Is cd the best medium for classical?

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Not that there's any choice these days, unless you like perusing charity shops and car boot sales for old'uns (which is grate).

― trappist monkey, Monday, 18 April 2005 10:14 (twenty years ago)

Yes, I think it is. Classical CD labels do seem to have a better approach to "mastering" than pop/rock labels. My road to damascus experience w/cd was a supraphon disc of dvorak's "hymnus", which I still have. In the pause before the chorus comes in, you can (faintly) hear them breathing in. I remember hearing that - magical! and then trying to work out how much I'd have to spend on a turntable to hear that level of fidelity.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Monday, 18 April 2005 10:21 (twenty years ago)

I think so too. Only trouble is classical discs (specially modern recordings) tend to make you acutely aware of the deficiencies of your hifi system (i have a £350 cd seperates doofer), so much so that i sometimes find myself putting the cd on my ghettoblaster instead cos it makes me less neurotic!

― trappist monkey, Monday, 18 April 2005 10:29 (twenty years ago)

overall it depends on the composer/type of work.

so to illustrate the point: Bryan ferneyhough's works for flute works really well as a record that I can put on from start to finish bcz you can see his development from his earlier works right through till the late 80s. otoh, the 3 CD set of webern's works and its sequence of one op. after another goes against bulding any sort of portrait...

sometimes the CD has been abused as a medium. That whole 'value for money' concept has been bought into that translates to 70+ minute discs that I can't get through till the end. There is no programmtic coherence. but its a prob with most genres. xp

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Monday, 18 April 2005 10:38 (twenty years ago)

tend to make you acutely aware of the deficiencies of your hifi system

OTM. Lately I've been getting neurotic about headphones!

otoh, the 3 CD set of webern's works and its sequence of one op. after another goes against bulding any sort of portrait...

I was thinking similar thoughts recently. Particularly all those rather, erm, difficult lieder placed consecutively over 30-40 tracks... But I can't imagine what the alternative is if striving for completeness.

Of course, programming smaller sequences and mixing and matching can sometimes be fiddly fun, so I'm rarely bothered by over-long compendium disks as such.

― Nag! Nag! Nag! (Nag! Nag! Nag!), Monday, 18 April 2005 11:48 (twenty years ago)

I don't mind the whole fill-the-disc thing w/classical music. I have all but one or two of the "decca london british series" and a lot of those have really nice extra tracks that I'd probably never heard otherwise. It's a good way of hearing a few lesser-known or shorter works by composers.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Monday, 18 April 2005 11:51 (twenty years ago)

yeah its no problem really I can just tape the orchestral works in one side, cantatas in another, str quartets in yet another side etc.

xp yeah, I guess...also works of 50+ minutes length work really well on CD, and they are usefully divided into tracks.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Monday, 18 April 2005 11:56 (twenty years ago)

Speaking of track divisions, didn't/don't (some) CD players accommodate indexes (sub-tracks) especially with classical music in mind? That is, a finer level of subdivisions within a standard CD track!?!? I've never seen this though -- is this ever usefully employed?

― Nag! Nag! Nag! (Nag! Nag! Nag!), Monday, 18 April 2005 12:40 (twenty years ago)

it might be the best medium, now that they know what they're doing, though for the first ten years classical music suffered the most from clumsy digital transfers; the delicate quiet string parts sounded raspy and the hiss was suddenly out of control. it's much better now, and engineers know how to take advantage of digital dynamic range, so beethoven's finally sounding like beethoven

but many of my favorite classical recordings remain completely out of print.

― milton parker (Jon L), Monday, 18 April 2005 17:43 (twenty years ago)

Like which ones milton?

― Masked Gazza, Monday, 18 April 2005 18:15 (twenty years ago)

SACD is turning up in the classical section of my store now... far more than in pop/rock or jazz. people are asking for them, too.

― fortunate hazel (f. hazel), Monday, 18 April 2005 18:21 (twenty years ago)

though for the first ten years classical music suffered the most from clumsy digital transfers; the delicate quiet string parts sounded raspy and the hiss was suddenly out of control. it's much better now, and engineers know how to take advantage of digital dynamic range, so beethoven's finally sounding like beethoven

OTFM. After recently hooking back up my turntable and listening to some old vinyl, I realized that I have to replace some late 80's era CDs whose sound is terribly mixed, whole phrases and sections pushed either too far back or too far forward for the music to work properly.

― M. White (Miguelito), Monday, 18 April 2005 18:24 (twenty years ago)

Not that there's any choice these days, unless you like perusing charity shops and car boot sales for old'uns (which is grate).

I buy classical music on LP online. It is incredibly cheap; there are numerous stores, at least in NYC, where you can get massive boxed sets for a couple of bucks and single discs for about a quarter. More rare recordings may be pricier, but it's incredibly rare that I see anything for more than $2 or $3.

― Ian John50n (orion), Monday, 18 April 2005 18:26 (twenty years ago)

yeah, the early days they just didn't know what they were doing. they were just running direct transfers without even listening to them, I think.

xpost off the top of the head
Charles Ives: Gregg Smith's "Music For Chorus", Kirkpatrick's "Concord Sonata", many many many other great albums recorded for the Ives centennial are just sitting in Sony's vaults.
Less than half of Robert Craft's Varese made it to CD, including "Deserts"

Most of my examples would be the 20th century stuff though, which always had a shaky grip on the market

― milton parker (Jon L), Monday, 18 April 2005 18:28 (twenty years ago)

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