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Try and get a free copy. It's on the Decca label (which has been the graveyard of many a fine recording).

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Yes, I hear they're trying to boost efficiency by having the accountants delete recordings before their even made.

What's odd is that Universal Music owns them too. I am sure that the accountants want the Universal shares to go up, up, up.

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Rest of it is on the same level. I would put it up against any other version out there. Makes you wonder what other gems might be tucked away in the archives over in Russia... For instance, could you imagine Kondrashin in the Tchaikovsky Symphonies? Or Schumann? Oh, the mouth waters...

I am currently listening to kick ass live Brahms 1 by Kondrashin and the Conertgebouw which Philips put out a number of years ago on CD... for about 15 minutes. Bit of a boomy recording from Dutch radio, but still great stuff.

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I just wish the accountants would realize that there's some stuff in their catalogues which a small number of people would buy if only they'd realease it. It wouldn't be big money for them, but they could make a few bucks by releasing such "collectors' items" to smaller labels, and not have to mess with it themselves.

There is a lot I'd buy off all three of the UC labels, but the accountants are interested in hundreds of thousands, as opposed to thousands or mere hundreds. Their dream is a crossover artist that goes platinum and has a billion dollar world tour. Like a good Renee Fleming or an even more commercial Yo-Yo Ma.

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At least the combined BMG/Sony is showing signs of life-- Not only in the issuing of the 'Living Stereo' stuff on SACD, but I also read somewhere recently that they were planning on giving up on the crossover stuff, because it never amounted to the big bucks they thought it would. They need to realize that classical isn't big money, but it can be a small source of very reliable income.

Classical, with its small core of devoted listeners, is pretty much the opposite of the music industry today. They want to hook people with a three minute single and turn that into a $13 CD buy. There is no way that they can do that with classical. First, the listeners are far too sophisticated, and, second, the CDs are often more expensive. There are not that many people who can drop $50 on a Parsifal or $25 on a Mahler disc set when the mood strikes them.

Sony is exploiting their back catalog to their advantage. DG, with the Classics series, is doing a good job. However, the Decca classics series seems geared to popular recordings. The only Decca Classics disk that genuinely surprised me was the '57 Walkure act 3 with Solti. I warrant that was designed to cash in on Flagstad.

Mahler is in a bad way in this setup, as he is a composer for those who have progressed well beyond Beethoven, Mozart, and the occasional opera aria. Mahler recording vary so widely and Mahlerites are so picky that it leaves the back catalog goons in the lurch. Gramophone's recommendation does not translate, despite DG's recent series, into sales. As I look at the situation, I think a private selection label, with special order runs of select albums is the way to go. I think that has been discussed here before. The packaging wouldn't be very fancy, but having a CD of the master tapes of a great recording has its advantages.

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Shhhhhh, don't give them ideas!

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I think they have already thought that one up for themselves.

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I wish Universal had done more with their burn-to-order service. They offered quite a few OOP titles on there. I bought one and was quite pleased.

Scott

I never even had heard of that service! What was available? Is it still operational?

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Well, being run by universal they basically had access to their back catalog. it was a pilot program that they have since discontinued, which is a shame. I had picked up a Levine disc of some modern composers on DG. came with a photo copy of the back and front cover. Wish something like this would start up again.

Scott

PS - it was called iclassics On-Demand

What a pity that they don't still have that service, and the other companies as well. I can think of so many things that are no longer in print that I long to be able to acquire. Perhaps, if the technology gets really cheap, they will resume doing it again. Or perhaps as the net evolves, these things will be downloadable in cd quality (uncompressed, or maybe in zipped files that could be unzipped). That would really be a way to get me to buy music online.

On July 26, Telarc will be reissuing the Slatkin Mahler 2nd on a stereo hybrid SACD. The original recording was made with the Soundstream digital system, which was at a slightly higher resolution than standard CD, thus the signal had to be compressed to fit the CD bit rate. Although these early Telarc recordings sounded good on CD, the SACD reissues I've heard so far do open them up a bit more naturally, so I look forward to listening to this one. It was always a good performance, some of Slatkin's finest work.

Interestingly, the digital signal was stored on a tape which deteriorated over the last twenty years, so they had to bake the tape to stabilize it and extract the digital data. In addition to remastering it, they also re-edited the performance, based on the original written notes they still had. This will be fun to revisit, with improved sound, too.