J.A.W.

Sorry to hear this. My condolences. I wish you the very best for the future.

Forgot to mention Clifford Curzon, although he recorded only a couple of sonatas. His recordings of the Impromptus and Moments musicaux are magical. One of the great but underrated pianists of the 20th Century in my view.

Richter is indeed excellent. Imogen Cooper recorded the later sonatas twice. Her first cycle is very good, haven't heard the second one. Radu Lupu is good too in my opinion, and so is Alfred Brendel, who recorded the later sonatas at least twice; his playing is an acquired taste, though, many people hate his interpretations.

Why would any intonation problems be much less on the earlier set?? I'm assuming the intonation problems are related to advancing age. They're not necessarily age-related, I've heard young string players with intonation problems. You posted the statement in your earlier post as a fact, but it's just an assumption.

Why would any intonation problems be much less on the earlier set??

It's a great set, one of the reference recordings of the Beethoven string quartets. It's been OOP for ages; this one could be either a reissue or one of those CD-R reprints. I'd check with the seller before buying.

I got the first two albums (Spirit in 1968 and The Family That Plays Together in 1969) when they came out and still like them. Never cared for their later stuff.

I've never been that impressed with Ansermet's interpretations and his orchestra, l'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.

In my experience you can go back; I uninstalled a later IE version a few times, only to find that an earlier version had reappeared on my PC.

Thanks to my bank (!) I found the solution: they advised me to add the site's address to "extra" -> "compatibility view settings".

Seconded. Let's hope it won't be as bad as what happened to the Philippines.

Posting pictures and quoting posts with IE11/Windows 7 is still not possible. When I try to post a picture, the browser freezes immediately. I'm using Firefox 25.0.1 as an alternative, but not being able to use IE11 is a nuisance.

Not anymore, the recording is now owned by Universal.

The versions I have are The Seasons (Die Jahreszeiten) by John Eliot Gardiner, the English Baroque Soloists, various singers and the Monteverdi Choir (Archiv 2CD-set) and The Creation (Schöpfungsmesse) by Richard Hickox, Collegium 90 and various singers (Chandos). They're both on my sale list, as religious works are not really my cup of tea. [edit] Gardiner recorded Die Jahreszeiten twice, both for Archiv. His later recording is often preferred.

I think it was.

Just noticed this thread. All the best and I hope your wife will have a full recovery.

Kevin Gray's "solo" masterings are excellent - he did Analogue Productions' John Coltrane impulse! hybrid SACDs, to name but a few. Gray's Cohearent Audio: http://www.cohearent.com/; his comment on loudness: http://www.cohearent.com/a-note-about-cd-loudness/

Thanks. The volume levels of the Hoffman/Gray hybrid Blue Note SACDs are very low and the masterings are very "polite" or laid-back. They could have been a bit louder and I prefer the more "direct" Alan Yoshida masterings on the Audio Wave Blue Note XRCDs, which are excellent.

I was wondering about that too.

Sad news.

U.S. residents usually don't pay tax on small packages from overseas. They just store what you ordered and from whom and when on some NSA hard disk drive.

U.S. residents usually don't pay tax on small packages from overseas.

Er ... how many more smilies would one have to insert to make it clear that is is not a matter of criticising but just of poking a little fun? That's why I said "implicitly or otherwise"; whatever you want to call it, it was criticism.

I think we should stop criticising moderators, implicitly or otherwise. We all know by now that they can never get it right...