Presto Classical is offering up to 25% discount on Chandos CDs and downloads until 30 October. I have no affiliation with the company (although I use it for most of my download purchases) but thought others here might like to know of the offer as there are some highly praised recordings on the label.
Stephen
One of their very best is an LP of Vaughan Williams’ ‘London Symphony’, which restores all the music that RVW was persuaded to cut from the score. It takes the length of the symphony from about 40 mins to around an hour. It’s magnificently recorded too, with the late Richard Hickox conducting an inspired London SO.
(Assuming that the Presto discount applies to LPs as well as CDs.)
Couldn’t agree more. Musicianship of the highest degree and superb sound always. The complete cantatas cycle is one for a desert island.
Eclassical offers 50% discount on Chandos…., until the 17th…
I bought a copy of this reissue and I can only say that I found it very disappointing. The sides are too long for decent sound and the pressing was too noisy for a work that often descends to near silence, especially in this elongated original version. If you like the Hickox/LSO rendition then stick with a digital format IMO.
My best Vinyl version is this beauty. I think I prefer the shorter version too.
I have a Chandos LP of Hickox’s ‘completed’ version of ‘A London Symphony’, which has lovely, silent surfaces. Have you tried swapping yours?
I agree that Barbirolli’s account is special - as indeed are most recordings that I have from ‘Glorious John’.
One that I treasure is the 1963/1964 (?) EMI recording that he made of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony with what was then Karajan’s ‘new’ orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic. (Made before Karajan found his own love for that composer following the Nazi ban on the composer’s music.)
I have it on a pretty ancient CD, but I live in hope that EMI will produce something like DGG’s ‘The Original Source’ series, and issue a German-pressed luxury vinyl edition.
You can but hope!
Sadly, EMI is part of Warner Classics and so far it seems all the LP reissues they have done are from digital source.
Hopefully, they’ll get on the AAA bandwagon and learn that plenty of people clamor for legitimate analog reissues, ala Tone Poet Blue Note, ECM Luminescence, DG The Original Source, Analogue Productions RCA Living Stereo, Original Jazz Classics (reboot) and so on.
I don’t know who actually owns EMI these days. I hope that it is no longer under the control of the appalling Guy Hands and his Terra Firma cronies.
I have a hardback book ‘The Final Days of EMI - Selling The Pig’, written by Eamonn Forde, which I can’t quite bring myself to read yet.
I just said so above. 
EMI is part of Warner Classics (i.e Warner Music Group), which acquired EMI in 2013. See Warner Classics - Wikipedia
Pollini at 80 is clearly taxed by the demands of the Hammerklavier, but his grasp on its structure and ability to achieve his vision remain awesome. One of the best performances of these sonatas I have ever heard, live or recorded.
Cheers
EJ
As did Vaughan Williams, at least when the final revision was published in 1936. Hickox managed to persuade the composer’s widow to allow the one recording of the original version but later recordings and live performances have to be of the 1936 version. (Not sure what happens when copyright expires.)
For me, the revision works better structurally and therefore as a symphony, but the sections cut from the original version contain some extraordinarily beautiful music and Hickox is the version I’d take to that Desert Island.
Roger
I don’t think that’s quite correct, Graham. The evidence is more that VW revised the symphony if anything against the advice of friends. Certainly the likes of Arnold Bax and George Butterworth deeply regretted the cuts.
VW’s style changed after WW1 and became tighter, less programmatic, perhaps a little more aligned with the European mainstream, and I think he wanted to make the symphony sound more in line with that somewhat austerer style. That was certainly the view of VW’s biographer Michael Kennedy and I think Ursula Vaughan Williams only permitted the one recording of the original because she did not want to go against the composer’s own wishes.
At least we should be thankful that both versions are available in excellent recordings.
Roger
Thanks for that insight.
I love the EMI vinyl copy that I have of ‘A London Symphony’ from Barbirolli, but Richard Hickox’s ‘complete’ version (with the LSO) on a Chandos LP runs it very close.
Just listened to this performance and to be honest found it a rather lacklustre effort, in mediocre sound, compared to the versions I am more familiar with (Vanska, Chailly, Karajan). Only in the finale I felt some personality coming through. I could well imagine Karajan deciding on the basis of this recording that his orchestra wasn’t quite ready for this masterpiece, yet (speculation of course, but so is the tired ‘Entartete Musik’ trope).
Cheers
EJ
Cheers
EJ
is this a new recording or reissue?
new (2022) recording
I’ve been listening to the almost Mozartean string quartet 10 by Schubert and now the Death and the Maiden string quartet. Quite a difference. The latter is how far a string quartet can go. It reminds me of Mendelssohns last string quartets which have the same drama and tension.
Magnificent compositions.
Knowing that Schubert died young, and with the name ‘Death And The Maiden’, you do approach the piece with strong intimations of mortality.
It’s magic that a piece of music still can convey a deep emotion 200 years later. 200 years is short in my musical world, but hey it was a very different time.
