Bargains

[Dave2002]

My knowledge of Telemann and his music is (shockingly!) poor: apart from a Suite that appears on a BBC MM CD, all I have in my collection is a 4CD Archiv set of Der getreue Music-Meister (that looks odd spelling, but it's what the cover says, Music not Musik!), under the direction of Josef Ulsamer.

The A minor flute suite is good, and the E minor concerto for flute and recorder is superb - in some recordings at least.

I wonder if that A minor one is the on your BBC MM CD. There are of course others.

[Pulcinella]

Thanks for all the comments/suggestions: it looks like I've got some exploring to do.

The Suite on the BBC CD is Suite in B flat 'La Bourse', TWV55:B11
Tafelmsik Baroque orchestra, directed by Jeanne Lamon
Recorded in Toronto in 1999

PS: Discovered another CD I had forgotten about.

Viola concerto in G
Recorder suite in A Minor
Concerto in F for 3 violins (from Tafelmusik)
Concerto for 2 horns (from Tafelmusik)

Capella Istropolitana/Richard Edlinger
Naxos

[Dave2002]

Thanks for all the comments/suggestions: it looks like I've got some exploring to do.

Recorder suite in A Minor

The recorder suite probably really was written for some form of flute - see https://ks4.imslp.info/files/imglnks...Ms-1034-05.pdf
Bar 9 in the manuscript goes down to E, and as I recall this does just about work on a recorder if some changes are made, but the "normal" treble only goes down to F.
I suppose it might be playable on a tenor recorder. However, there may well have been recorders and players in Telemann's time which would have made the flute part an option. I believe many wind players at the time played several instruments.

[MickyD]

I think this must be my number one concerto by Telemann - what a lovely combination of instruments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygai0nr0K9Y

[Kamisama]

https://www.amazon.de/dp/B003W16TAE

Telemann: Tafelmusik (4CD, Goebel)
€6.63 (excl. postage)

[MickyD]

https://www.amazon.de/dp/B003W16TAE

Telemann: Tafelmusik (4CD, Goebel)
€6.63 (excl. postage)

That is the most amazing bargain...I remember stumping up about forty quid for the original release!

[Dave2002]

That is the most amazing bargain...I remember stumping up about forty quid for the original release!

A slight snag might be that the am.de site tries to re-enroll me into Prime. Would that be different from Prime in the UK? If so, I'd have to make sure I cancelled any future payments to the am.de site.

I've not seen this issue before.

[Bryn]

A slight snag might be that the am.de site tries to re-enroll me into Prime. Would that be different from Prime in the UK? If so, I'd have to make sure I cancelled any future payments to the am.de site.

I've not seen this issue before.

I think you may find it's a slimmed-down version of:

[Dave2002]

I think you may find it's a slimmed-down version of ...

I meant I hadn't seen the issue with the Prime in the German site. I was finding it a little difficult to be sure what was going on, since German isn't one of the languages I'm particularly fluent in.

In the past most of the European Amazon sites have behaved pretty much the same as the UK site, but after the B**** word, I'm no longer sure.
I don't want to subscribe to something on yet another site, and then forget about cancelling it.

The particular box mentioned only has 4 CDs in it, whereas the box you mention has 10. Is that one still available?

[Bryn]

I meant I hadn't seen the issue with the Prime in the German site. I was finding it a little difficult to be sure what was going on, since German isn't one of the languages I'm particularly fluent in.

In the past most of the European Amazon sites have behaved pretty much the same as the UK site, but after the B**** word, I'm no longer sure.
I don't want to subscribe to something on yet another site, and then forget about cancelling it.

You can opt to display amazon.de in English and have the prices in £. The Prime 'offer' is a sick joke. If you follow through on it for that Telemann Tafelmusik set the cost, with unexpected p&p, is higher than without Prime.

[Dave2002]

What equipment you have to play the files on is rather important. Many modern CD, DVD and Blu-ray decks will also play FLACs from USB sticks, sometimes even with gapless play. The same applies to some modern amplifiers, etc. Otherwise, resolve to WAV and use appropriate software to burn to CD-R or other recordable optical media.

There was a time when even mp3s wouldn't play on Apple kit without effort, but now it only seems to be FLAC which is problematic. To test I downloaded a Flac file from this site - http://www.2l.no/hires/ - and I was surprised to find that it would load into Audacity and play from there. Not that that is a particularly convenient thing to use for the purpose of playing the FLAC files. VLC is supposed to be a viable way to play Flac files, but I can't get that to work. There is a conversion tool from NCH called Switch which apppears to be free for non-commercial use. I tested that to convert to mp3, and that worked OK. I think it will also convert to other formats such as WAV, so with a bit of effort it would be possible to generate CD equivalent quality from the Flac files for the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, and the French Piano Concertos. Might just be worth paying slightly more for the Flac files, even if they get converted quite rapidly to mp3.

What quality level and bit rate are the mp3s in the downloads? Using the Switch tool it is possible to set the bit rate high, and also the quality level. I'm assuming that the mp3 downloads are made from CD standard masters. It is just possible that mp3s made from masters with greater bit depth might sound better, but I don't think that's going to apply here as the quality is probably inherently limited by the digital source material.

[Bryn]

There was a time when even mp3s wouldn't play on Apple kit without effort, but now it only seems to be FLAC which is problematic. To test I downloaded a Flac file from this site - http://www.2l.no/hires/ - and I was surprised to find that it would load into Audacity and play from there. Not that that is a particularly convenient thing to use for the purpose of playing the FLAC files. VLC is supposed to be a viable way to play Flac files, but I can't get that to work. There is a conversion tool from NCH called Switch which apppears to be free for non-commercial use. I tested that to convert to mp3, and that worked OK. I think it will also convert to other formats such as WAV, so with a bit of effort it would be possible to generate CD equivalent quality from the Flac files for the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, and the French Piano Concertos. Might just be worth paying slightly more for the Flac files, even if they get converted quite rapidly to mp3.

What quality level and bit rate are the mp3s in the downloads? Using the Switch tool it is possible to set the bit rate high, and also the quality level. I'm assuming that the mp3 downloads are made from CD standard masters. It is just possible that mp3s made from masters with greater bit depth might sound better, but I don't think that's going to apply here as the quality is probably inherently limited by the digital source material.

If you place your cursor over "mp3" on the listing, is should show 320kbps.

[Dave2002]

If you place your cursor over "mp3" on the listing, is should show 320kbps.

Of course - and now I don't know all the details - it's not just the bit rate which makes a difference with mp3s. Probably anything over 224 kbps is generally good enough in my experience - but it might depend on the kit used. There are also quality parameters in the encoders - and I have been led to believe that they do make a difference. The NCH tool I mentioned does allow different quality levels, and for my Flac -> mp3 test I just set it at the highest level. The Flac file was reduced in size by a ratio of 17/50 approx. Probably most people don't worry about how the encoding works/worked these days - though I have heard good recordings at lowish bit rates, and some terrible ones at higher bit rates.

I'd forgotten some of this, but here is a page (from 2015) which shows some details of compressed audio and video formats - http://hireme.geek.nz/bitrates.html#...o%20384%20kbps
Actually I don't agree with that page - I found that I definitely needed to go up to over 192 kbps - generally - to get acceptable results with mp3, but I couldn't discern many differences above 224 kbps. However, I know that there are recordings where there might be just one passage - perhaps lasting 5 seconds in a one hour disc, where that passage may completely alter the perception of the whole work - and that happens with CDs as well as compressed audio. Otherwise most people would say that the different presentations were to all intents and purposes identical.

Indeed many people probably won't be able to tell the difference between a good mp3 and a CD or a Flac file though having better quality equipment is likely to show up the differences.

I guess I'll buy the Flac files so that I can make my own CDs and rips etc.

[mathias broucek]

There are plenty of ways to convert from FLAC to Apple Lossless with no loss of quality. I use dBpoweramp

[Dave2002]

There are plenty of ways to convert from FLAC to Apple Lossless with no loss of quality. I use dBpoweramp

Indeed that's fine if you already have dBpoweramp, otherwise the cost of purchase would largely wipe out the benefits of not purchasing the CDs in this case. The trial versions might work - but they might also either not do a good job, or put audible interference into the converted audio stream.