Bargains

[Bryn]

Bravo Bryn - that wasn't an Oxfam, I bet

No indeed, it was a hospice shop. There again, as previously mentioned here, I did get the whole of Solti's Ring for £14.96 (one multi-disc jewel box per music drama, but no booklets) in the Windsor Oxfam shop a few years ago.

[Dave2002]

The Barbirolli Viennese Album - pure magic

http://www.duttonvocalion.co.uk/proddetail.asp?prod=CDSJB1024

Cheaper in Am Marketplace.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Barbirolli-Viennese-Album-Various-Composers/dp/B00006S1X6/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1343909906&sr=1-1

As to what is on the so called Barbirolli/Ravel Everest cd see:
http://audaud.com/2008/08/satie-orch...h-sir-john-ba/

Barbirolli Society 2 CD set ordered for around £3 including postage. Should be good, but not sure if all the performances from my earlier EMI tape will be on the CDs. Seems JB did record a few of them more than once.

[Hitch]

Thank you for the kind words and recommendations. All of my purchases were of second-hand items from Amazon's "Marketplace" on its British, French, German and Canadian websites. Good luck with your search. Perhaps CD-hunting should be made an Olympic sport...

[cloughie]

Thank you for the kind words and recommendations. All of my purchases were of second-hand items from Amazon's "Marketplace" on its British, French, German and Canadian websites. Good luck with your search. Perhaps CD-hunting should be made an Olympic sport...

On a par with shooting - let's face it aiming in the right direction is important, or maybe relays - whose baton do you take forward?

[Dave2002]

These sets are ideal for impecunious students, etc., who want to explore the repertoire.

Do you fall into the impecunious student category, or the etc.? If you keep following this thread you mqy end up impecunious!

I was going also to point out the mega boxes - Mozart, Beethovem, Bach, Haydn etc. from BC and other firms. They can be good, though the chances are only a fraction of the CDs will be played. I got into those first with the BC Mozart box, which cost about £100. Then the Bach box appeared on Amazon at under £50. That big box does have the B minor mass, the St Matthew Passion, and all of the cantatas.

The contents of these various boxes - big, medium and small can vary from year to year, and performances in large collections can vary between excellent down to average or lower.

Good luck with your CD safaris.

[PJPJ]

Forthcoming Dutton releases:

http://duttonvocalion.co.uk/#new_epoch2

£6 each inc p&p at the time of writing

http://hmv.com/hmvweb/directQuery.do?Ntt=duttonvocalion&searchType=0&N=547+1574&Ne=1289&adultFlag=false&rid=138EDD484DAC&Ntk=Products

EDIT: Now £10

[Ferretfancy]

I've just found an LP in my local Oxfam shop that brings back a vivid memory. It's Peter and the Wolf narrated by Frank Phillips with the LPO conducted by Nicolai Malko. Unfortunately it's not the original pressing, but one of those Decca Eclipses in fake stereo, but it doesn't sound too bad.
Why the vivid memory ? Well, the original LP was used by us lowly technical operators to trot round the studios in Broadcasting House on night shift to test the turntables,presumably because it had a familiar announcer's voice and orchestra.

Of course, Frank Phillips was a very formal figure, more accustomed to serious news reading, but he makes quite a reasonable stab at characterisation, and the playing is good. This disc used to drive me mad, but after nearly sixty years it's fun to hear, and for only a quid!

Incidentally, the 78 test disc was The Teddy Bear's Picnic, but enough of that !

[Don Petter]

Three more BCs for you:

Legendary Russian Pianists 25cds - 20.97€

http://www.amazon.de/Legendary-Russian-Pianists-Kissin/dp/B001TEKI6C/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=AT8AEARSVQPS&coliid=I3TS6GMPXS4599

Delivery is 6€ irrespective of number of items.

Tanks for the tip, hafod!

Ordered at 7.30 pm on Thursday evening - In my hands at 9.30am this morning (Saturday). In spite of being ftom the German site, the package came from Dunfermline, I notice.

Looking forward to many hours of exploration.

[Roehre]

Forthcoming Dutton releases:

http://duttonvocalion.co.uk/#new_epoch2

Including this Vaughan Williams CD with 4 premiere recordings.

[Dave2002]

Not really bargains but while ordering the version of the requiem by Berlioz conducted by Charles Munch from Amazon - a Living Stereo SACD (were these originally RCA - now apparently Sony?) I noticed a few more Living Stereo releases for around a fiver (£5.47) including Daphnis and Chloe also by Munch, and Also Sprach Zarathustra and Mussorgsky Pictures conducted by Reiner. I'm not sure how many channels there are on each of these. The Berlioz should be 4 channels, but the others could be 3 or 2 depending on how they've been mixed down for these releases. Are any of these SACDs at just over £5 worth having? There are also several at higher prices - £11 and upwards.

[PJPJ]

I think they're all worth having. The Berlioz is 3-channel (just the front), older Strauss/Ravel are stereo. There are more Berlioz/Munch are they're terrific.

[Dave2002]

OK. I think I got confused. There are a few multi channel versions of the Berlioz Requiem with at least 4 channels, including Davis (4) - Pentatone, Abbravanel (4) - Vanguard, Spano - full multi channel - Telarc.

[Ferretfancy]

All the original Living Stereos were recorded on 3 track tape, so there can't be any material for re-mastering offering genuine surround information as far as I know. Do try to hear the Berlioz / Munch recording of Overtures plus the Royal Hunt and Storm. Magical horn playing in the latter piece. The recording of the Requiem conducted by Louis Fremaux was originally an SQ Quad issue, so that would be a candidate for SACD surround.

[PJPJ]

All the original Living Stereos were recorded on 3 track tape......

All of the later ones were; as with the earliest non-mono Mercury recordings, Living Stereo recordings from 1954-55 weren't made with the Ampex 3 channel recorder and are just two-track. Indeed, the very earliest from late 1953 and early 1954 used a pair of single-track recorders.

Munch's Ravel Daphnis & Chloe (1955), and Reiner's Strauss Also Sprach and Ein Heldenleben (1954) and Bartok Concerto (1955) are examples of two-track. (There's no third channel on those SACDs.)

http://www.stereophile.com/musicintheround/1104mitr/

http://www.stereophile.com/news/021306rca/

And here's the blurb which used to be on RCA's defunct website for the SACD releases:

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/RCALivingStereo.jsp

[Dave2002]

Synchronising two indpendent tape recorders for stereo must have been difficult - perhaps next to impossible.

I was quite surprised years ago that adjusting the head azimuth on a cassette recorder was sufficient to shift a central soloist to the left or right very noticeably. The time difference between the channels caused by this would have been of the order of only a few milliseconds, so synchronising two separate tapes for the length of even a short piece to avoid the soundstage drifting could have been quite a challenge.