David Ayers

Steve's point is just that 'jazz' and improv is dominated in terms of record consumption by its past. Personally I don't care so much about that as I don't think that recordings make any money for contemporary artists - it is just much more about being out there. They are out there, audiences are often small, so we all carry on. Apart from anything else, when you see these people and get to know some of them your sense of wanting them to thrive grows.

Nobody has said any of that! Steve just thinks it is better to support living music. He was asked like what, so he answered.Who, now, defines themselves like a 60s teenager by musical taste? What really matters is what goes on in the art, not in the consumer. But art needs understanding, advocacy and audience. So let there be a little advocacy. If I could suggest one shift in the implicit framework it would be from the consumer as monadic judge and petty patron - king of the psychological world - to experience - to say no more about what and how this might mean. In any case, the appearance of debate here is not about changing the mind of the discussants, it is about allowing other readers to shape a view. Be happy with old records and knowing better than those who differ - the 'elite' - others may choose to move on.

I guess if you were interested in the question of musical meaning you'd have worked your way through Adorno and Dahlhaus by now, for starters. I thought you hated art-for-art's sake? In this case meaning can be read as giving a purposive shape to scored music, as we are accustomed to, say, in Sibelius. The Weinberg I have heard on Spotify - ther is quite a lot - is the product of rehearse-record sessions for collector's labels and I don't find the passages where the musicians have really got hold of it and made it bloom. So the notes are there but the sense of shape and purpose which might eventually bind people to this music is not. Sadly that sym no. 12 is not yet on spotters. If you are wondering what it 'means' there is a small clue in the title...

@bev: the judgement is in the making of music - it is all judgement - it is only judgement - @lon: of course, people can listen to what they like - but so what? the people who sit outside a process will never shape or contribute to it. All Steve is suggesting is that there are living and unfolding arts which people could attend to - some people don't like modern art - that defines them, but not the art. PS that wasn't my list - I chipped in to defend Steve

Collecting records - which I do - does not influence much what music was, is, or can be. It does create an illusion of agency-in-consumption. Sociologically interesting. Curiously gender specific. But why does Steve's (unranked) list of people who interest him earn a rebuke from you?

To you evidently it has none. Probably puzzles you that the Soviet authorities destroyed every copy they could find. So is there any piece by Weinberg you prefer or are they not to be ranked?

Oh, I get it. I just don't line up behind your choices and projections. Good - because i want you to buy everything by York Bowen on Chandos, Hyperion and Naxos - get off the sofa and start downloading now...

I guess I'd be grateful if somebody just picked one Weinberg piece to play in concert and really showed that something could be made of it. The completist approach of labels like Naxos and Chandos points to the world of collectors. That said, NEOS have also been doing Weinberg which at least suggests the cultural cachet which those other labels lack. Anyone care to recommend one Weinberg Symphony and say that they find it as meaningful as Shostakovich 8? Music is about pure sound? Ha! Happy Birthday to You.

@steve: I guess if people aren't interested they aren't. I don't know whether record collectors are the audience for contemporary music. I just like a bit of life, myself. Chilly in there with the musty LP sleeves and the 'slightly worn' jewel cases. Brrrrrr. @bev: music is all about judgement - that is how it is made - you still don't get it.....

I'm a big fan of Shostakovich, particularly the string quartets and the later symphonies. I also have a soft spot for the violin and cello concertos. I imagine I'll like Weinberg, as I get to know his work. You might not. Whatever Shostakovich's limitations, his works generally have meaning. I don't find that thread in Weinberg, though it may be there.

People should read that link to Hoffman all the way through. It doesn't address all the issues though. Do we want to hear what 'Rudy' wanted us to hear? Or do we want to hear what the musicians might have wanted? Or just what we want which, after all, might matter most? At the heart of the issue of 'what we hear' is the question of balance, and we start to run into the issue that small jazz groups may have in general never really resolved the question of what they are supposed to sound like in what real or imagined acoustic space. It is NOT a matter of what the individual instruments 'really' sound like - perhaps surprisingly, and just as well for Rudy's piano - nor is it a matter of forensic detail of resolution. It is a matter of the balance in the hearing, feeling or imagining of the music as a whole, where in fact the music is not a whole but where it is willed and wished to be a whole. This is true of all music, and in small group jazz the problems of balance are notorious given the differences of timbre and volume between the instruments. For this reason we are always dealing with a certain invention of a jazz sound in the recording/mastering/playback processes, and for that reason models of faithfulness to the 'tape' or to the intentions of various parties (including listeners) don't actually get to the nub.

http://universalmusic.it/jazz/artista/discografia/?ida=307054 It just says there is a booklet with complete discographical information. Fingers crossed.

Thanks for posting.

Not costing you too much in this case though

Really I like the BN Works the best, but there is only a percentage of titles I have actually 'replaced'. Mostly I have just been grateful when reissues became available, in whichever series. I am debating whether to get some replacement SHMs or just go for (less good) titles I still don't own. A lot of the BN titles have paled on me over time, which is one reason I don't care to invest too heavily in them any more.

I've got much less interest in historical boxes than others BUT Böhm is a familiar DG staple and Hogwood one way at least to do the Mozart syms (though they are all in the Boehm box). Ansermet a draw for repertoire? Maybe, but some of it rather faded - ? And Richter? If I would ever buy a piano box maybe this one... Do you really want Elias??

There's also a Hogwood Mozart at a good price.

I notice the Boston/Ozawa Mahler cycle has snuck back in at a budget-y price. Probably not for me but at this price some may wish to add it to the pile.... http://www.amazon.co.uk/Symphonies-Ozawa/dp/B00CSDCC8A/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1391503654&sr=1-1&keywords=mahler+ozawa It is one of those Italian Universal items, I believe. Did we discuss their Bohm edition, by the way? Another bargain http://www.amazon.it/The-Symphonies-Box-22cd-Bohm/dp/B00BK40R1M/ref=pd_sim_m_8 I mean let's face it, hats off to universal.it for their jazz and classical sets. We didn't discuss it here, I don't think, but there is a Mengelberg set which is also one of theirs. I'm quickly scouring the website to see if we missed anything. There's a Chailly set from 2012 that I don't think we discussed. Anyone spot anything else?

I do watch Hollywood movies but I never heard of this guy, but his death is being rammed down my throat by the BBC and one of the national papers slavishly reproduces a claim from his camp that he had been clean for 23 years. Right. Culture industry marketing 'storm' (i.e. blip)..

Not really. The stereo master is mixed from the session tapes. Otherwise nothing could be 're-mastered' because the master would be the session tapes which obviously can't be redone. I'm not an expert, but I was told that mastering engineers like Kevin Gray, Steve Hoffman, Vic Anesini and Mark Wilder (to name a few) are using the original session tapes as sources for their masterings where they can. The term "remaster" in this case means that they went back to the source to create a new mastering; the term is used to distinguish the new mastering from earlier masterings. Yes - the original session tapes are not the master - so I am wondering in the case of the Impulse Coltrane which is missing - the session tapes or the original masters. Or both. 'Remaster' these days is as likely to mean the digital version of an analogue master as it is to mean any remixing from the original tapes, though in the case of 2-track in-the-mix stereo edits this distinction may be blurred (and hence the slippage with which session tapes become referred to as 'masters').

Not really. The stereo master is mixed from the session tapes. Otherwise nothing could be 're-mastered' because the master would be the session tapes which obviously can't be redone.

Here's what I got on a quick search on spotters for more non-historical versions. It includes two all-boy versions plus the Chinese version on BIS. Place to start, anyway. Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde

Wrote a longer post but lost it. Upshot was, has anyone followed new recordings in the last 20 or 30 years? I know I haven't, apart from Urmana/Schade/VPO/Boulez. There seem to be a lot.

Of course they have. Not sure why this is a question. Same in the US. Aren't I right in thinking that a lot of US RVGs, for example, were made using the borrowed tapes from Toshiba because they are in better condition? Isn't the superior condition of some tapes stored in Japan at least part of the reason that so many Japanese issues turn out to well? Question of vocabulary. I've always taken it that the master was the version taken from the mix prepared from the original tapes and is not to be in any way equated with the original tapes or even with that master mix. So in this case have the original studio tapes been lost, or the original master mix (if different), or the original master (taken from that mix) - or all of those -? Never quite sure what people mean.

Who has been singing these roles recently? The last London performance (which I missed) featured Christianne Stotijn and Burkhard Fritz.