Encouraged by Ralph Moore's favorable reviews of several recordings from High Density Tape Transfers, I took the plunge and ordered 5 of them. One was the Oistrakh-Fournier-Galliera Brahms Double, which he recommended. I was not disappointed: the performance beautifully judges the balance between imperious, crisply articulated playing (the three-note dotted motif that pervades the first movement, assertive in the orchestra, more lyrical and yielding when taken up by the soloists) and lyrical long line; the teamwork of the two soloists is impeccable. The sound, while an improvement on the Warner remastering, is not spectacular.
The other four recordings feature Pierre Monteux, whose performance of the Brahms Second Symphony at Tangelwood in 1961 hooked my 14-year-old self on classical music. They are: the complete Daphnis and Chloe; all three Debussy Nocturnes (oddly coupled with Mendelssohn's incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream), the Beethoven Pastoral symphony, and Dvorak's 7th, along with "My Home." The performances are of course known to be distinguished, but the sound! Wow! My previous favorite Dvorak 7th was Christoph von Dohnanyi's with the Cleveland Orchestra, in excellent digital sound, rather like George Szell's but with a little more humane give-and-take in the phrasing. I can honestly say that the sound is not just as good as, but better than, the Dohnanyi recording. The same can be said for the others, especially the Ravel, which runs the gamut from orgiastic abnandon to the utmost delicacy. No recording can quite reproduce a live performande. But with these four, I could close my eyes and almost forget that I was in my living room listening to a recording made half a century ago rather than a live performance.
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