An orchestral tour-de-force with the Abyss
One my most deeply rooted musical passions are large orchestral compositions, because I feel that they provide a
complete, holistic experience, where the mind, the soul and the body are involved at the highest and more direct, visceral level.
I still use to attend live concerts (pandemics allowing), although much less than in my younger age alas, and in this sense going back to a hifi system is always a humbling experience to some extent, and one would argue that this is even more the case with headphones, which is of course true, but ...
There are some very special recordings that – thanks to the combination of the music itself, inspired musicians, and especially talented recording engineers – are able to capture the sense of the event, its scale, its venue in such a magical way that makes it possible to travel time and space so to speak, and therefore should be treasured as the most precious jewels.
Mercury Living Presence and RCA Victor Living Stereo series, while dating several decades back and not as silent and polished as modern audiophile recordings, do provide that feeling of liveliness and ... presence to the music that grabs me in a very visceral, immediate way. Soundstage is usually very wide and deep, and the unfiltered background / ambient noise from the venue actually provides an added value to the realism of the experience.
The AB-1266 reproduces the scale of these recordings and their rawness in a surprisingly convincing way, for a headphone, like no other system I have tried.
The Mahler symphonies series with Vänskä / Minnesota for BIS (as the one with Fischer for Channel Classics) are among the most transparent, tonally rich large orchestral recent recording cycles.
Here, the impressive dynamics of the recording is made even more challenging by the complex, massed passages where all the orchestra (and the chorus!) play together, which is difficult for a hifi system to render without collapsing into a confused, strained sound. The Abyss – of course supported by the DAVE and the AIC-10 – follows these relentless dynamics swings with ease, keeping a seemingly effortless readability to the music and a volume of air around the music which lets you fully release and surrender to the tsunami of sounds.
But, if you really want an adrenalin overdose, you can always rely on the outstanding Reference Recordings series with Eiji Oue and the Minnesota Orchestra. These are transparent, huge sounding, crazy imaging, bass cannons recordings, with little to no compression, where the AB-1266 conveys the dynamics slam, the physical impact of the deepest bass drum octaves and the shock waves of the tympani in a fashion that makes your upper body shake, as unreal as it may seem.
An orchestral, emotional tour-de-force indeed!
