High-end home stereo for cheapos
So audio CDs are pretty much useless by now, except as an initial transaction medium. I'll assume the reader pulls his music from a hard-drive as FLACs (or whatever)—originating from audio CDs or SACDs—and uses Foobar2000. (If you are using iTunes or other anathema, go take an ice-cold shower and flog yourself repeatedly with a plucked chicken until you come to your senses.)
Now, here is how to get champ sound for under $700, not including the computer. You will need the following two devices (or the like) and speaker cables to connect them.
1. Amplifier: KingRex T20U USB. This amazing Class D (read: small in size and not powerful enough to tear a house down but producing great sound) has a decent DAC built into it, and so can be fed a digital stream via USB. They call it "Class T" because the chip (though it is not a digital amp!) is made by Tripath.
Caveat 1: Make sure the "Wave" (and on some systems, also the Main out) volume level for your computer's operating system is on the maximum when using this amp. This is based on my unseemly experience with Windows XP; maybe on one of those cloying Apple abominations it is different — I'll never know. The reason is that decreasing volume digitally amounts to reducing bitrate, thereby reducing quality. The fact that the "Wave" slider alters the digital signal is an insipient1 feature of the plug-and-play drivers used by this amp.2.
Caveat 2: This amp uses banana plugs (e.g. these).
6moons review: http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/kingrex2/u.html
Official site: http://www.kingrex.co.uk/t20u_amplifier.html
Audiomagus (store): http://www.audio-magus.com/product_p/109103.htm
2. Speakers: JohnBlue JB3
6moons review: http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/johnblue/jb3.html
Audiomagus (store): http://www.audio-magus.com/product_p/109201.htm
Josef Bulva
The Czech pianist (b. 1943) made some fantastic recordings (now out of print) before his career was tragically cut short in 1996 by an accident—he slipped on ice, mangling his left hand on broken glass. According to the Josef Bulva Society, he (at least partly) recovered after 13 years, and gave a handful of concerts in 2009.
The same Society released a ridiculously expensive (EUR 220) 7-CD selection of his recordings, available on Amazon.de. The CDs are clumsily embedded in a huge (coffee table book size) book that won't fit into your bookshelf unless it is a gun cabinet. The book production is aptly slipshod (JPEG compression artifacts and pixelation in images, default system fonts, etc.), giving it a quaint Eastern European look and feel. Some of the recordings suffer from clipping and mediocre production (though some are decent), and the CD pressing quality is wanting. Less weight in paper and more recordings of the master of pedaling would have been better. Nevertheless, I recommend this triple-priced collection—much can be learned from this supremely meticulous musician. And If you manage to get a hold of his RCA Chopin recordings, you'll be set.
The tracklist is here. The book includes the run-of-the-mill biographical notes on the composers, two panegyrical pieces entitled "The Josef Bulva Phenomenon" (Guy Wagner) and "Aspects of Interpretation" (Ivan Parik) and an interview with Bulva (by Klaus Seidel).
Here is Bulva with Chopin's Scherzo no. 2 in from 1987 (not the Scherzo#2 recording of the aforementioned set). And here is the first movement of the 2nd Sonata, and the 3rd of Martinu's extraterrestrial Sonata. (All in mp3; here's foobar.)
Sokolov plays Rachmaninov 3rd
This is Grisha Sokolov, flanked by Gilels' cowlick:
He does not perform with orchestras anymore, as he was never satisfied with the result. None of his collaborative concerts and only a handful of solo recordings were committed to plastic. The nonesuch from Petersburg, however, performed Rachmaninov's 3rd, rigged, at least thrice: with Ollila (SRSO), Gergiev ('89 Mariinsky), and Tortelier ('99 BBC SO), according to Lykhin. These recordings, like many of his recorded but unreleased concerts, circulate the net in under-bitrated MP3s . I would cough up some serious sovereigns to obtain a decent, non-mp3, version of the EPIC Tortelier recording, and I can barely afford a happy meal. (At least I was told this is the Tortelier one; I am referring to the recording with the audience unrestrainedly applauding after the first movement). In any event, here it is: Rachmaninov, Piano Concerto No. 3 with Grigory Sokolov, Tortelier/BBC SO. (Click "request download ticket", then "download".)
þe olde Bruckner & Wagner T-shirt
Of course you want your own Bruckner-obsequiously-shaking-Wagner's-hand T-shirt.
It is a silhouette by Otto Böhler, taken from Werner Wolff's Anton Bruckner Rustic Genius. To print this, download this TIF, open it in Photoshop/GIMP/whatever, and use the TIF to create a layer with a silhouette of Bruckner & Wagner in your own choice of color. The background can be white if you intend to print using an iron-press. Note that if the shirt itself is not white, the color in the PSD should be lighter than the desired result. The color will be a composite of the printed-ink and the shirt's dye.
From the Preface:
While I was studying law at the University of Berlin and pursuing music under the instruction of Engelbert Humperdinck, I heard the first performance of Bruckner's Ninth Symphony under the direction of Arthur Nikisch. I wrote in my diary: "I am overwhelmed. It makes me suffer. It works in me and on me with the power of a catastrophe of nature. The rhythm of the clarinets at the end of the First Movement over the inexorable organ point on D will never cease haunting me."
Inexorable indeed:
[...]
Shostakovich 3×3
And here is Bashmet/Muntian with the Viola Sonata.
From the Grove (in 'Posthumous reputation'):
Unlike that of many composers, Shostakovich's reputation with the musical public has grown steadily since his death, fuelled by post-glasnost' revelations about the society in which he lived. By most conceivable measurements, he has become the most popular composer of serious art music in the middle years of the 20th century.
[...] The doctrinaire rump of the Western avant garde never became reconciled to Shostakovich's importance, although some who started in that camp have at least come to recognize the multi-faceted complexity of his music. On the other hand, natural conservatives in Russia, Scandinavia, Britain and the United States acknowledged the influence but generally failed to grasp the underlying complexities of tone. Those complexities could only have taken the shape they did under the unique coercions of Stalin's Russia. As the most talented Soviet composer of his cursed generation Shostakovich was uniquely equipped to transcend those pressures, and as such his achievement is unrivalled.
Also, interesting is the summation in Prokofiev's entry:
A large number of the works that are free from political professions have a firm place in the international repertory, and he is rightly counted one of the major composers of the 20th century. He was not a great influence on younger generations of composers, unlike Schoenberg, Berg and Webern, Stravinsky, Bartók and Messiaen – except in the Soviet Union, where Soviet-trained musicians of a whole generation took their guidelines from either Shostakovich or Prokofiev, raising the achievement of one or the other to the status of a philosophy of life, and passed on their stylistic features to those who followed.
