For the past 10 days or so, I was fully occupied in various tasks and no spare time could be squeezed out to listen to music. Finalising the schedule of a certificate course and performing the standard setting (complicated and tedious calculations) for a postgrad examination -- alas they are not doing well this year -- are time-consuming yet no mistakes can be entertained. Even today I have to drive some 40 km to the airport as my son is going back to the UK for the new term. Just returned home feeling lost and tired, I really need a good sleep. Thinking of starting to write something tomorrow, on the many discs I've listened to for the past month, e.g. the Dudamel B9, the TMSO's B5s, the Tahra SACD of Furtwangler's wartime Eroica, the rumours I heard about the contemporaneous release of Keilberth's 1960 Salzburg Festival concert (with B9) on Testament and Orfeo, etc. Can I finish all these? Can I resort to the overused and straddling term "cautiously optimistic"? Just senseless babble in a hypnagogic state.

In Memoriam - Kurt Sanderling

Kurt Sanderling passed away on 17 Sep 2011. May he rest in peace.

He left many memorable recordings for music lovers to cherish. His Beethoven and Brahms symphonies, Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 (mono), Rachmaninov Symphony No. 2, Bruckner Symphonies Nos. 3 and 7, and, above all, Shostakovich symphonies are particularly remembered by this humble listener. I took out some of these recordings and listened once again with sadness and at the same time admiration and respect.

His Beethoven cycle with the Philharmonia Orchestra stands proudly alongside the only other two cycles by this orchestra with Karajan and Klemperer.

Each recording of Brahms symphonies by him is memorable,  for his unmannered, natural music making.

Simply inevitable.

While he might not exhibit the type of astringency and ferocity of Mravinsky's Shostakovich, he graced his reading with a fine balance of Slavic warmth and  melancholy, which is more moving.

This box-set was bought in 1997 in Berlin. The price tag was still in Deutsche Mark. I missed his concert when he stood in for an ailing Giulini in Feb 1998.

His Bruckner 3rd and 7th are among my favourite recordings of these symphonies. Just three months ago I revisited his Rachmaninov Symphony No. 2 and that gave me a happy afternoon. Thank you very much Maestro.

The new EMI Wilhelm Furtwängler box-set -- disappointing documentation

The new EMI Wilhelm Furtwängler 21-CD box-set, The Great Recordings, should be a convenient and relatively inexpensive route for young music lovers not familiar with this great conductor to get to know his art. There are also surprises for seasoned Furtwängler fans: new Abbey Road  24-bit digital remastering of the Beethoven and Brahms symphonies recordings following the footsteps of the SACDs of these recordings released by EMI Japan not too long ago. Although I've already had many Furtwängler recordings, I was still lured by this new gimmick and bought this box-set with HK$500.

The card-board packaging is quite nice and neat. So far so good. However when I read the enclosed booklet, I was really disappointed. They got the orchestra for the last three Brahms symphonies wrong. In this and previous EMI sets, only the First Symphony was played by the Vienna Philharmonic, and the rest the Berlin Philharmonic. The dates of the recordings corresponded to the old set. Here in the new box-set, it is incorrectly documented that all the Brahms symphonies were recordings of the Vienna Philharmonic as shown below:

The booklet of the old EMI References box-set of Brahms symphonies is shown alongside the new one below:

Such a pity. 

I'll go to my friend Savio's home to compare the sound of the CDs in the new box-set with different previous incarnations by EMI Europe or Japan. Savio has good high-end hi-fi gears and he is also a very experienced classical music lover and critic. Let's see what results we'll get.