Listening to Now (In Surround) - Volume 2

[4-earredwonder]

Birdsong At Morning......

I admit that my first listen left me sort of ....well.....hmmm. I was expecting it to be similar to their last album...which IMO, it's not. This one is softer, more mellow and reflective. Again, I need to listen a few more times to really settle in to an opinion.

On the other hand, all I do is work, and I'm super tired......that doesn't help my frame of mind.

Listen to it again. It immediately captured my imagination.

 

[Lute]

The Gallant Style: Mozart and his Contemporaries (SACD Cantate)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Justin Heinrich Knecht (1752-1817)
Theodor Grünberger (1756-1820)
Jan Krititel Kuchar (1751-1829)
Leopold Mozart (1719-1787)
Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler (1749-1814)
Christian Heinrich Rinck (1770-1846)

Christian Brembeck, Holzhay-Organ (1798) Abbey Neresheim

 

[4-earredwonder]

The Gallant Style: Mozart and his Contemporaries (SACD Cantate)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Justin Heinrich Knecht (1752-1817)
Theodor Grünberger (1756-1820)
Jan Krititel Kuchar (1751-1829)
Leopold Mozart (1719-1787)
Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler (1749-1814)
Christian Heinrich Rinck (1770-1846)

Christian Brembeck, Holzhay-Organ (1798) Abbey Neresheim

The CALM before the Storm. Japan is bracing for another typhoon? Horrors, Brett. Stay safe and seek refuge in a church ...... plenty of organ music there!

 

[4-earredwonder]

Listening to the Organ's poorer cousin, Dejan Lazic on the piano:

 

[Lute]

The CALM before the Storm. Japan is bracing for another typhoon? Horrors, Brett. Stay safe and seek refuge in a church ...... plenty of organ music there!

Thanks, Ralphie! The typhoon passed through in the middle of the night. It kept me awake until 4:00 am. I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. I thought the whole house was going to blow away!!! This morning my garden is a mess, but fortunately we got through it. However, now another typhoon (number 25) is helding toward Japan from out in the Pacific. Lots of energy out there!

 

[4-earredwonder]

Thanks, Ralphie! The typhoon passed through in the middle of the night. It kept me awake until 4:00 am. I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. I thought the whole house was going to blow away!!! This morning my garden is a mess, but fortunately we got through it. However, now another typhoon (number 25) is helding toward Japan from out in the Pacific. Lots of energy out there!

Hopefully, you'll replant your garden but thankfully, you're safe. Hurricane season is about to begin in the US and already has wreaked havoc in the South. Another one is going to hit Baja California today or tomorrow where my sister lives [in Encinitas, CA].

 

[4-earredwonder]

My take on Bernstein's Mass......I thought the libretto was weak and the only memorable tune was "A Simple Song." If you listen carefully, one will also detect elements of West Side Story in the Score. Upon it's premiere at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., it was not critically well received. Kent Nagano did an admirable conducting job and the Harmonia Mundi multichannel SACD which certainly has discrete elements captures the score in superb sonics.

I should also listen to the competing Kristjan Järvi mch SACD which is more highly regarded.

Supposedly, the definitive version is Bernstein's own which hopefully will be released in QUAD one day in a digital format!

 

[Lute]

Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet No. 2
Béla Bartók: String Quartet No. 3
Johannes Brahms: String Quartet No. 1

Schumann Quartett (SACD Ars Produktion)

 

[Barbazul]

Almost forgot I have this Sarah’s rarity
Both albums really enjoyed.

 

[Lute]

Henricus Isaac: In the time of Lorenzo de’ Medici and Maximilan I 1450-1519 (SACD Alia Vox)

Hespèrion XXI
La Capella Reial de Catalunya
Jordi Savall (director)

 

[GOS]

Birdsong At Morning......

I admit that my first listen left me sort of ....well.....hmmm. I was expecting it to be similar to their last album...which IMO, it's not. This one is softer, more mellow and reflective. Again, I need to listen a few more times to really settle in to an opinion.

On the other hand, all I do is work, and I'm super tired......that doesn't help my frame of mind.

OK. So, with better sleep, a better mind set. I'm listening again. In fact.....since I was concerned that I was too biased based on my feelings about their previous album that I took a different approach.

I took both A SLIGHT DEPARTURE and SIGNS AND WONDERS, loaded them both into Foobar and hit shuffle. I turned off my monitor so I couldn't see which song and or album was playing. I will say, that all that I heard was wonderful. I think, partly what was throwing me was what turned me on to Birdsong in the first place was Devil's Stomping Ground...which is a Zep sounding grinder. So, no songs on the new one had that character...so it sort of threw me.

Regardless of that......this is one hell of a great band, so much heart and imagination. They continue the tradition with this new one. It will only grow on me more as I listen.

 

[Lute]

J.S. Bach: The Organ Toccatas (SACD MDG)

Christoph Schoener, organs of St. Michaelis-Kirche Hamburg

 

[kap'n krunch]

MILES
ASW
SACD

..of course a mammoth LP like BBrew does not come out of nowhere...

 

[Lute]

Rush - A Farewell to Kings (BD-A 40th anniversary)

 

[bmoura]

Wow! Thanks for this, Brian.

My mom was an organist for most of her life, and Vierne's Carillon was one of her favorite pieces - I have a cherished recording of her performing it at the church where she was head organist for 40 years. Clicking on your link was a bit of an emotional surprise on otherwise quiet Sunday afternoon (Mom's been gone a few years now), but in a good way.

Going to download now. Thanks again for the heads-up.

- Jim

I enjoyed the album in DSD 256 Surround Sound (as recorded).
The low end bass energy on that highlighted track in the Surround Channels is definitely an attention getter!

 

[bmoura]

The celebration of Bernstein at 100 continues with a new DSD Surround Sound recording of his Tony-Award winning musical Wonderful Town.
The DSD Download includes a bonus track - with an audience participation edition of "Conga".
Fun! Recommended in Surround Sound.

A Top 15 DSD Best Seller - New DSD Stereo & DSD Surround Sound Recording of Bernstein's Tony Award Winning Musical!

Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra celebrate Leonard Bernstein's 100th Birthday with a new DSD Stereo & DSD Surround Sound recording of Wonderful Town that captures the energy and excitement of sold-out performances from December 2017. The album also features soloists Danielle de Niese, Alysha Umphress, Nathan Gunn, Duncan Rock, and the London Symphony Chorus.

As a bonus, the DSD Download editions of the album includes a bonus track - an Audience Participation Edition of Conga from the Broadway musical. Wonderful Town is available today at the NativeDSD Music store in DSD Stereo and DSD Surround Sound. Save by buying both editions using the specially priced ST+MCH option.

Andrew Clements of The Guardian says "Wonderful Town is an unqualified, uncomplicated delight. This is the hour-long concert version, which sacrifices narrative continuity to preserve the best numbers in Bernstein’s score. Though no stage director was credited, there was a theatrical framework of sorts, including a conga that embroiled most of the London Symphony Chorus in the fun.

Rattle’s performance had just the right brassy pizzazz, with a cast led by the irrepressible Alysha Umphress as Ruth and Danielle de Niese as Eileen, the two sisters who arrive from Ohio determined to launch their careers; Nathan Gunn, David Butt Philip, and Duncan Rock took smaller roles, all slick and nonchalantly brilliant."

LSO Live tells us "Bernstein’s five-time Tony award-winning musical follows sisters Ruth and Eileen on their quest to make it big, pursuing careers in writing and acting from their cramped basement apartment in New York’s bohemian Greenwich Village. Fresh from rural Ohio, the sisters end up getting more than they bargained for, realizing that life in the Big Apple is not as glamorous as it may seem.

A bright and cheery love letter to the city that never sleeps and the colorful characters inhabiting it, Wonderful Town draws on Fields and Chodorov’s 1940 play My Sister Eileen, which itself is based on a series of autobiographical short storied by the ‘real-life’ Ruth McKenney.

Bernstein’s infectious score includes classic numbers such as ‘Ohio’, ‘One Hundred Easy Ways’, and ‘A Little Bit in Love’, as well as a riotous conga that had delighted audiences dancing in the aisles of the Barbican Hall."

https://lsolive.nativedsd.com/albums/LSO0813-bernstein-wonderful-town

 

[sjcorne]

ES's 461 Ocean Boulevard.

"Let It Grow" is just a beast in surround. I love how Clapton's low whisper vocal and the strumming are foregrounded, then those electric guitars steadily rise from behind you, and it just keeps building in intensity until the breathtaking conclusive onslaught of keys and guitar. Real demo stuff.

 

[sjcorne]

Someone pointed out in one of the XTC poll threads a while back (it might've been @rtbluray ) that each remixed album has one track that stands out in terms of surround mixing. For Oranges & Lemons it was "Across This Antheap", for Skylarking it was "The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul", and for Black Sea it was "Living Through Another Cuba".

On Nonsuch I gotta say it's "Books Are Burning". Steven absolutely slayed this one. It's a masterpiece of a track (one of their best, I think) and a masterpiece of a surround mix. Love the guitar solo jumping between the rears on the fade.

 

[d0zer]

Styx - The Mission (BRA) - not bad at all...

 

[fredblue]

ES's 461 Ocean Boulevard.

"Let It Grow" is just a beast in surround. I love how Clapton's low whisper vocal and the strumming are foregrounded, then those electric guitars steadily rise from behind you, and it just keeps building in intensity until the breathtaking conclusive onslaught of keys and guitar. Real demo stuff.

unusually/exceptionally/ordinarily Mr.Scheiner "nails it" for me time and again in surround.. but Guzauski's 5.1 mix has the low whisper vocal licked on this track in particular (to my lugholes) but i have to say i am torn from track to track on the 2 differing 5.1's of 461 OB and ultimately am so glad we have two surround renditions to pick and chose from to make
one's own 'ultimate' surround version of this classic album.. what a luxury!