it does indeed come up with the so-called 21 disc set! I see that Amazon has revised the price of the 'other' Real Chopin box from £160 down to £71.99 and I suspect this is the real 'Real Chopin'... really (even though it's marked as a one disc set).

I placed my order with UK Amazon and have just been told that the box won't be delivered as it is out of stock - I wonder if I will get the 21 discs or not? Surely Il Grande Inquisitor, Amazon have to give you a refund if they are not giving you the set you thought you were ordering?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I've just received the Double Decca Strauss Tone Poems CDs cond. Solti:
Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel, Eine Alpensinfonie, Eine Heldenleben, Also Sprach Zarathustra. All but one are new versions to me.

[Panjandrum]

Two charity-shop purchases:
1) Messiaen Quattuor pour la fin du temps (DG - Shaham, Meyer, Wang, Chung);
2) rather more obscure, Prokofiev Alexander Nevsky and Shoster 9 (Dorian - Dallas SO/ Mata -1993).

I gather this Messiaen seriously split the critics. Penguin put it at the top of their list yet apparently Gramophone absolutely savaged it tho' I can't find the review online. Amazon reviews are 5-star except for one 1-star which says they can't tell quavers from semiquavers (or was it semi's from demi-semi's?).

Roger Nichols was the Gramophone reviewer back in November 2000, which was when the Messiaen was reviewed. His verdict was:

"Bands up all those who would put money on a one-time music director of the Paris Opera being able to distinguish between semiquavers and demi-semiquavers? Well, Myun-Whun Chung can't here, and I suggest you keep your hands on your wallets.
Messiaen concludes his Preface to the Quatuor with some 'Advice to performers', in which he recommends that, having read his commentaries and theoretical explanations, they then forget about all that: 'it is enough for them to play the text, the notes and exact durations, and to be sure to play the nuances indicated.' Also, in the two slow movements (V and VIII) they must `maintain the extremely slow tempos implacably'. One wonders what else he could have written for his wishes to be taken seriously.
Myung-Whun Chung's substitution of semiquavers for demi-semiquavers throughout the last movement is only one example of many in this recording of durations and nuances being altered, presumably with a view to `self-expression' (listen to Erich Gruenberg and Michel Beroff - on the first recording of the piece - to hear how this last movement should go). And durations not only of notes, but of rests, which are just as important in Messiaen as in Webern or Boulez.
Frankly, I'm not prepared to waste my time or yours on a detailed expose of the many textual errors. Suffice to say that the violin is horribly out of tune in bars 11 and 12 of the last movement, that the clarinet changes pitch perceptibly on the long crescendos on single notes in III, and that the cellist at the end of IV begins his glissando a quaver early, leading to a shambolic cadence. Really one expects a more responsible attitude to the text from such experienced musicians, and Deutsche Grammophon should be ashamed of putting out such a sub-standard disc."

[Il Grande Inquisitor]

Surely Il Grande Inquisitor, Amazon have to give you a refund if they are not giving you the set you thought you were ordering?

I have no doubt I'll get a refund from the marketplace seller - indeed, I've already contacted them. I had also placed an order with Amazon so, like you, will be interested to see what they send. Marketplace sellers could claim, justifiably, that Amazon misrepresented what they were actually selling, whereas it should be harder for Amazon themselves to wriggle out of it. I wonder if the 'we're out of stock, it's going to take longer than we thought' email is a tactic to get people to cancel their orders?

[MickyD]

Ah, sorry, IGI, I omitted to read that your purchase was from a Marketplace seller. But yes, I reckon you're right - Amazon will no doubt take their time over this and hope we get fed up....they have already signalled in their e-mail to me that I can cancel if I wish to do so. They actually kept me waiting eight months or so for a book once (though unlike our Chopin set, it wasn't cheap!)....of course in the end I cancelled out of sheer frustration.