Carl Nielsen Symphonies

[PJPJ]

Chung's was a very early CD release and an early purchase for me. Recording quality was disappointing even at the time (on all my various sound systems over the years) and the performance with its cruder gear changes didn't displace Garaguly's in my affections yet I've kept the disc for nearly 30 years. Blomstedt's SFO recording [of the 2nd] doesn't open out on my main system, either, though I can quite believe the combination in a different system would show them off far better.

If forced to keep just two cycles, at the moment I'd hang on to Berglund's and Colin Davis's, and also keep the single discs with Jensen, Tuxen, Grondahl and co. There's much excitement to be had from those pioneering accounts with edge-of-the-seat playing.

[Barbirollians]

Blomstedt is the cycle for me . I am pleased to own a number of supplementary recordings like Bernstein in 3 & 5 , Barbirolli in 4 and Frandsen in 3 and Tuxen in 5 but it is generally to Blomstedt that I turn when I want to hear Nielsen's symphonies .

[johnb]

I remember hearing Barbirolli conduct No 4 at a Halle concert when I was in my teens. It would be nice to have his recording as a memento.

[PJPJ]

Perhaps it was this performance?

http://www.mdt.co.uk/nielsen-symphony-no-4-sibelius-orchestra-john-barbirolli-bbc-legends.html

[Barbirollians]

His Pye recording is I believe back in the catalogue on a Barbirolli Society release.

[johnb]

Perhaps it was this performance?

http://www.mdt.co.uk/nielsen-symphon...c-legends.html

I'm very tempted. It is, of course, a different performance as I heard him conduct it in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester.

[Barbirollians]

I have the BBC Legends record - I doubt you will be disappointed -it is very exciting .

[HighlandDougie]

I found the Barbirolli (in its EMI reissue incarnation) in a second-hand CD shop in Paris (Melomania, Bvd Saint-Germain - successor to La Chaumière in rue de Vaugirard, now closed) on Wednesday (it was all of €8.00) and I didn't buy it, which I am now deeply regretting*. Anyway, if anyone comes across the following - as I have said before - the performance of the 4th is truly magnificent:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nielsen-Syms-Danish-Jensen-Grondahl/dp/B000005CZI/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1357324785&sr=1-1

The Naxos reissue sounds horrible and should be avoided at all costs.

*Now rectified via their online shop

[Bryn]

I found the Barbirolli (in its EMI reissue incarnation) in a second-hand CD shop in Paris (Melomania, Bvd Saint-Germain - successor to La Chaumière in rue de Vaugirard, now closed) on Wednesday (it was all of €8.00) and I didn't buy it, which I am now deeply regretting*. Anyway, if anyone comes across the following - as I have said before - the performance of the 4th is truly magnificent:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nielsen-Syms-Danish-Jensen-Grondahl/dp/B000005CZI/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1357324785&sr=1-1

The Naxos reissue sounds horrible and should be avoided at all costs.

*Now rectified via their online shop

Take a look at the Dutton sale post in the Bargains thread. But be quick, I intend to order it.

[Oops. Sorry, wrong Dutton Nielsen disc. I'm ordering the one I spotted anyway.]

[HighlandDougie]

Take a look at the Dutton sale post in the Bargains thread. But be quick, I intend to order it.

[Oops. Sorry, wrong Dutton Nielsen disc. I'm ordering the one I spotted anyway.]

Thanks Bryn. 'Wrong' disc duly ordered. The Frandsen Espansiva is a fine performance, although I don't think that the Philips 10" LP does it full justice.

[PJPJ]

It's an excellent transfer of this fine Frandsen performance, and the OOP disc (Jensen and Grondahl in 2 and 4) mentioned earlier is superb.

More Jensen and Tuxen is on Australian Eloquence

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Symphony-Nos-1-Flute-Clarinet-Serenade/dp/B003LDKJMW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1357330561&sr=8-2

which includes first-class performances of the flute and clarinet concertos.

[richardfinegold]

Gilbert reviewed in Fanfare. I thought the reviewer did a better job of expressing what I had last posted. An interesting alternative performance, not a basic recommendation .

[jayne lee wilson]

I have great respect for JLW and after reading her praise for Chung with the Gothenburg SO I bought their recordings of Nos 2 and 3 cheaply, second hand, from Amazon. My first reaction when I played No 3 was "Bloody hell, this is loud". I had to set my volume control at a much lower level than I can ever remember.

Now, we all know that CDs have a maximum level which can't be surpassed so I had a very strong feeling as to what was going on - and, after looking at the ripped files in Soundforge, found I was right.

The only way to make something sound that loud is to boost up the loud passages and then use limiting (i.e. truncate the tops and bottoms of the waveforms). In fact, looking at the waveform and using Soundforge's clipping detector, it turns out that all the loud passages are pushed heavily into hard clipping. Not good! They can get away with it because the audible effects of the clipping are masked by rasp of the fortissimo brass.

I really disliked the disc. I found it tiring to listen to. It was rather like being battered around the ears for 38 minutes (something Nielsen can do very well on his own, without BIS's assistance). It was a relief to turn to Blomstedt's recording which has very much more natural and believable audio perspective. (I also preferred the performance.)

I wrote to Robert von Bahr, CEO at BIS records about this post, giving him a link to allow him to read it. He gave me permission to quote from his reply, as follows...

"...I did not do these recordings personally - they were produced by the GSO's resident producer together with the Swedish Radio, but, since I worked with the same person from the Radio, I can vouch that we certainly didn't do anything of what this person says. Indeed, I don't think this was even technically possible at the time. These items were recorded on a Sony F-1 digital recorder and, while it is true that we did make sure that we took out every ounce of headroom, we followed the BIS principles, that is, once the top level has been identified and put at zero dB, nothing was touched. So I cannot vouch for clipping, but I can certainly vouch for the fact that what is on the CD hasn't been tampered with."

Robert von Bahr, CEO, BIS Records.

These Chung/GSO recordings have been given the highest praise by many reviewers for many years, from Gramophone to MusicWeb http://www.musicweb-international.co...lsen_Jarvi.htm[/URL], and on my own system they sound spacious, full and warm, with a large and deep soundstage and a very wide dynamic range. The very smoothness of the sound makes them very rewarding listening at high levels. Trying the finale to No.2 just now, I was soon grinning and laughing at the musical and technical splendours once again. The definition and immediacy of those horns at the start of 3(iii)!
With 2 CD Players/Transports and 3 DAC filter settings on hand, these Nielsen recordings sound good in whichever combination, though the best would be the Minimal Phase setting on the DacMagic, fed by the Krell/Teac transport. With very demanding orchestrals, increasing the Townshend supertweeter level slightly helps organise the soundstage too (a phenomenon I've noticed too with 24-bit recordings).

I've never used any spectrum analyser, but googling on "soundforge" did reveal a 10/2012 bugfix for Version 10.0c which "fixed a bug which could cause the spectrum graph to be incorrectly displayed in the spectrum analysis window". I've no idea if this is relevant to johnb's analysis or not.

That puzzling measurement aside, I can only reiterate my conviction that different reactions to recordings are almost entirely due to system differences - and our own ears, the overload characteristics of which vary greatly between individuals. I've also heard qualitative differences between different issues of the same recording, and not only when remastered.

[johnb]

Jayne, welcome back after your Christmas break from the forum.

I'm very impressed that Robert von Bahr has responded to you in such a detailed way. It says a great deal about the care that BIS takes about their recordings. Indeed their recording quality is usually superb.

However, in this instance I still believe that their is an issue with the fortissimo passages being pushed into limiting and I will reply more fully a little later. (By the way, talk of a bug in Soundforge spectrum analysis is rather a canard as I wasn't using that tool.)

[Later edit] The spectrum analysis is a specific tool within SoundForge (and most audio editing software) but it is not a tool that I was using.

[johnb]

Firstly let me say that I don't have any expertise what-so-ever and it is impertinent, not to say extremely arrogant and foolhardy, of me to enter into a debate with someone as esteemed as Robert von Bahr and my understanding might be flawed.

However, before I reply directly (a little later today) can I go on a short diversion about clipping?

When people talk about clipping what does it mean and what are the audible effects?

Well imagine a wave and then slice off the peaks (top and bottom) so they are flat - that is what a clipped waveform looks like. It is usually caused by pushing the sound level beyond what a CD (or a digital file) can cope with.

I've uploaded an example of what clipping sounds like on a 1kHz tone. There is a sequence of 4 second examples, normalised to -14dB (i.e. made quieter) so they don't blast people's ears. If people listen with headphones the examples should give a good idea of the effect of clipping - but please turn the volume control of your headphones down before listening. The examples are:

0dB: the original 1kHz tone
+1dB: increased 1dB above the limit
+2dB: increased 2dB above the limit
+3dB: increased 3dB above the limit
+6dB: increased 6dB above the limit
+12dB: increased 12dB above the limit

(All are normalised to -14dB, peak level)

https://www.box.com/s/a7qj7o9ry05m3n4ky4po

Of course, I chose a 1kHz tone so that the effect would be clear but when clipping occurs on isolated peaks in real music the effect isn't always as marked and it can be masked by the complex timbre of the music and might not be noticeable.