Franz Schubert – Symphony no. 8 ‘Unfinished’ (15-10-08)
Ludwig van Beethoven – Symphony no. 2 (16-10-08)
Felix Mendelssohn – Symphony no. 4 ‘Italian’ (17-10-08)
César Franck – Symphony in D minor (18-10-08)
Gustav Mahler – Symphony no. 1 (19-10-08)
Antonin Dvorák – Symphony no. 8 (20-10-08)
Camille Saint-Saëns – Symphony no. 3 ‘Organ’ (21-10-08)
Jean Sibelius – Symphony no. 2 (22-10-08)
Anton Bruckner – Symphony no. 8 23-10-08
Johannes Brahms – Symphony no. 2 (24-10-08)

You can download them here.

This means that you can instantly download and then burn an exact duplicate of what you would purchase in a store. You previous quality naysayers should now be satisfied.

Currently they have only launched in the UK, so you have to pay in pounds.  Also, they seem to be a tad more popular then anticipated: the site frequently is spitting out “too many users” type messages at the moment. This means you might have to wait until late-at-night GMT before being able to explore and download stuff properly.

Despite these initial hiccups, this is great news for the classical music world.

UPDATE: it looks likes you get a whole bunch of free music just for signing up, although most of these tracks are individual movements it includes a complete performance of Saint-Saens symphony No. 3.

So far I have listened to the ones I know the best: 6, 5, 9, 7. Only once each so far, as it all just got downloaded about an hour or two ago. Aside from noticing a bunch of stuff which apparently had been completely obscured by my ears during the myriad previous symphonic listens (key changes and modulations seem way more obvious, for example), it’s striking how similar certain sections sound to the (Beethoven) piano sonatas. I don’t yet know if that’s due to Liszt deliberately orchestrating them like that, or if it’s pure Beethoven shining through… or if it’s me trying to be clever. I’ll try and keep you posted on that one. Hopefully it’s the middle one.

Which contains, beyond the very sexy cover photo, the 15th symphony of Shostakovich arranged for six musicians, three of whom are percussionists. Kick arse. Here’s an example from the cheerfully sly third movement, first a Haitink conducted rendition of the orchestral version:

And here is the same section performed by the sextet:

They particularly seem to relish those impudent little glissandi at the end.

I love hearing pieces arranged for completely different instruments: aside from letting you distinguish all kinds of things that are either masked or you are accustomed to in the original versions, there is something purely delightful about listening to a familiar piece played in an unfamiliar way. Although, you purists out there might disagree…

You can buy the CD online over at DG, if you’re interested.

]]> http://classicalconvert.com/2008/06/rearranged/feed/ 4 http://classicalconvert.com/2008/04/friends-dont-let-friends-use-itunes/ http://classicalconvert.com/2008/04/friends-dont-let-friends-use-itunes/#comments Wed, 16 Apr 2008 05:01:15 +0000 Me http://classicalconvert.com/2008/04/friends-dont-let-friends-use-itunes/ The subject of where to get one’s non-CD music from (because that’s the way we roll these days) has come up several times before. In the last edition Dennis commented on his surprise that more people hadn’t left the mostly still DRM encumbered and low quality lands of iTunes for the emerald pastures of Amazon (which offers 256Kbps audio, DRM free). Over at Electronista today they have a post on exactly that issue.

A recent industrial research survey by the NPD group shows that only 10% of Amazon’s users are converts from iTunes, and iTunes also only holds 6% of the total market share of music sales in the US (compared to 19% for iTunes, 15% for Wal-Mart and 13% for Best Buy) which is actually a decrease in relative market share from 6.7% last spring.

Maria commented last time that she though the average iTunes user probably was just buying a couple of songs they heard on the radio, and likely doesn’t care about 128Kbps bitrates. I think that’s bang on. The thing about Apple is that everyone and their mom recognizes the brandname instantly. I would hazard a pretty whopping guess that the majority of people do not distinguish between “iPod” and “MP3 player” or “online MP3 retailer” and “iTunes”, let alone caring about the difference between 128Kbps and 256Kbps or AAC vs. MP3. They just want to get a copy of “Soulja Boy” they can play on their pink iPod Nano.

In fact, since most of the music purchasing audience probably doesn’t give a crap about technical specifications at all, it’s not terribly surprising that more companies haven’t pushed ridiculously-high-quality (specifically, lossless) digital recordings. The increase in users this would attract versus the expenditure is probably negligible for outlets which make most of their money from mass-market sales.

On the other hand, this is probably why DG is very smart to have 320Kbps audio available. Classical listeners are stereotypically extremely concerned with audio quality, and a classical store offering higher quality recordings will poach a significant fraction of classical downloaders from other sources. I would guess the same is true for jazz as well, another genre with more than it’s fair share of audiophiles, but since I can’t stand jazz I dunno if there are any specialty high-quality retailers out there.
In the end, there has to be a financial incentive for a company to offer high quality recordings, and currently there is no widespread public demand for this. Joe Consumer is far more concerned with having a pretty interface than downloading DRM free music. I suspect this will only change when either Amazon becomes a real threat to iTunes, or when seamless transferral of music to relatively high quality reproduction systems (see: not listening through crappy earbuds) is commonplace. Or perhaps music will get dragged along with the demand for HD video transmissions.

Here’s to the day when we can download lossless HD music in glorious 50.1 surround sound. Until then I am pretty content with 320Kbps.

We just need the quality gap to close before our favorite polycarbonate pitted media altogether. That is, stores need to hurry up and start selling lossless audio files as an option. Otherwise, everyone is going to get so inured to the unquality of low bitrates that we’ll probably all start talking with compression artifacts littering our speech. Or something equally not-quite terrifying.

And while you wait for that, here she is serenading a cafe:

Click here to view the embedded video.

There is something distinctly bizarre about classical music videos.

The author of the original article (which is itself a response to this piece comparing popular and classical pieces) suggests things such as multiple annoyance tiers (of course, this isn;t what the author calls them) for concerts. That is, different rooms in which people can “attend” a concert performance – such as one in which the audience is free to drift in and out and talk amongst themselves, albeit only up to a certain decibel level (god knows how that would be policed).

I’m all up for natural selection of ideas, so someone should give that one a go… but I’m pretty suspicious of it’s potential for success. I suspect it would end up as a bunch of people standing around, not really discussing the piece, and than leaving after a few minutes because the whole experience is kind of uncomfortable.

The next idea discussed is even more bizarre: that there should be an alternative means of attending the concert which consists of sitting alone in a booth with a pair of headphones on and some sort of video screen. There would be controls to pause, rewind, etc. Now… how is this different from just watching a DVD of the performance? In your own home? A much better implementation of this idea would surely be just to provide high-quality video and audio versions over the internet, for a small price. I’d love it if the major orchestras regularly did this.

I think the concert hall listening experience is distinct. You are experiencing the music without any pauses, and perhaps more importantly, without the ability to pause it. You necessarily relinquish your control. No replaying is allowed, you simply have to experience the music as it comes to you. Contrast this to recorded music, in which you can skip sections, or replay movements or fractions of movements as the music moves you to do so. These two approaches are complementary, and trying to shoehorn one into the other seems to be tricky, and probably less than ideal.

What I would much prefer to see is not only the orchestras putting their performances up online, but also making it so that these recorded performances can be discussed and analyzed by the devotees. For example, how about a system in which people can comment along the timeline of the video, meaning that each section can be separately discussed.

Warning: he says fuck, so you might not want to watch at work.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Although music is less limited in this kind of circumstance (after all, if you’ve got earphones in you’re directly hooked up, but there isn’t an equivalent input for vision, we’re still waiting for retinal laser projection) it’s still a related problem, what with the low bitrates, over-compression, horrible earbuds, etc. Plus, David Lynch kicks arse.