Our Favorite Things: Recordings.(staff favorites of the past year)

Once again, we have asked our staff to pick their favorites from among the recordings they have encountered during the past year. We think you will agree that this is quite an eclectic list, and we hope that you find it useful. Enjoy!

Steven G. Baird (SGB)

What a great time to be an audiophile who's just starting his CD collection! With digital audio finally crawling out of its insensate infancy, the budding audiophile has many excellent sounding selections to choose from in two great digital formats, SACD and HDCD. So much progress has been made in digital recording technology that I find it nearly impossible to recommend any current production CDs that do not employ, at minimum, 24/96 or XRCD mastering (but there will be a few). While I have often taken the stance here that digital sound was sometimes disappointing (and more often than not), I think it is safe to say now that the industry has made great strides recently towards correcting this. I consider HDCD to be a move in the right direction (my Rotel RCD971 makes for convincing evidence that the HDCD naysayers were/ are misinformed) and SACD what digital should have sounded like all along. SACD finally makes it difficult for me to hear many differences between digital and a quality vinyl source. Numeric ratings first for sound, then performance, on a scale of ten, end each item.

Classical:

Gustav Mahler: Symphony # 8 (Symphony of a Thousand); Sir Georg Solti, Chicago Symphony, Decca 289 460 972-2 (24/96 remaster). Recently I waxed eloquently over this one in Reissue Roundup, and will add here that Solti has not been among my favorite conductors. He has his moments, though, and there are 79 of them here alone. If you have only a passing interest in classical music, this might be the one CD you should buy this year. Although the music may be a bit overwhelming for the novice listener, it certainly belongs in any classical music enthusiasts collection. It would be difficult to imagine a more riveting performance than Solti's or one with better sound (7/10).

Ottorino Respighi: Roman Festivals and Pines of Rome. Lorin Maazel, Cleveland Orchestra, Decca 289 466 993-2 (24/96 remaster). Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and he's just delivered an early Christmas present. In that recent article mentioned above, I published my wish list of mysteriously missing great performances from Decca. Well here's one of them, and it is especially welcomed because it restores this reference recording to the catalog for the many who missed it in the past. As a bonus, they've thrown in Rimsky-Korsakov's Suite from Le Coq d'Or. The biggest difference I hear between this astounding CD and the original Decca LP is in those extremely dynamic moments where the orchestra bursts out of the silence. I might have to side with JMC on the matter of requisite amplifier power on this one: anything less than several hundred watts, say, 500, from your transistor amp might not reveal all that this CD has to offer. The LP is still a bit more dynamically startling, and the image slightly different, but the CD bears a remarkable likeness to the record otherwise. This is absolutely the very best of the Decca Legends remasters I have heard so far. You will not want to miss this one (9/9).

So as not to take up a lot of space listing all of the Reference Recordings label's HDCDs, I'll just say that Professor Keith Johnson provides us with some astounding sound shows on every CD I've bought from them recently. Here's the perfect excuse for you to upgrade to an HDCD-capable player right now. I'm particularly fond of the Stravinsky release (RR-70CD) that packs more than 74 minutes of reference quality sound from Eiji Oue and the Minnesota Orchestra onto a single CD. The company often runs special offers from its web site, so you might want to visit them regularly to pick up on some reference standard CDs at truly bargain prices. The Stravinsky CD rates a 9/9 as do many others from the label. Sad to say, though, that if you picked up on the allusion above, my recent communications with the company indicate that some of their early vinyl releases will not be remastered to CD.