Universal Classics, owners of the great Deutsche Grammophon, London/Decca, and Philips catalogues, has made its entire treasure trove of Mahler recordings available for free, full-track, online streaming. Whether you are a babe in the Vienna woods or a seasoned Mahlerite, this is a rare opportunity to audition and compare a good 180 Mahler symphony recordings, including over 60 out-of-print Mahler titles.
The tracks, first posted to Mahler150.com last year in honor of the 150th anniversary of Gustav Mahler's birth, remain available in 2011, the 100th anniversary of Mahler's death. While you can no longer vote on the contents of DG's 13-CD box set, Mahler: The People's Choiceit has already been issuedyou can still compile playlists of favorite movements and complete symphonies, and create your near-ideal mix-and-match performance of all Mahler symphonies and song cycles.
With well over 115 individual exhibits and hundreds of high-end audio and home theater brands making music just steps away from a wine show, auto show, a cigar show, and live jazz, T.H.E. Show: Newport promises to raise the bar for consumer audio shows in Southern California.
Scheduled for next Friday through Sunday, June 35, in the Newport Hilton, adjacent to Orange County's John Wayne International Airport, T.H.E. Show: Newport is the brainchild of Bob Levi, President of the successful Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society, and Richard Beers, President of T.H.E. Show. Levi came up with the idea, selling Beers on the notion of a new show that would open the audiophile fiefdom to the area's 24 million inhabitants. Beers in turn summoned forth over a decade of knowledge on show organization, and provided the infrastructure to make the event possible. . .
How am I to convince music lovers that this CD is markedly different from Attention Screen's first two live CDs?
The question kept running through my head as I marveled at the breadth and maturity of Attention Screen's remarkable improvisations during a pre-concert sound check in the Piano Salon of Yamaha Artist Services, Inc. (YASI), at 689 Fifth Avenue, in the heart of Manhattan.
Attention Screen impressed even more at the public concert the following night, April 24, 2010. As the band members engaged in one improvisational miracle after another, fearlessly exploring new territory, the beauty and inventiveness of their playing astounded me.
Now in its second year, and almost double the size of its launch, AXPONA (Audio Expo North America) is set to make a major impact on East Coast audiophiles when it opens to the public on April 15. Sponsored by Stereophile, the annual show, which runs April 1517 in the beautiful, centrally located Sheraton Downtown Atlanta, promises at least 70 exhibit rooms alive with gear from at least 250 individual manufacturers . . .
Salon Son & Image, the annual open-to-the-public Montréal Hi-Fi Show sponsored by Stereophile, is almost upon us. Scheduled for March 31April 3 in Montréal's centrally located Hilton Bonaventure HotelThursday March 31 is for trade and press onlythe largest consumer audio show in North America has been planned with the audiophiles of tomorrow in mind. . . . For the real skinny, watch this website for comprehensive show blog coverage provided by Robert Deutsch, Art Dudley, and John Atkinson.
After seven previous Grammy nominations for his engineering efforts, veteran recording engineer and equipment designer Keith O. Johnson has received his first Grammy. Together with producer David Frost, "Professor" Johnson won Best Surround Sound Album (for vocal or instrumental albums) at the 53rd Annual Grammy® Awards.
Canadian pianist Robert Silverman, whose artistry has made him an audiophile legend, is set to continue his complete Beethoven Sonata Cycle Series in San Jose, CA. The four remaining concerts are scheduled for February 3 and 10 and April 7 and 14 in the excellent acoustic of San Jose's Le Petit Trianon Theatre. All proceeds from the performances will benefit the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford.
Producer of the series, Michael Silver of Audio High in Mountain View, CA, has retained Marc Wilsher to make high-resolution digital recordings of the entire series. Judging from an unedited hi-res master of the first movement of Beethoven's "Waldstein" sonata, the clarity and truthfulness of Silverman's sound in Le Petit Trianon are first-class.
The recordings could be as revelatory as the recordings that John Atkinson and Ray Kimber have and continued to make of Silverman performing other repertoire. Stereophile will release a new recording of Brahms' Handel Variations and Schumann's Symphonic Études later this year, and IsoMike has recently released a 7-CD set of Silverman performing all the Mozart piano sonatas. (JA's photo shows Robert performing a Mozart sonata at the 2010 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest.)
There's something happening here, and what it is is exactly clear. It's a revolution of sortsa new paradigm for the High End. Despite pessimistic proclamations of the impending death of high-end audio, an unprecedented number of new high-end consumer shows have emerged in North America. Filling the gap left by the demise of Stereophile's Home Entertainment Show in 2007, these seven (!) showstwo new in 2011, two in expanded versions following successful launches in 2010are reaching out to people of all ages, sexes, and format preferences.
Stage III Concepts, a Pasadena-based company whose products are distributed by Brian Ackerman of AAudio Imports, has released four newly re-engineered, top-of-the-line cables. All are part of the A.S.P. Reference series (Absolute Signal Purity), and are entirely handmade (including connectors) by Luis de la Fuente. Connectors are made of ceramic with a mixture of special resins to minimize crosstalk between pins, and the entire housing composed of carbon-fiber and epoxy resin. The wire itself is silver-palladium alloy. The A.S.P. Reference interconnect and speaker cable also sport a vacuum dielectric.
On display were the Zyklop power cord ($6000/1.5m), Gryphon interconnect ($5800/1m pair RCA, $6300/1m pair XLR), and Mantikor speaker cable ($13,200/2m pair). Besides digital and phono cables and speaker jumpers, the company sells hook-up wire for components in a variety of gauges. The least expensive, 22 AWG ($66/1.5m) is followed by 17 and 15 AWG ($280/1.5m).
Asked about the cable’s sonic properties, Ackerman replied, “It has no sound at all. It’s probably the closest thing I’ve heard to having no wire. It’s virtually invisible, like a direct connection.”
Steve Holt, global sales manager for MIT, proudly introduced me to the company’s brand new Matrix line of cables. Designed by Bruce Brisson, the cables retail between $9999 and $21,999, and are part of the company’s reference line.
The new speaker cable comes in three flavors: Oracle Matrix HD 90 ($9999/8ft pair), Oracle Matrix HD 100 ($14,999/8ft pair), and Oracle Matrix HD 120 ($21,999/8 ft pair). There is one interconnect, Matrix 50 ($4999/1m pair, $5999/1m balanced pair). For digital cabling, one needs to go up one step in the reference line to Oracle MA-X digital ($3495/1m RCA or BNC, $3995/1m AES/EBU)
These new cables use MIT’s multi-pole technology. “We talk about poles of articulation,” said Holt. “There are electronics inside our boxes on the cables to provide wider bandwith coverage to power, so that sounds at either end of the spectrum won’t be rolled off as quickly.” The Matrix cables also employ a new technology called F.A.T. (Fractional Articulation Technology) that helps maintain the harmonic structure of audio signals.
In the Magico room where they were displayed, the new Magico Q3, Soulution amplifiers, and files from Paul Stubblebine’s Tape Project made wonderful music through Oracle Matrix HD 120 speaker cable and the Oracle MA-X interconnects (start at $8495/1m pair). You can see the Oracle Matrix HD 120 boxes in the above photo, which was taken behind one of the Magico speakers. If other rooms hadn’t called, I would have dropped everything then and there and stayed for hours.