Great Bargain on Telarc CDs – Classic Erich Kunzel Boxset

Posted by Tan   

Are you still playing to CD? If you, like me, still do, then you will find this offering from Telarc exciting. Telarc is the recording label known to produce albums of excellent recording quality with great dynamic range, many of which are perennial reference demo discs for audiophiles.

I discovered on my usual go-to site for classical CDs, Prestomusic.com, that Telarc has some of their CDs packaged as boxsets. The pricing is a great bargain, at GBP16.46 (MYR89) for a pack of 5 albums it is just about what we’d pay for just 1 Telarc CD here. Each CD works out to MYR18, plus postage, it is cheaper than buying used.

Link - https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/8862359--classic-erich-kunzel.

The 5 albums included in this boxset are:

·       Ein Straussfest

·       Pops Plays Puccini

·       Verdi Without Words

·       1812 Overture & Wellington's Victory

·       Ravel: Bolero

The CDs are labelled as either “Made in EU” or “Made in Austria”, and each CD comes in a cardboard jacket with the original CD's cover art, no jewel case here. One disadvantage is that you don’t get the CD liner notes, but if you are building up your CD library, this is a quick and cost effective way to go. .

Since I already own the “Ein Straussfest” album on a single CD (made in USA), I did a sound quality comparison between the 2 versions. The single CD version has a slightly more open sound on the top, while the boxset version sounded a little warmer, nothing to lose sleep over. I wouldn’t be able to tell if I walked into the room not knowing which version was playing.

While you are on Prestomusic.com, check out the other offers they have on classical music and jazz. They offer music downloads and streaming subscription too.

Excellent Music - Part 2

Let’s continue on with a few more albums that I came to love in the past year.

1. Marcus Miller – Silver Rain

Marcus Miller is a jazz musician and composer. He played as a bassist on Miles Davis' jazz band. Now he has a prolific solo career as well as working with other artists.

I clued onto Marcus Miller from his bass guitar performance with Lee Ritenour in the ‘Legends of Jazz Showcase with Ramsey Lewis’ bluray disc.

‘Silver Rain’ is from the jazz-rock genre. Many tracks on this album indeed rock pretty hard. If your system is not well sorted out (e.g., bass boom, poor separation), this album will easily degenerate into a mess.

I finally ‘got’ this album when I played it through the PMC IB2i loudspeakers which were at my place for a few weeks for a write-up. With the PMC, my room was pulsating with tight, well defined, deep bass notes from Miller’s playing. His two very short solo bass guitar tracks (tracks 1 ‘Intro Duction’ and 14 ‘Outro Duction’ alone were worth the price of the album.

A fun track is track 2 ‘Bruce Lee’, which uses melodies we easily associate with Bruce Lee’s movies. Miller also showed his ingenuity in re-arranging Beethoven’s serene ‘Moonlight Sonata’ into a harder-edged composition played with modern instruments.


2. Nils Lofgren – Acoustic Live


Nils Lofgren is most noted as a guitarist on Bruce Springsteen’s band. He also has a solo recording career with many recordings under his belt.

This particular recording is of one of his live performances, in which he is the lead vocal and plays the acoustic guitar and piano.

This recording captures the live atmosphere vividly. The listener’s involvement is enhanced by the interaction of Lofgren with the audience and the people's spontaneous response. The track that best demonstrates this is track 5 ‘Keith Don’t Go’, Lofgren showed his guitar playing prowess to great success, the pyrotechnics elicited shouts of excitement and applause from the audience. It is quite an immersive listening experience.


3. Dean Peer – Ucross


This album has long been regarded as an audiophile classic.

It consists entirely of Dean Peer’s own compositions and solo playing on his bass guitar. I have been looking for this album for some time after hearing his ‘Lord’s Tundra’ on Stereophile’s Test CD 3, but could not find it in local music stores. Finally I found it on Dean Peer’s own website.

The music, playing and recording quality of this album is superb. The sound fills the entire front portion of my listening room, not just with the music notes, but also oodles of atmosphere and air. The decay of the notes and the silence in-between complete the sonic picture and left the listener with a fulfilling listening experience.

You not only get startlingly transients, slam, speed, and deep bass but you also get beautiful ambience and texture.


4. Reference Recordings – Dallas Wind Symphony Sampler


All audiophiles know Prof. Keith Johnson’s classical music recordings on his Reference Recordings label.

This album consists of selections from his works with the Dallas Wind Symphony with the customary high recording quality.

Puchong Wong showed me a quote about this album from an issue of the Taiwanese hifi mag Audio Art – “Don’t buy this CD if your amplifier is not powerful enough, your loudspeakers are not big enough and your room is not huge enough.” Now, that should give you an idea of the kind of orchestral music on this album.

Indeed, on the opening track, the timpani whacks will startle first time listeners, and the bigger your system and your room are, the bigger the sound you’ll get.


Enjoy your music in 2012!

Excellent Music - Part 1

I'd like to follow Big E in naming a few excellent albums I discovered in 2011. These selections fulfil my two criteria – a) the music must be interesting and the performance good enough to stand up to repeated listening and b) the recording quality must be high, since this is an audiophile oriented blog.

Let me start off with a Malaysian effort:

2V1G Second Album


Well, this one is not a discovery but a re-discovery. I totally underestimated this second effort from Pop Pop Music’s 2V1G trio. I bought this CD for more than a year and hardly played it, while 2V1G’s first album remained one of my favourites and reference for female vocal, not least because of Regine Tai who, sadly, has since left the group.

My first impression of 2V1G’s second album was that it was a competently done album but did not reach the artistic height of the first one. The performance came off as a little dull and flat.

I was proved wrong entirely with the arrival of the TAD Compact Reference loudspeakers in my system. The ultra-detailed TAD finally allowed this album to be showcased in its full glory. This second 2V1G effort by Leslie Loh turned out to be a more natural and balanced recording than the first one. The TAD-CR1 showed up all the ambient cues in the recording venue and the little nuances in the performance, it was like the entire event was transported into my listening room.

All the songs on this album don’t go much faster than andante. They are mostly about sadness, lost love, nostalgia. The entire album has a melancholic mood. There is no dynamics, speed or transients to impress the listener. The whole thing hangs together, and hang together it surely does, with the craftsmanship that Winnie Ho and Jeffrey put into their singing and Roger Wang into his guitar playing.

This album is like my first encounters with Japanese food, which can be described as ‘light’, ‘bland’ and ‘flat’ when compared to our local fare (think char koay teow or nasi kandar). However, as time passed, I started to appreciate that the album, like Japanese food, is about subtleties, balance and texture.

Roger Wang ‘s guitar accompaniment complements the two voices beautifully. His arrangement can be described as sparse, even more so than the first album; but it is so appropriate for the mood of this album that any additional notes may be considered superfluous and any less the whole thing will just collapse.

Winnie Ho outdoes herself compared to her last outing. She is always dependable in her technical prowess but when it comes to emotion, she holds back just a little too much in the first 2V1G outing, in my opinion. It is no longer so here - in track 4 “Trying to understand”, which is about a couple whose love has cooled, listen to Winne at the last phrase where she asks why her man no longer wants to understands what she thinks in her heart, you can hear the wretchedness in her voice and her total surrender to the situation. In track 9 ‘Rucksack’, about a girl hanging onto a rucksack a loved one left with her for years, the memories and the longing she expressed through her voice was simply moving.

Jeffrey is a worthy addition to the trio. His style is less showy but no less effective in conveying the emotional message. I like his solo tracks most – tracks 3, 5, 7. The best is track 5 ‘Looking from Afar’, again about lost love - He beautifully conveyed the picture of a guy who can’t shake his memory of his ex and how his thoughts drift to her time and again in the depth of night.

Want to know how a good hifi system can convey emotion? Listen to this album, if you don’t feel touched by these 2 voices and a lone guitar, you still have some work to do on your system.

How does this second album compared to the first? At the end of the day, I’d still rate 2V1G’s first album higher, but just by a hair. This 2V1G Second Album now stands proudly shoulder to shoulder with its older sibling.

This post has taken up more space than I planned. I’ll do a second post on a few more excellent albums from 2011.

Two Excellent Albums : "Art Pepper Meets The Rhythm Section" and "Trittico" - Part II

This is a continuation from my last post dated February 8th. Now, let me talk about the Trittico album.

This album was made by the illustrious Prof. Johnson of Reference Recordings with Frederick Fennell conducting the Dallas Wind Symphony. Since a wind band is involved, as expected the music is martial, dramatic and even bombastic many a times. Not for a quiet evening, but good for a bit of adrenalin rush.

The title composition alone from this album is worth the audiophile’s money. If you like to demo something that has big dynamic swings, which is complex with multiple musical treads intertwined, then the first movement of Trittico (also the first track on the album) will satiate you. If after that big movement, you still clamour for more, switch to track 3, it is even bigger, more complex, and hits harder.

At less than 3 minutes running time, these movements are short by classical music standard (yet they are fully formed), however, do not take them as to be like the normal audiophile chestnuts – spectacular sound but can be musically bland. These are compositions and performances that have depth. After repeated listening I could still find or learn something new from them.

In fact, the same could be said of all the compositions on this album. After Trittico, move on to ‘Feast Day in Seville’, a transcription for orchestra from a movement in Issac Albeniz’s ‘Iberia Suite’; then onto Edvard Grieg’s ‘Funeral March for Rikard Nordraak’. That is where I am at, and it is just half the album. It will take me a while more to fully explore the other compositions, which include a Symphony and a Variation in 6 movements.

The recording quality of the CD is of the usual high quality from Reference Recordings. Its sound is wide open, with the Dallas Wind Symphony clearly and cleanly recorded. The band is spread out in front of the listener and you can pick out the musical thread played by each band section – the separation is excellent and there is no muddiness in the sound.

There you go, a classical album that is great for both musical enjoyment and hifi listening.

Two Excellent Albums : "Art Pepper Meets The Rhythm Section" and "Trittico" - Part I

The music forms that these 2 albums represent are diametrically opposite of each other. One is of the Classical genre, which is structured, organized, disciplined; the other is Jazz, which is free, improvisational at heart, and relatively raw. I love them both.

Both albums, coincidentally, were introduced to me by friends who visited to listen to my system. Thanks, mates!

Both albums aren’t new, they have been around a long time. The “Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section” album was originally issued in 1957 (I also gathered that the original LP issue of this album is now very much a collector’s item, though there are reissues now). The ‘Trittico’ album was released in 1999.

Let me talk about the Art Pepper album first.

Common to many Jazz recordings from the 50’s and 60’s, the Art Pepper album has an analogue feel to it, the transfer is clean and clear, the sound has good body, is warmish and a little ‘golden’. Like some Jazz recordings from that era, Art Pepper’s solo sax is panned hard to the left channel, while the other instruments, including bass, drum and piano, are panned hard right.

The best part though, is the music making. Apparently Art Pepper had not been playing for a few months, his recording label saw fit to pair him, in short notice, with the rhythm section of Miles Davis’ quintet, as a sort of challenge to him. And the end result of this collaboration is one of Jazz’s great albums.

Art Pepper’s style is unlike my other favourite sax players - John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Cannonball Adderley. He had a more accessible style of sax playing, less ‘intellectual’ and a little lighter. This album, I think, can be enjoyed even by a non-Jazz fan. Just bear in mind that Jazz is more about rhythm than tune, so don’t go around looking for some beautiful, sing-able tunes. Instead go in to enjoy the twist and turns of the solos and the toe-tapping good rhythm. If you aren’t tapping your toes and grooving along listening to this, your playback system has a serious problem with rhythm.

I like particularly tracks 1 and 3. Track 1 “You’d be so nice to come home to” is an excellent example of a classic Jazz piece that has speed, excellent energy and bouncy rhythm. Track 3 ‘Imagination’ is the only slow track on the album, its gently swaying rhythm, the burnish sax tone, the brushes on the cymbals, and the deep double bass notes all make up to a satisfying and relaxing musical experience. From track 5 onwards, I found that the playing is a little similar in style, but all in all, it is still a great outing.

If you are a classic Jazz fan, you should add this album to your collection. If you are not yet, this is a good place to start.

(Part II to come…)

Best Music 2010.

This is the final instalment of our Best of 2010. You could say that I've saved the best for last, after all, all our prized high end audio equipment would have amount to a nought, if there's no beautifully recorded music for us to appreciate!

Most of my musical diet in 2010 is still consumed in the CD format, and some on vinyl(re-issues mostly). As the audiophile music landscape evolves towards hi-rez down loads, how much longer will CD remain as the dominant format? Only time will tell, but as we go along, here are my top 5 favorite music, so happened they are all on the vulnerable CD format, enjoy!


This Linn Super Audio Collection Vol. 4 has become my current favorite reference disc, not only because of it's pristine recording quality, but also musical integrity above all else. It's quite nearly the most complete reference disc available with a wide range of music genre, from girl guitar, female/male vocals, Jazz and various sub categories of Classical music, from choir, solo piano, chamber to large scale orchestra spectaculars.


Jz8 is still my favorite Pop Pop Music release to date. Caters mostly to more matured audiophiles with a taste of Jazz oriented Chinese pop music. Many have complained of a slightly bloated double bass on the recording, but on a well sorted out system, that's not a problem. Tey Cher Siang is a hugely talented young pianist that truly deserves our support. A genuine case of "Malaysia Boleh" at work here!


When ever I play Charly Antonili's Crash CD/LP(yes, I have both! The LP has been recently re-issued) on my system, people really sit up and listen in awe, song after song! Here's a drum kit focused recording that's musically relevant as much as it is an audiophile test disc. This CD will take one's system dynamic and transient handling abilities to the max! Are you sure your system can handle it?


Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, conducted by Eiji Oue featuring Minnesota Orchestra is one of my favorite Reference Recordings. This recording not only captures all the dynamic crescendos of the performance, but also all the tonal beauty & harmonic richness and timbral texture of every individual classical instrument. There's never a dull moment on this CD, as I am thrilled by the roller-coaster like dynamic swings of the opening Non Allegro one moment, yet only to find my self appreciating the instrument's beauty of sound on the next slower Andante con-moto movement. The 24/192 hi-rez down loads version is now available too!


Brasileiro is the pretty and petite Z Yan singing Chinese pop tunes with a twist of Bossa. The music is easy going and certainly easy to like. The recording quality is also Pop Pop Music's best to date. Z Yan is also supported by a stellar cast of excellent musicians, like the above mentioned Tey Cher Siang on piano, Roger Wang guitar, and finally Salvador Guerzo saxophone.

Finally, I'd like to wish all our readers to "Enjoy The Music!"

James Blunt

I think almost everybody is familiar with James Blunt's big hit - "You're Beautiful" (if not, check it out on youtube, the live performance at the BBC is the favourite version of mine). I even have friends telling me that they were so fed up with the track because of its high airplay. Can't blame Mr. Blunt, its catchy tune and simple but effective lyrics made the song an instant hit.

Though I liked that song, I never bought any one of Blunt's 2 albums, until I read the post in the 'Life is a Journey' blog (link at the right hand panel), where Sting - not the English in New York called it the 'Best Love Song of the Decade'.

That post, from a few months back, reminded me of the song again. While browsing for CDs in a music store, I saw James Blunt's second album, "All the Lost Souls", so I bought it. Spinning it in my system and in my car, I found that I could like his music pretty much. So I turned around and got his debut album, "Back to Bedlam", from eBay.

I am definitely behind the curve on this, as both albums came out quite a few years back. Better later than never, I suppose.


I don't quite know which genre James Blunt belongs to, somewhere between pop and rock, I suppose. I found his albums edgier than the norm for pop, and they did not have the saccharine sweetness that much of pop had. That was what appealed to me. The f-word in the middle of "You're Beautiful", a love-at-first-sight love song, was ingenious. These albums stood up to repeated listening, the music quality was high throughout such that I could listen to them from beginning till end. I have been spinning them for the last few months.

The recording quality was pretty good on "Back to Bedlam", the sound has clarity and good body, vocal was natural with little annoying sibilance (though by no means is it an 'audiophile' recording). "All the Lost Souls", on the other hand, was just ok, its sound was just a little flat and fuzzy. Did this have anything to do with where they were pressed, I do not know.

My top 3 favourites from each album are, in sequence:
"Back to Bedlam":
- 4. Goodbye My Lover (yes, I like this one better than "You're Beautiful")
- 2. You're Beautiful
- 1. High

"All the Lost Souls":
- 4. Same Mistake
- 8. Shine On
- 5. Carry Me Home

However, like I said, the rest of both albums were of high musical quality too.

Third Eye Blind

Rock is not part of my usual music diet. However, I am always keen to explore.

A friend at work suggested that I listened to a band with a cool name - "Third Eye Blind". She let me listen to a few tracks from their self-titled first album, I was instantly hooked. In addition to the dark and brooding qualities many rock bands display, Third Eye Blind (3eb) added just a wee bit of that Californian sunlit quality and American optimism (San Francisco is its birth place) to their music, that distinguished it from the others.

I liked it. So I went on to seek out their albums and chanced upon a CD with a collection of their best tracks from their 3 albums, for a total of 19 tracks. I quote the excellently written liner notes:
"The songs that comprise this collection come principally from Third Eye Blind's three albums to date: 1997's Third Eye Blind, 1999's Blue, and 2003's Out of the Vein. Each hot track continues the story of (Stephan) Jenkins' cool refusal to conform. The music is a at root about a singer and songwriter determined to stay in creative touch with his founding notions of freedom."


The recording quality turns out to be quite excellent, and the quality of the music is really high. I have been spinning the CD in my main system and in the car for a couple of weeks since.

This music is great and the melody is infectious. It always perks me up on a slow day. If you have not heard 3eb, check them out. :-)

My Music

A friend recently asked about the music I listened to when I blog about equipment. Hmmm... I thought that would be a good blog entry from me, so here I would like to share with you the CDs I usually listen to when a piece of new equipment got into my system.

There is no rocket science involved in the selection of these CDs. The most important factor is that these are music that I enjoy and worth repeated listening, no point spinning a CD many times if you do not enjoy the music, right? As for sound quality, as long as it is good enough then it is good enough for me :-), you can see that some of them are not 'audiophile oriented', so to speak, especially the jazz and classical albums. Here we go:

Vocal:
From top, left to right
- Rickie Lee Jones: "Pop Pop"
- Shelby Lynne: "Just A Little Lovin' "
- 2V1G
- A Tao's Songs
- Manger compilation CD - the Livingston Taylor's tracks (tracks 11 & 12)
The first 4 CDs also have substantial guitar accompaniment, so they are also very good for evaluating guitar replay.

Jazz:

- Sonny Rollins: "The Bridge"

- Sonny Rollins: "Way Out West"

- Miles Davis: "Kind of Blue"

- Cannonball Adderley: "Somethin' Else"

Jazz music is great to evaluate pace and rhythm, anything that can make me go foot tapping will be in my good book. :-)

Classical (& Instrumental):

- Mozart's Symphonies (Neville Marriner and Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields)

- Modest Mussorgsky's Picture At An Exhibition (Claudio Abbado and London Symphony Orchestra)

The Mozart is sweet and flowy as the Mussorgsky is bombastic :-)

- George Winston - "Autumn" (piano solos)

This is not classical music. It is an excellent solo piano recording though. If your system had any brightness, the piano's high registers will expose it. On my system, this CD plays without brightness only after I warm up my monoblocks for at least 1 hour.

- Beethoven String Quartets No.6 and No.1 (Cleveland Quartet)

- Tchaikovsky and Korngold Violin Concertos (Anne-Sophie Mutter, Andre Previn, Vienna Philharmonic and London SO)

These two are for the strings.

And lastly, something more dynamic:

- Manger Compilation CD

many like track 15 The O-zone Percussion Group's 'Jazz Variants', I personally prefer tack 13 The Yuri Honing Trio's "Walking On The Moon".

- Hugh Masekela - "Hope"

Live recording, great music, energetic and powerful

- The Sheffield Lab Drum & Track Disc

My favourites are the 2 drum improvisation tracks

In addition to these, I also listen to a number of others, some are CDs newly acquired, some are re-discoverery - some current faves are Zee Avi, Youn Sun Nah's 'Voyage', Elgar's "Enigma Variations" and David Munyon's "Big Shoes" on Stockfisch Records.

Happy listening. :-)