David Ayers

It is actually quite irritating, this set, but....

Late last night a set of complete Haydn Quartets went in my amazon basket for 30 UKP. Now may be the time, I thought. This morning, 73 UKP. Now may not be the time, I thought.

The original LP is awful!

I've been holding off on boxes for reasons of time, but the DG Strauss Complete Operas proved irresistible after I auditioned it on spotters. It maybe made a difference that I have little Strauss on CD. If you want librettos do not apply! This is a magnificent set. Not quite a 'bargain' by the standard of this thread but most definitely a bargain by any other standard.

This kind of data is very closely guarded! I would like to know about top-selling jazz artists and labels. I did read that in classical, which is a bigger field, that the best-selling non-crossover recording artist is Cecilia Bartoli, whose albums sell in total 200,000-500,000 each. Her albums are quite heavily marketed and elaborately packaged, and each has a carefully researched and developed concept. I wonder how top-selling jazz compares to that? I also know that some small labels are funded at a loss by their owners and that at the very bottom end some titles only sell 100 copies. We also know from some years ago that Blue Note were deleting reissue titles which sold less than 500 copies annually. In that Blue Note case, you are talking about very cheap reissues that were regularly marketed as a series and sold in-store, so probably they are a benchmark, of sorts. I am also told by another label owner that CD sales are in constant decline - which we know, of course, and which is why some have given up completely. I am curious about ECM which is the one major label seeming to survive and thrive, but they never talk numbers. Always interested to hear more, and of course we say CDs but downloads are pretty important to revenue so we should mention those too.

first review I've seen here http://www.londonjazznews.com/2014/02/cd-review-jon-irabagon-trio-it-takes.html That sort of review - by shallow stylistic comparison - kills things for me. Makes me disbelieve the whole sector.

Excellent! I've never understood why CD is the benchmark, though. CD and CD-quality files are described as 'lossless' but - they are lossily mixed down from 24 bit recordings and remasterings.

It is Ezra Pound-style rhetoric. Just a style. There is no 'behavior' against anyone on the board.

'Moms' is a proven musical talent of long standing.

I don't see the problem with robust aesthetic discussion. In fact I think it is a good idea.I am more interested in things that move me along than in things that confirm my 'taste', which is just a kind of weird comfort zone that - in the end - I am not comfortable to be in. And 'Moms' is not speaking from nothing - far from it.

Trying to figure out why the names on the left are all of living people and those on the right are not. It seems an awkward comparison which begs all sorts of questions about designating as composers people whose music is very rarely performed outside their own direction. But. if you are being serious about absolute comparisons (the Brotzmann x-tets are just FUN groups) then - is there a Braxton composition that in your opinion matches in absolute compositional terms Pli Selon Pli or a Mitchell composition that equals ...explosante fixe... ? Not 'sound world', which as I think you know is a trivialisation of questions of formal composition and artistic purpose, but in absolute terms. Is there a piece by, say, Henry Threadgill, which you consider to have the same compositional novelty and accomplishment, and the same place in the history of music, as Schoenberg op. 9? Just a question, mind you, but one invited by the comparison to concert music. Which is Hemphill's 9th, so to speak - ?

Toyed with both and decided against. I own recordings of most of the French repertoire and with Debussy and Ravel I don't want to spoil hearing them in concert by over-exposure. Richter, I know much of that repertoire and am not a piano fan. Plus these days it takes me a month to get through two or three CDs. So I'm keeping it real. Berlioz too - we had Sir Colin's Berlioz, then Gergiev's Berlioz - I need a rest, though I'm itching to hear Les Troyens in concert again.

Good prices on Richter and Ansermet at amazon.co,uk http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00GYHSYW4 http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00DT2322E

Yes. Oh - wait - no....

Bit of a derailment, but Holloway's essay can be found here http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/26th-august-2000/41/music

What mortal can resist the yawn of gods?

Bev - we know, it's fine. That is why I have been 'doing' Weinberg - because several recording labels are proposing him to me, so I take that seriously. I am hoping to find something really outstanding which will justify all the recording activity - I yet may. But. You are mistaken about the questions of collective imagination which are involved in the development of interpretation - modern scores really need a great deal to be brought to them, and that is a matter of imaginative investment, not only by the interpreters - and there is only so much time, and so many claims on the collective attention..

Well, we'll see whether a real platform for Weinberg develops outside of Russia and, I guess, Poland. My guess is not, based on what I have heard. That's all I am trying to assess. We'll see. His opera The Passenger deals with Auschwitz. See Alex Ross's discussion here http://www.therestisnoise.com/2010/09/weinbergs-the-passenger.html . Maybe too much extra-musical meaning for you, Bev. Ross asks the right questions and wonders whether, despite his sense of Weinberg's epigonism and the less than inspired nature of many works, there is a counter-narrative yet to emerge in which Weinberg's ideas were being adapted by Shostakovich.

In fact the first says the disc 'is full of first class interpretations'. Put those reading-glasses on!

FWIW the Spotify holdings I have been working through are here Weinberg

True and much here in London too. But this wasn't about contemporary music, just a question about how much there is in Weinberg, and whether existing recordings justify the wave of hype.

Get that chip off your shoulder!

I listened to it, then judged. Why do you assume others act and speak in bad faith? And you think you are better worked out on the philosophy of modern music than Adorno? Good luck persuading people of that.

My source for that claim is, I think, Fay.