On Friday morning at 9am, the blogging team of (left to right) yours truly, John Atkinson, Herb Reichert, and Jana Dagdagan gathered for a strategy meeting
Not having listened to Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.6, aka the "Pathétique," in quite some time, I had forgotten how heart-tugging beautiful it is. While there are many recordings of the work, few can possibly sound as good and feel as right as the new hybrid SACD from Channel Classics with Iván Fischer conducting the Budapest Festival Orchestra. Due out October 7, when it will also be available for download in high-resolution format from nativedsd.com, the recording also enlists the fine Brno Czech Philharmonic Choir for its atmospheric pairing, Borodin's Polovtsian Dances.
The Rocky Mountain Audio Fest is set to begin this Friday, October 7, from noon to 7 pm, in the mostly remodeled Denver Marriott Tech Center. The three-day audio show, which ends on October 9 at 4pm, promises 128 exhibit rooms, 32 vendor displays, plus three more in the parking lot (including the fabled Sony Magic Bus), 332 exhibit companies, and, at 62 exhibits, the largest CanJam ever.
The second I encountered Dynaudio's Focus 200 XD powered loudspeaker at the High End 2015 show in Munich, Germany, it called to me. I wasn't so much drawn to its unique functionswhich I describe belowas by the fact that it could help fill the black hole left by the dismantling of my reference system for my move from big, badass Oakland, California to the small, magical town of Port Townsend, Washington.
One of America's most vital living composersNew Yorker Steve Reichturns 80 on October 3. In celebration, Deutsche Grammophon and ECM, two companies that greatly helped build Reich's reputation by recording his initially uncategorizable forays into minimalism, have reissued their seminal efforts. From DG comes the 3-LP set, Steve Reich: Drumming, a reissue of its 1974 vinyl box that included Drumming (197071), Six Pianos, and Music for Mallet Instrument, Voices and Organ (both from 1973). From ECM, in turn, comes a 3-CD set, Steve Reich: The ECM Recordings.
You read that correctly. 2017 will see the advent of two, potentially competing high-end audio shows, located just 35 miles and several congested freeways apart in Southern California. The first, the new Los Angeles Audio Show (LAAS), will take place June 24 in the Sheraton Gateway LAX, and is produced "in collaboration with the Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society" (LAOCAS). The second, a continuation of T.H.E. Show Newport that was founded by the late Richard Beers and formerly supported by LAOCAS, will be held September 2124 (September 21 reserved for press) in the Hilton Anaheim, near Disneyland.
What do Prince, David Bowie, Merle Haggard, Gato Barbieri, Phife Dawg, Frank Sinatra Jr., Keith Emerson (Emerson Lake & Palmer), Dan Hicks (Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks), Maurice White (Earth, Wind & Fire), Paul Kantner and Signe Toly Anderson (Jefferson Airplane), Glenn Frey (Eagles), Dale Griffin (Mott the Hoople), pianist Paul Bley, bassist Rob Wasserman, sopranos Susan Chilcott, Phyllis Curtin, and Denise Duval, countertenor Brian Asawa, composers Steven Edward Stucky and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, and conductors Pierre Boulez, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Gilbert Kaplan, Gregg Smith, and Royston Nash have in common? Besides the fact that all were musicians who made multiple recordings and who died in 2016, their recorded legacies rarely, if ever, get airplay at dealerships or audio shows.
It's shocking to go from the sound of soprano Anna Netrebko's voice on her first DG recital of Opera Arias to that on her latest disc, Verismo. The earlier disc, recorded in March, 2003 when Netrebko was 32, showcases a true, shining lyric soprano whose vocal production is absolutely smooth. Over 12 years later, when Netrebko recorded Verismo between July 2015 and June 2016, her weightier low range lacks shine, and her stronger and sometimes wider vibrato occasionally shows signs of a beat.
The news is not simply that Best Buy/Magnolia stores' 82 Hi-Resolution Listening Stations which they developed in the US in conjunction with Sony, have proven so successful, and generated so much interest in hi-res, that the company has added 250 more listening locations around the country. It's also that we now have data that shows a major reason for the expansion: Far more people care about sound quality than many would have you believe.
Almost 20 years separate the First and Second Violin Concertos of Sergei Prokofiev (18911953), but they share a language of such ravishing beauty and unexpected transitions that they seem like first cousins. Among their many recordings, violinist Vadim Gluzman reading with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra (ENSO) under Neeme Järvi's on a BIS hybrid SACD, entitled Prokofiev Violin Concertos, Etc, easily holds its own against classic recordings by Heifetz, Milstein, and, more recently, Vengerov with Rostropovich.