# Need some advice on recordings



## Krisena (Jul 21, 2012)

Okay, so I'm contemplating buying a recording of Stravinsky's La Pulcinella (and possibly some other of his neo-classical works, recommendations?) and Ravel's L'enfant et les sortileges.

Which recordings should I go for? Sound quality is important for me, I don't want to listen to any artifacts for sure. I also have a knack for sensuality. Go!


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

Sorry, Krisena, that I don't have any recommendations.

Stravinsky's neo-classical phase is my least favorite of his, and I don't have anything on the Ravel piece.

I'm curious, though, about the audiophile tendencies of young Norwegians.
On other site forums as well as TC, I've seen young users from Norway make similar statements about how the recording quality affects their listening enjoyment (or rather that archival recordings prevent them from enjoying the music).

We all love great recorded sound no matter where we live, but I wonder if there is something else in the air there in Norway which contributes to these high standards for recordings?


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

_L'enfant..._: Lorin Maazel's DG version is a very strong recommendation. Despite its age (1961) it still sounds fine and the soloists and orchestra are excellent and the reading flawless.









Personally, I also like Previn's EMI recording


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## Krisena (Jul 21, 2012)

Prodromides said:


> Sorry, Krisena, that I don't have any recommendations.
> 
> Stravinsky's neo-classical phase is my least favorite of his, and I don't have anything on the Ravel piece.
> 
> ...


Heheh, that's the first I've heard of it. I'm just going by the fact that I've had great experiences with recordings that let me pierce through the wall of the orchestra and listen to in detail the various instruments, something I've so far not been able to do with recordings that are so old they have artifacts. You're of course welcome to try to change this impression of mine. 

Examples of recordings I find great would be something like Harnoncourts June 24th 2007 recording of Beethoven's 5th or Karajan's recording of Mozart's 41st with the Berlin Philharmonic. I'm not talking about interpretation, but the fact that I so clearly can hear all the instruments and "zoom" in on them if I want to. Hope this helps.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

I would strongly recommend Maazal's L'enfant and Abaddo's twofer of Stravinsky suites that includes Pulcinella. Both are among my favorite Stravinsky CDs. Sound quality is excellent. I'd also recommend Paavo Jarvi's Stravinsky chamber works on Pentatone.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

I think the problem you have with older recordings may be the fact that you are listening with headphones that aren't designed for classical music. A lot of headphones are goosed for rock with bright upper mids and boomy bass. This sounds fine with modern music, but it turns historical music to mush. I find Sennheisers are much more suited to classical because of their relatively flat frequency response.

There are an awful lot of monumentally amazing performances from the past. If you rule them out, you'll be missing out on more than you'll ever know.

By the way, your Karajan Mozart recording is more than fifty years old.


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

Krisena said:


> Examples of recordings I find great would be something like Harnoncourts June 24th 2007 recording of Beethoven's 5th or Karajan's recording of Mozart's 41st with the Berlin Philharmonic. I'm not talking about interpretation, but the fact that I so clearly can hear all the instruments and "zoom" in on them if I want to. Hope this helps.


I don't understand what you mean by "artifacts".

Older recordings are often more truthful than later ones. Many EMI recordings of the 60s are really much more than acceptable - even as early as 1959 (Karajan _Rosenkavalier_) - and, of course, Decca in the same period produced many very fine recordings (the _Ring _being the obvious example). For the purposes of this post, I'm just talking about the engineering and the production values.

That said, in the early 70s, Decca released the Maazel Prokofiev _Romeo and Juliet _and, even on a modest hifi, I felt a step change had been achieved in sonic quality.

The worst artificial sound all happened in the 70s, 80s and 90s, I have found. Apart from the Americans (some lamentable CBS recordings on vinyl for example), the worst offenders were Deutsche Grammophon, in my opinion. Of course, the conventional wisdom was that these were superlative recordings but, in truth, that was just clever marketing, exploiting an Anglo-Saxon elitism that prefers German products over others.

In truth, a decent hifi (not necessarily an expensive one) will reproduce any decent recording well, revealing a faithful soundstage with good positioning and presentation of instruments. Of course, the oldest recordings will have a narrower dynamic range than contemporary ones, and clarity might be slightly compromised (because of the development of microphone technology) but that's all. But, if you're listening over headphones, you cannot assess the quality of recordings because (even though they are monitored by engineers over headphones) they are engineered to be listened to over loudspeakers.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

The only reason that headphones are used in the studio are for isolation from the mikes. Mixing is never done on headphones.


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## Krisena (Jul 21, 2012)

bigshot said:


> By the way, your Karajan Mozart recording is more than fifty years old.


I know, I know. I didn't say I had anything against old recordings, per se, I just want good sound quality and no artifacts.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

You're safe with pretty much anything since 1957. Classical music is generally the best recorded kind of music of all.


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