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Review by krisjan August 21, 2006 (5 of 5 found this review helpful)
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Performance: Sonics: |
It amazes how good the sound is from these ~45 year old recordings. Have we really progressed all that much in recorded sound since then? Some might say we have regressed - and I would be hard-pressed to argue. That said, this recording is not perfect (few are IMO - see the forum for a liveley discussion on this topic). To wit, Heifetz's violin is too prominant in the mix. The timbre is excellent, however, and reveals his great skill as a fiddler. Other than that, I don't have a complaint about the sound. It is really good.
The performances are classic in the best sense of the word. There have been many good recordings of these works over the years but none better than this one. Sargent's conducting is sympathetic with Heifitz's whims. Get this one to get a glimpse of a bygone era in performance and sound.
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Review by Windsurfer August 23, 2006 (5 of 6 found this review helpful)
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Performance: Sonics: |
krisjan just a few days ago (August 21, 2006) reviewed this saying:
"It amazes how good the sound is from these ~45 year old recordings."
I agree! Given the age of these, the sound is truly amazing. But I take issue with Krisjan when
he asks: "Have we really progressed all that much in recorded sound since then?" and then suggests that we may have regressed!
As wonderful as these are, in giving us a flavor of the art of Heifetz, it seems to me that most of the multi-channel DSD recordings, and many sourced as PCM that I have recently acquired stand head and shoulders above these for sounding more like live music performed in a real concert hall and much less like an electro-mechanical experience than these superb souveniers if you will, of the violinistic wonder that was Heifetz.
Here, the orchestra is recorded with a big hole in the middle such that it sounds like two separate bodies one on the left and one on the right. There is incipient overload distortion, never truly obnoxious as in some others of this series (such as the otherwise superb Monteux Franck Symphony), but it is noticable. Unless you make allowances for its age, this is far from outstanding sound quality.
So buy these for the best sound you will ever hear from Heifetz, but don't be deluded by any notions that recent PentaTones, Harmonia Mundis, Tudors, BIS, Telarcs, Sonys, RCO Lives, new BMGs and about a dozen or more of others aren't far, far exceeding the sound quality of what is on this disc.
My ratings are (to borrow a phrase from PN), six out of five for performance and 2-1/2 for sound, down from 3, because the master was recorded so as to make his violin seem seven feet wide!
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