Complete Mozart Piano Sonatas

Suffice to say I don't share your preferences. which appear to be for dry acoustics and close miking. I love the van Oort set of Mozart keyboard pieces for most of its 14 discs; the recent complete Blavet sonata discs from Jed Wentz are another delight to my ears. Even discs not recorded by Peter Arts, such as the Capriccio reissue of Bach Christmas Oratorio (Otto/Concerto Koln) sound perfectly fine to me through my Stax earspeakers. Not horrible by any stretch of imagination, but like you said, great bargains at their price.

 

very very wrong but if it helps you to cope with my critics about the brilliant Classics CDs, I don't mind if you think so.

Don't forget also that in Europe not many people listen to music exclusively through headphones...

And please don't mix ambience with echoes..

 

If I listen to those brilliant classical discs through my electrostatics and don't get the same aural mess as you do, I'd consider your criticism mostly irrelevant for all it matters. Why, you've got room resonances to cope with if you listen through loudspeakers, and I don't have that problem at all, plain and simple. So who's hearing it more accurately? Plus your complaint about the Brilliant Classics sound is shared by few, if any at all, reviews that I have read in formal or informal publications both on and offline. Is it possible that those other reviewers all have been confusing ambience with echoes, too? I don't think so.

 

This is getting very OT so I'll answer only to the part considering the sound quality of Brilliant classics CDs, since this could concern those persons over here who may consider to buy the Pires version released by this label (I ordered this version also).
Discussions about accuracy listening through headphones or in a professionally acoustically treated room should be done in the technical part of the Forum.

With a few german audiophiles I had this discussion concerning this label. For this we especially compared indipendently on our own system the reeissues vs. the original Denon or EMI ones and we all came to the same conclusion.

 

Luckily your opinion above has nothing to do with the new Brilliant Classics recordings (particularly the van Oort Mozart sonata set) upon which I have based my judgement regarding sound quality etc.. I have not heard either Pires Mozart sets. However the Denon Pires set now available in stores would NOT be the original release as you suggested in your post: it has been remastered by Denon. Brilliant Classics, on the other hand, possibly got the previous generation tapes from Denon and that would explain any discrepency you heard in side-by-side comparisons. If so, I don't see why BC should be blamed for re-releasing the older version.

 

I tend in that direction too, but I still want to hear, what certain great Mozarteans make of the music, and they use - alas - modern piano.

BTW Pires Denon cycle, rereleased by Brilliant is in my opinion more than acceptable as to recording quality, and you have to be very much a HI-FI Feinschmecker to be unable to appreciate her great playing for reasons of "suboptimal" reproduction.

 

Disclaimer:
Any occational resemblance with any living person in the statement above is completely accidental and entirely unintended.

 

Great humor, pe-zulu, even though I think
I have just witnessed how self-claimed
"audiophiles" can and do make a big deal
out of very little. Maybe it worries some
if Brilliant Classics sells too many Pires
Mozart sets at bargain prices!

I must confess that my extremist sentiments
regarding the use of modern pianos for
Mozart arose after I heard the newish
Lars Vogt solo recital (on EMI) which
claimed to have incorporated lessons
from historicist performers such as
Harnoncourt. The result is like, so
goes a proverb in my culture, "mincing
parsley with a butcher's knife." In
other words, sounding at once robust and
dainty, awkwardly. (Robert
Levin said Viennese fortepianos are
at least 30% faster in mechanical
response than modern concert grands.)

Brahms is said to have favored older
instruments for solo or chamber music
and newish, more powerful ones
for concertos. I think I understand
why he made such distinctions as
it seems to bother me considerably
less when someone's playing a modern
grand in a Mozart concerto. I can
still listen to the Zacharias set which
I own or will even spend money to
hear someone Edwin Fischer play
Concerto #25 K503, a piece I
like immensely.

FangLin

 

True, but that would apply to many of your posts in this forum. As a matter of fact, I personally think these discussions on system accuracy when dealing with classical music are usefully posted here.

I never listened to BC records. But I would like to know about their quality.

If the moderators feel this is going in the wrong direction, they will split the thread.

So, are BC records actually worse? And why?

 

BC records have always sounded fine to me, but maybe it's because my system isn't very revealing!

 

what I suggest is that if anyone wants to find that out, they should buy some BC CDs listen to them and be especially aware of the transparence and depht of the soundstage during the fortissimo. Compare these points with the CDs from the expensive line of Decca, DG, EMI and maybe some Philips.
More complex the music, more I notice a difference. But also with piano music I'm missing the transparence compared to the mentioned labels.
If you don't hear the difference than great you won't have something to think about.
Nevertheless I consider the recordings of BC good and the quality / price factor just exceptional.

With Barock music I definitely prefer the use of the cembalo than a piano. With Mozart I'm more for the piano but I don't dislike the fortepiano (example: the piano concerts with Bilson and Gardiner).

 

This is an important point for the lot of us, who owns kit, which isn´t able to detect the difference in that obvious way. But maybe I should make some A/B tests.

 

Masolino,

I expect to recieve the van Oort Mozart box (and the Badura-Skoda cycle) in a few days. Very exciting.
Even if I own a Stax Signature headset, I rarely use it. I think the perception of room (ambience maybe) is severely disturbed. But if I want to analyze the sound as such, it is perfect.

 

Only make sure that the A/B test involves samples that are similar in remastering history. For Pires's Mozart, BC may have gotten the un-remastered material from Denon which no doubt will sound a notch or two off when compared to Denon's new remastered box which is available for twice as much in price.

 

pe-zulu

The Badura-Skoda cycle was actually the first one I ever owned of Mozart's sonatas, when all Astree-Auvidis recordings had very simple, somewhat ugly covers. I see they have now improved the packaging (five digipacks in a slipcase?) and seem to have remastered the recordings also. Congrats and I think you will enjoy them much more than I did.

ps. I absolutely agree with you on the Stax. I often ENJOY listening to music more on sound systems with loudspeakers, but for monitoring purposes nothing beats top-notch electrostatics.

 

Among others I can compare the Brilliant release of Hans Fagius'Bach cycle with the original BIS release, and the Brilliant release of Joseph Payne's French Suites with the original BIS release, and Robert Haydon Clark's Brandenburgs and Orchestral Suites with the original Collins Classics release, so I have got a lot of possibilities.

 

The lot arrived to day, together with a bunch of CDs with organ music of Bach, Buxtehude, Lübeck, Böhm and Bull, so now I know what to do during the next weeks, when I am off.

 

Organ music by John Bull? Interesting. What kind of instrument(s) did the performer use? My most recent acquisition in that field is a Byrd recital by Leonhardt on the Alpha label.

 

A typical French baroque organ, judged from the specification (hasn't heard the CD yet) with 8F Grand Orgue 13 stops, 4F positif 8 stops and Pedal only Flute 8F and trompette 8F, but with tirasse GO/Ped. The organ was built by an anonymous builder around 1662 and was restored recently by Pascal Quorin. It is situated in the Saint-Thomas Church, Mont Saint-Aignan near Rouen, Normandy. The organist, whom I never have heard of before, is Thilo Muster, a pupil of Guy Bovet, and since 1994 titular organist at the Cathedral Saint Pierre de Geneve. I can report again later, when I have heard the CD. May take some time, because of the Mozart piano-CDs.

I own a few of Leonhardt's recordings of English harpsichord music, and he plays this music very introvert, as he uses to play almost everything, as if he is playing for himself, and this is IMO certainly true of the one you mention above; but I think his explorative style suits the music, which I find very substantial, well.

 

Yes please tell us later how you like the Bull disc. I just realize that I have some Byrd played on organ, too, which is on a disc from Davitt Moroney's complete keyboard Byrd. He also uses a French style baroque organ (freestyle copy by Ahrend) but obviously omits certain registration that was impossible for early seventeenth century. I also thought only ricercars and older style counterpoint pieces were fit to be played on organs. Moroney, however, included some "voluntaries" which could be anything but variations on popular melodies or dances.

Leonhardt's few Scarlatti recordings actually sound quite
extrovert to me, so he really has some fire in him, too,
which alas is too rarely seen. His recent recordings have
won admirations that seem to me almost reverential
in nature, as if the master has achieved true transcendence
of his media. Maybe he has; everthing in his playing
seems so subtle, meditative and understated now
that to my ears he may as well be playing a Chinese
Qin rather than a sixteenth-century northern European style
harpsichord.