J.A.W.

They have just repackaged the earlier sets; none of these have been remastered, which means that the Bessie Smith set will have the same awful sounding heavily no-noised masterings as the 2CD-sets from the early 1990s.

I really hope UMG will not take over EMI, swallow Mosaic in the process and merge them with their Hip-O imprint. I generally don't like UMG/Hip-O's masterings and much prefer Mosaic's sonic output.

I'm told that major companies are often unwilling to license recordings for a set if there are other majors involved, and that the licensing cost is prohibitive.

My advice would be to keep the original CDs.

Thanks. I think you mean Wally Traugott

That doesn't prove anything. Who mastered the original discs? Why don't you do the research and come up with the answers instead of almost always criticizing others? That (criticizing others) is all you seem to do here.

Erskine Hawkins would be a good follow up. I was thinking 30s Earl Hines would be a good choice too. I suppose it will be pre Wardell Gray Hines led a big band from 1928 to 1948. Wardell Gray was with Hines during 1943-1945. I was aware of that but I'm wondering if the "choice" years that would comprise the box would exclude the WG period No idea. Why don't you ask Mosaic?

See the Mosaic site (scroll down) - the mastering of the set was done by Kurt Lundvall.

I'm guessing the upcoming Mingus got precedence over the Webb.

Erskine Hawkins would be a good follow up. I was thinking 30s Earl Hines would be a good choice too. I suppose it will be pre Wardell Gray Hines led a big band from 1928 to 1948. Wardell Gray was with Hines during 1943-1945.

Not in the United States. I'm not sure about Japan, but I've never heard of a CD release there.

What instrument does he play the Haydn sonatas on?

what would she actually play on that Haydn box? 't says "period instruments", but ignunt me doesn't know what that means with respect to Haydn, sorry. Auf Deutsch: Cembalo, Clavichord, Hammerklavier und Orgel. She plays all these instruments on her various CDs, but she doesn't play the organ on the box with the complete piano sonatas. That box is excellent if you want to have all of Haydn's keyboard sonatas, but to my ear only the later, mature works are interesting.

Thanks for your response, Mike. I'll pass on the Haas discs. Cochard's François Couperin - the earlier disc - is indeed wonderful.

Yep, Pre-Bird.

Am now listening to Céline Frisch's interpretation of the Goldberg Variations; so far it's great, an excellent MomsMobley recommendation!

Inspired by the high praise of Hantaï's playing by some on this board I listened to several sound samples of Hantaï in various works over the last few weeks and found that I can't get used to his playing, it sounds "quirky" to me.

For once I agree with Soulstation1. Whatever one thinks of the stuff Lon is selling, derogatory comments are out of line here.

Not quite, the set included "A Night in Tunisia".

Wow, completely opposite to my reaction. I read this in a matter of days while I was visiting my Mom in June. I didn't like the racial ID system (but got used to it pretty quickly) or the dropping of "the" before proper nouns (more annoying) but never felt that the writing was otherwise terrible or in anyway difficult to follow. Jeff could you favor me with a quote or two that you think epitomizes this problem you had? I'm probably just being a curmudgeon - the writing is usually not as bad as I indicated. This morning, when I read my post from last night, it seemed overstated. But there are enough examples of muddled writing and incorrect use of punctuation that I was really put off. I'm not going to spend a bunch of time looking for examples, but here are a few quickly-found examples of what I consider bad writing, all from a few pages of Chapter Six: Not just bebop's but Powell's time was flying, and that is reflected in the title of the first piece that he chose to play, one in which he tries to catch up, all at once, to everything that he has been missing. For the uniqueness of the event, not Brown, Roach or Granz remembers anything of the unprecedented circumstances or Powell's dramatic response to them. What Granz heard was more likely stride piano; that was the style that Powell had first learned from his father, and then from watching Tatum and the other after-hours pianists, and had, latterly, dashed off phrases of when a member of Cootie William's orchestra. In each case I know what he means (sometimes after reading the sentence twice), but I doubt that any of these sentences would have passed muster with a good copy editor. Neither would Pullman's refusal to capitalize Catholic, as in the name of the Christian denomination. There was a passage or two (which I'm not going to search for) where the small "c" confused the meaning. The nonstandard nomenclature, dropping the definite article "the," the sometimes poor sentence structure, the sometimes missing punctuation - the cumulative effect of all of these just really exasperated me. But maybe that's just me. I'm a curmudgeon when it comes to writing. Judging by the examples you posted I think I'll pass. I have trouble enough reading English as it is and I don't have the patience trying to figure out what the author means; I don't need any more headaches.

If they took (some of) the material from the Evidence CDs, they also "imported" the heavy noise reduction on those discs

Definately. (why do about 40% of people think that's how you spell definitely?--actually, based on a Google comparison it's only about 10%) Don't get me started on misspellings many people think are correct... And I'm not even talking about the abuse of apostrophes in verbs and plural.

Yes, Hans, I plan to get a region-free dvd player for Christmas. Just askin' - in my experience people tend to forget about details like that

Amazon UK Marketplace sellers do NOT subtract VAT from their prices, even for non-European buyers. They do not operate within the same set of rules that "Papa" Amazon does. And yes, based on the US shipping address that you use, any Amazon site knows that you are in the US. When you order from Amazon UK (or DE or FR) proper, VAT is automatically subtracted out from the price listed on the website. For example, if you order an item listed at 10 GBP, your price (as long as your shipping address falls outside of the European Union) would show up as 10/1.2 = 8.33 GBP. Note that VAT percentages are different on the other Amazon Euro sites. Marketplace sellers in the UK are considered to be selling second hand goods, even if they're in 'new' condition, and there can be no VAT on second hand goods because there is no value added in them. MG Not quite true. Under certain conditions VAT is payable on second-hand goods in the European Union. So where's the value added? MG The fact that stuff is being traded is seen as added value; labour is invested. Not my idea, but those are the rules. I changed my post, too MG The content of my posts remains the same, I only corrected a couple of errors.