BaL 21.11.20 - Mozart: Die Zauberflöte, K620

[Maclintick]

They rely on us for that.

& who, pray, are "They" ?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

& who, pray, are "They" ?

A light-hearted comment. A source of available BaL recordings appears weekly in this forum. The BBC doesn’t provide a list; we do.

[Bryn]

A light-hearted comment. A source of available BaL recordings appears weekly in this forum. The BBC doesn’t provide a list; we do.

And a very fine service, to those who visit, it is.

[Edgy 2]

With popular works it must often be impossible to survey all the available versions. Why not limit it to the new recordings since the last BAL on the work in question plus the winner from the last time.
It is the reviewer's preference that is being shown - how could it be anything else in the time available and how often that preference is challenged here by others with their preferences. Has there been a time when a BAL reviewer has recommended a real Lemon of a recording; I can't bring an instance to mind.
A better way of comparing recordings was abandoned years ago but Interpretations on Record remains the gold standard for this kind of programme.

How I miss that programme

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The final choices were Jacob’s and Solti. I decided to buy the Solti version on CD, as I no longer had it (or anything else) on LP. The set arrived this morning, and I wasn’t disappointed.
(The surprise was the length of time the package took to arrive. It was dispatched 14 days earlier. OK, it came from Germany, but it was still very slow. Walking from Düsseldorf to Rotterdam would have taken 41 hours; then 11 hours, 30 minutes on the ferry to Hull; finally 14 hours on foot to Scarborough - a little under 3 days. So I wonder which route it took.)

[LHC]

The final choices were Jacob’s and Solti. I decided to buy the Solti version on CD, as I no longer had it (or anything else) on LP. The set arrived this morning, and I wasn’t disappointed.
(The surprise was the length of time the package took to arrive. It was dispatched 14 days earlier. OK, it came from Germany, but it was still very slow. Walking from Düsseldorf to Rotterdam would have taken 41 hours; then 11 hours, 30 minutes on the ferry to Hull; finally 14 hours on foot to Scarborough - a little under 3 days. So I wonder which route it took.)

Earlier this year I ordered something (I can't now remember what it was) from a company in Italy. It was being carried by DHL, and it was possible to follow its progress on its web tracker. Having been despatched the next day from the supplier in Italy, it quickly made its way to the channel ports. It then apparently sat in a DHL warehouse in the port for 3 weeks, before finally being sent on to the UK and finally to me.

[Barbirollians]

I bought a cheap copy of the Abbado recently. It had completely passed me by as I think at the time at the nadir of the Inverne years I had cancelled my Gramophone subscription. Its full of lovely singing , playing and conducting but yet again the blasted dialogue - Papagena for some reason squeaks like a laryngitic mouse - immensely annoying . Am noting all the tracks with her dialogue to programme them out in future. Klemperer had very good reasons to scrap it all.