Mozart: Horn Concertos
Alec Frank-Gemmill, B-flat horn; Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Nicholas McGegan, cond.
BIS-2635 (reviewed in native 24/96). 2024. Thore Brinkmann, prod.; Brinkmann, Håkan Ekman, engs.
Performance *****
Sonics ****½

When I recollect the soundtrack to my acid-tinged summer of 1967, several LPs stand out: The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's you-know-what, The Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties, Richie Havens's Mixed Bag, and Dennis Brain's equally famed recording of the Mozart Horn Concertos, with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Karajan. Though all of them sounded potent and execrable, in equal parts, through our starving–ex-student record players, neither the Mozart's monophonic provenance nor the too-distant sound of Brain's horn could diminish the joy it brought me...

How wonderful it is to revisit these tuneful, often jolly concertos played by a superb horn virtuoso, Alec Frank-Gemill, backed by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra conducted by one of the world's most distinguished period-practice authorities, Nicholas McGegan.

If there's a technical thing nearly every audiophile knows, it's that low frequencies (LF) aren't directional. We tend to treat LF as mono—think sub/sat systems in stereo, "LFE" in home-theater. But if the conclusions of a study by Thomas Lund, a researcher at Genelec OY, imply what they seem to, then that conviction is quite wrong.

In addition to resetting that bit of conventional wisdom, Lund's study may have uncovered an important contributor to the feeling of envelopment so many audiophiles crave, itself a profound source of pleasure beyond the music itself. As I have often said, and probably written once or twice, listening to a good hi-fi system is like getting a massage.

No matter how much I upgrade my digital rig, my trusty $1195 Well-Tempered Record Player blows it away without half trying. . . That's why I corralled a bunch of promising midpriced cartridges and spent a couple of months settin' 'em up, breakin' 'em in, and listenin' to 'em on my favorite records.

So much critical ink has been spilled on Maria, Pablo Larrain and Steven Knight's biographical fantasy on the last days of operatic soprano Maria Callas, that everyone who hasn't yet seen it "knows" exactly why. Which is a crying shame, given that very few reviews present the musical reasons that make Maria essential viewing, especially for people who care deeply about music.

Caroline Shaw: Leonardo Da Vinci (soundtrack); Ethel String Quartet: Persist (Works by Allison Loggins-Hll, Migiwa "Miggy" Miyajima, Xavier Muzik, Sam Wu, and Leilehua Lanzilotti); Zlata Chochieva: Works for Piano and Orchestra; Rococo: Works by Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Dvořák, Rachmaninoff, and Shostakovich; Tchaikovsky: The Seasons; Romance in F minor; Mozart: Serenata (Eine kleine Nachtmusik | Posthorn | Haffner).

Avishai Cohen: Ashes to Gold; Matt Slocum: Lion Dance; John Hollenbeck: Colouring Hockets.