Welcome to 2025’s classical discussion …
Thank you @Bolivar_Pou for recommendation of the Chung Trio recording. Myung-Whun Chung is one of the greats and I look forward to hearing this.
Following on a January Gramophone recommendation, I was listening to this wonderful piccolo cello + Postscript ensemble Geminani recording as I read your note. Fabrice Fitch’s review piqued my interest, leading me to read the brilliant Octavie Dostaler-Lalonde and Valentin Bajou liner notes. Irresistible temptation immediately yielded to, I find this a delightful recording. The ensemble is superbly complementary and I have to admit that theorbist/lutenist Michele Pasottie drew me to the piece almost as much as the piccolo cello. This recording has me looking at Ms. Dostaler-Lalonde’s previous recordings.
Speaking of some excellent cello work and unusual but winning non-guitar repertoire from Francesco Castelnuovo-Tedesco, David Hurwitz recommended this Quartetto Adorno recording in his KOLA (Keep on Listening Awards) at Classics today https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMk0bUMhhJE. While the entire performance is highly commendable, I particularly enjoyed the cello performance with occasional breakthrough growls.
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Thanks Bill. Listening to the Octavie album of Giminiani sonatas. Certainly a delightful interpretation. Many thanks for the recommendation. The inclusion of a second cello may be, in fact, an innovation of Giminiani or the Italian school.
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Glad you enjoyed the Octavie Dostaler-Lalonde/Postscript Geminiani recordings. Definitely a recording I’ll return to.
Had a listen to the Beethoven Violin Romances you mentioned above. Had never previously listened. They are indeed very nice. As I often do, I did some comparisons and found a performance by Henryk Szeryng/Bernard Haitink/Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra also greatly enjoyable.
Qobuz Chandos Recordings_Re-adding to Roon
A completely separate consideration for all. Recordings from Chandos remain available from Qobuz. In the course of looking into a specific Saint Saëns piano concerto (no. 5, the Egyptian), I found that a previous favorite from Chandos by Louis Lortie/Edward Gardiner/BBC Philharmonic that I had previously listened to was described in Roon as unavailable. I had a look in Qobuz (I’ve done this with other Chandos recordings) and it is, in fact, available from Qobuz.
How to get Roon to recognize a Qobuz-available Chandos recording?
This is only pertinent to those adding Qobuz Chandos recordings prior to 2024, who now find the recordings designated in Roon as unavailable.
In Roon, I removed the album. Do this by opening the album, clicking on the encircled 3 dots, which opens a window (shown with a different recording below). Select Remove from library, wait a moment and it is removed.
I then searched from within Roon and re-added the specified recording back to Roon and there it was, again playable.
Wonderful recording!
Seems as though Chandos recordings have been assigned some new metadata in Qobuz making items added to Roon prior to the 2024 Chandos sale to Klaus Heymann that make them appear unavailable in Roon. Someone else will need to try this to see if it is true for Spotify. Please share findings. I apologize to you folks that had already worked this out as providing irrelevant information.
The dreaded unavailable may not be a closed door in some instances after all! Hope this is of value to some of you.
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This is excellent. Two violins, cello and double bass. The review sums it up well. Features Elizabeth Wallfisch, a fine violinist. One of my favourite finds of the last few years.
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I am enjoying these new/old purchases to fill out my Stokowski recordings…two from Pristine Classical and two from HDTT…sound quality is pretty amazing given age of the recordings and great even definitive performances despite some Stokowski tinkering!
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Another good Hyperion release. Opus 5 Corelli. Excellent. I usually listen to Lina Tur Bonet’s version but this is very good.
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I’ve seen favorited Qobuz albums become unavailable a fair number of times, occuring after a record label replaces an existing release with a hi-res version. Unfortunately, then the new version is handled like a completely separate release and there is no automatic linking from old to new. When you check on the Qobuz app and see it available, you can favorite it there and it will appear in your Roon library (after refreshing). You will then see both old and new versions displayed in your library and you can remove the old version.
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Thank you @mSpot for pointing this out. I’ve successfully done this before as well. In the case of Chandos, though, the resolution in Qobuz is the same and requires removal of the unavailable version in Roon before you can favorite the version in Qobuz with the new metadata. I tried a number of other approaches and only this method worked.
The only reason I brought this to the group’s attention is that there have been several complaints/regrets previously expressed in this wonderful blog about Chandos label no longer being available since the sale in June 2024. Just wanted to point out to those folks and others who have not yet discovered this problem, that, at least with Qobuz, this is not the case. Awaiting further information from those using Tidal or Spotify. For those favoriting Chandos label recordings after 2024, this is not an issue.
When this topic came up, I noticed most of my Chandos albums appearing in Qobuz manyfold, mostly two versions in identical 96/24 format which are both available. Maybe they were having some issues with local legal restrictions or something went wrong with replacing older variants.
Current releases are just as affected as older ones (at least back to 2001 which marks the year my oldest Chandos album has been released). Unfortunately metadata is also a problem with Chandos, particularly multi-part composition grouping. Particularly annoying with works like ´Swan Lake´ consisting of 55 tracks.
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I tried the following steps, which worked for me.
On Roon, I found a Chandos album that I had favorited on Qobuz some time ago, and the tracks are all labeled unavailable.
I noticed that Roon shows a VERSIONS tab for this album, which only appears when there are multiple versions of the same album. Selecting the tab shows the unavailable version currently in my Roon library and two additional versions available on Qobuz. I’m able to select and play either of the Qobuz versions. I have no idea why Qobuz would have two versions that are seemingly identical (both 48kHz/24bit).
Favoriting and adding to my Roon library works as expected. If I tap “+ Add to library” for one of the Qobuz versions, it goes into my Roon library and becomes favorited on Qobuz. My unavailable version and the second Qobuz version remain listed.
At this point I cleaned up by removing the unavailable version from my Roon library. I also tried adding the second Qobuz version to my library, and it worked. When I checked on the Qobuz app, it shows two of this album in my favorites, so Qobuz really does seem to have two copies of the album in their catalog.
I found another Chandos album in my Roon library with unavailable tracks, and it follows the same pattern with two playable versions on Qobuz.
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Full credit to Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. Some sort of metadata misadventure at Qobuz and/or newly sold Chandos. We’ll possibly see more of this as more labels undergo the equivalent of musical chairs (OK. OK. Weak I know it. But irresistible). The Hyperion label transition, though, has been seamless. Here’s hoping the same hold true for BIS, which is, so far, so good. Can anyone on this group comment upon similar Chandos-Roon issues with Spotify or Tidal?
I’ve had the Chandos issues with Qobuz. I also had the same thing with some BIS releases. I suspect they are all re-licenced when the company is sold. Hence the need to update to the current version.
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Richter’s discography is massive — and a mess. The reissues and re-couplings are impossible to keep track of. (You can use the pianist discography site to look up his recordings, re-issues, recording dates, recorded composers and works, or his label recordings.) If you are a pianist, pianophile, piano maven, or piano geek you will be frustrated trying to come to terms with it all.
Fortunately, most of his classic studio recordings are not hard to source.
Richter famously hated the studio and there are many, many recorded concerts which suffer from mediocre to terrible sound. And, of course, both the standard repertoire and the byways of the piano literature are well represented by great recordings in stellar sound by many other pianists. So if you are only casually interested in Richter you can easily be overwhelmed and simply move on. But Richter is a legendary artist, and though the recordings can be erratic, many are worth hearing. The box sets which have been issued over the years are a big help. I’ve been re-listening to a bit of my Richter library.
Richter’s Eurodisc Recordings cover the 1970’s which were generally a good time for Richter at the piano. I don’t think you can stream this box but many of the individual recordings are available in other incarnations. The Schumann Symphonic Etudes, Bunte Blätter, and some of the Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Bach, and Tchaikovsky are worth a listen. The sound ranges from mediocre to good, but not stellar.
The Schumann is streamable here:
Next up is the Sony Box:
Richter’s Complete Albums on RCA and Sony contains the legendary series of solo concerts that Richter gave at Carnegie Hall in 1960. Most of these are in mediocre but listenable mono sound. The well known performance of the Scriabin Fifth Sonata from the concert of October 30th is amazing as are many other moments from these concerts. The December concerts were recorded live by RCA in decent stereo.
The RCA studio recordings included here are all well known classics: the Brahms Second Piano Concerto with Leinsdorf and Chicago (which makes it to a lot of “best of“ lists), the Beethoven First Concerto with Munch and Boston, and a selection of Beethoven sonatas. The later recordings that round out the collection were more controversial when they were issued. Jed Distler’s liner notes are worth a read.
At the time, Richter did not want the Carnegie live recordings issued as he felt he was nervous and his playing not his best. But this release gives you a good sampling of what the fuss was all about when he came to America. Many of the albums are available individually and are streamable.
More to follow…eventually…
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There were a lot of changes with Chandos in recent times because of that sale. Of the Chandos albums I bought as digital download, a lot (I don’t know if “all”) are no longer available as re-download from Qobuz, all had new links assigned. The albums from the Chandos catalog had new IDs assigned in the Qobuz database and as a result all older links, playlists, etc. will not work anymore.
I love the Lortie Saint-Saens recordings by the way and bought them from Qobuz as digital downloads.
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Will the previous thread remain available? Some great recommendations and reviews there. Thank you.
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Thank you. I, like you, download and backup immediately, realizing that only death and taxes are forever. We still have unprecedented access to so much incredible music thanks to wonderful services like Qobuz and can discover/refind it thanks to Roon.
The Saint-Saëns piano concerto no. 5, particularly the second movement, is a wonderful performance.
Thank you @CoralRad for parsing some of the Richter recordings. Finding the “great ones” is a bit challenging for this artist, who, at his best, is among the greats.
Lastly, found this artist’s Miroirs recording exceptional, in some ways more appealing to me than the splendid Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Angela Hewitt, Zlata Chochieva, Beatrice Rana, Steven Osborne, Bertrand Chamayou and Fazil Say versions.
This Ms. Chochieva two CD recording is wonderful over its entirety, including Ravel’s Miroirs.
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One a flight from Memphis, I met a guy my age, and we talked about music.
He asked if I wanted to join him to see some movie called “The Exorcist”
He mentioned that he was a classical musician. I realized that I already owned several of his LPs, and this is one.
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Roon doesn’t yet have an info on this 36 CD box, though individual recordings are listed. I picked this up last year, when the set was a JPC exclusive box, not sure what the status is now, but I thought the idea was to make this available elsewhere too. Anyway, this is a great, modern set of Haydn complete symphonies. Top performances, brisk and light, with precision, but not harsh or thin, like some stern HIP performances.
Anyway, the particular performance of Symphony #40 (and all the other performances in this set) I just listened to is also available for streaming/digital download on Qobuz (and presumably elsehwere).
So far (I have listened to some “classic classics”, like #94, #104, some favorites like #87, and some earlier ones, like #1, #2, and here and there in between) it’s one of the finest Haydn “Complete Symphonies” sets I have heard. Thomas Fey started the project, but unfortunately suffered a severe brain injury and as a result, was not able to record all the symphonies. Johannes Klumpp and Benjamin Spillner took over, but the results were equally distinguished and excellent.
For anyone who enjoys Haydn, this is a great set to add, and it would also be a top recommendation for anyone just looking for a complete “Haydn Symphony” set.
As I said, all the recordings are available for streaming and most of them are available individually on CD as well.
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in the other thread I highlighted a new to me performance of Andrea Chenier with Franco Bonisolli and Renato Bruson. I was browsing another forum, and someone mentioned an old recording of Rigoletto with Bonisolli and Rolando Panerai. I tracked it down, and it’s really quite good:
Bonisolli is quite disciplined, and easily has all the notes, and Panerai has the right color and weight to his voice. the rest of the cast is also good, and the conducting totally idiomatic, albeit with an orchestra one does not usually associate with Italian opera.
so I went looking for more, and found this:
all I can say is that it’s stupendous, easily competitive with any other performance I’ve heard. Bonisolli is in his element, with ringing top notes and a sure legato line. Zancanaro is just as good, with real bite in his voice, sounding like the natural heir to Bastianini. I prefer this performance it his better know recording with Giulini on DG. Likewise, both women are wonderful, and there’s an Italian on the podium with a German orchestra. the sound is quite good, with the voices forward. overall, better recorded than the Rigoletto.
there’s also a Traviata, which I have not yet listened to, but the cast is promising:
if memory serves, these were originally released on Eurodisc, which was occasionally distributed in the US by RCA. on CD, they may have been on Acanta for a while, but the digital releases are on “Zebralution”, which I have never heard of. They’re available to stream on Tidal, Apple Music, and Amazon Music, but I could not find them on Qobuz. I didn’t check Spotify.
I saw Bonisolli sing Manrico in Washington in the mid-80s. his acting, if it can be called that, gave hamming it up a bad name, but there was no doubting the voice. track down the Trovatore if you can find it.
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