J.S. Bach: Six Suites for Viola Solo, BWV 1007–1012
Kim Kashkashian, four- & five-string violas
ECM New Series 2553/54 (2 CDs). 2018. Manfred Eicher, prod.; Judy Sherman, eng. DDD. TT: 2:22:35
Performance ****½
Sonics *****
Little is known of the origins of the Solo Suites, usually performed on the cello. No manuscript in Bach's hand survives, and in the copy produced by his second wife, Anna Magdalena, markings for slurs, articulation, and dynamics are sparse even by baroque standards. The suites may actually have been composed for the violoncello da spalla, an…
I have flip-flopped between these points of view: that some audio products or technologies are better suited than others to specific styles of music, and that any good product or technology should be equally at home with rock'n'roll, chamber music, large-scale classical, hard bop, techno, ragas—even George Crumb.
At age 19, in my first job as a hi-fi salesman, I was asked to adopt the first of those views. The shop I worked in carried only two loudspeaker lines—EPI and Ultralinear, both long gone—and the owner urged me to push the former on lovers of classical music, and the latter on…
The UNI-DIN curve is available commercially via the Acoustical Systems Smartractor ($599, footnote 5), a phono-alignment protractor described by the manufacturer as "universal" inasmuch as it can be used with virtually any pivoting tonearm. Like Dennesen's popular Geometric Soundtracktor before it, the Smartractor has much in common with a draftsman's beam compass: here, the beam is a 13"-long rod of square cross-section, machined from polyoxymethylene (POM), that slides along a block of POM that has both a locking screw and a vernier scale. Fastened to one end, perpendicular to the beam,…
To celebrate its fifth birthday, Southern California retailer Audio Element (117 East Union Street, Pasadena, CA 91103) is having an open house on Saturday, November 3, from 11am–4pm. Featured will be new products from dCS (the Bartók D/A headphone amplifier), Musical Surroundings (the Nova III phono preamplifier and Hana ML phono cartridge), and Wilson Audio (the Sasha DAW loudspeaker).
Light refreshments will be served. More details can be found here.
Audio Element was founded in 2013 by Brian and Jennifer Berdan. The Old Pasadena storefront (above) was once the site of a music…
Thursday November 1, 6–9pm, Atlanta specialty audio retailer HiFi Buys Atlanta (3157 Peachtree Road NE, Atlanta, GA) will have an open house featuring special guest Richard Vandersteen, founder and head engineer of Vandersteen Audio. Richard, along with global sales manager Brad O’Toole, will demonstrate the System 9 (above), featuring the new Sub Nine subwoofers and System 9 granite bases, the Quatro Wood CT loudspeakers with the new M5-HPA high-pass amplifiers, and the new Sub Three adjustable subwoofer with the Treo CT loudspeakers.
To RSVP click here.
Sometimes, I feel I'm two people. One, a card-carrying audiophile, is always looking for ways to optimize his enjoyment of multichannel music recordings, a purist pursuit that begins with file playback and leads to DACs, amps, and speakers, while eschewing anything that can complicate or compromise the sound. Thus, while his main system may seem elaborate to outsiders, to him it seems streamlined: NAS>player>DAC>preamp>power amps>speakers. In fact, it's possible to combine the NAS and player in a single device, if that device's CPU and RAM are capable of doing all the tasks—…
The Marantz AV8805 ($4499) is the fourth Marantz pre-pro I've used, with little change in external appearance or user interface since the first. The most widely promoted features new in the AV8805 concern home theater (eg, 13.2-channel processing and eARC, the latter being the latest version of HDMI's Audio Return Channel) and video (eg, DolbyVision HDR or high-dynamic-range imaging). It includes HEOS, a wireless streaming app from Denon and Marantz that runs over Bluetooth and WiFi and is compatible with Alexa and Apple AirPlay. HEOS is interesting, but would be far more useful if it could…
Sidebar 1: Contacts
Benchmark Media Systems, Inc., 203 E. Hampton Place, Suite 2, Syracuse, NY 13206. Tel: (800) 262-4675, (315) 437-6300. Fax: (315) 437-8119. Web: benchmarkmedia.com.
Marantz America, 100 Corporate Drive, Mahwah, NJ 07430-2041. Tel: (201) 762-6500. Fax: (201) 762-6670. Web: us.marantz.com.
Sidebar 2: Recordings in the Round
Stravinsky: Music for Violin, Vols. 1 & 2
Vol.1: Pastorale; Excerpts from L'Oiseau de Feu; Chanson russe from Mavra; Danse russe from Pétrouchka; Suite from Pulcinella; Duo Concertant; Excerpts from Le Rossignol; "La Marseillaise" (de Lisle)
Ilya Gringolts, violin; Peter Laul, piano
BIS 2245 (SACD/CD).
Vol.2: Pastorale; Ballad; Suite Italienne from Pulcinella; Divertimento from The Fairy's Kiss; Apollo's Variation from Apollon Musagète; Violin Concerto; Elégie; Tango (arr. Dushkin)
Ilya Gringolts, violin; Peter Laul, piano;…
Virtually all of the active components in your system—DACs, preamplifiers, power amplifiers—work by modulating the DC output of their power supplies with an AC music signal. Surely, then, the more perfect your household AC is, the more perfect your audio system's output will be. Analogies abound—to dirty water used in distilling good whiskey, to inferior thread used to weave fine fabrics—and all amount to the same thing: you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
The problem with that thinking, like so much of what passes for thought in high-end audio, is that it's qualitative.…
