Re: Gould Bias

[kimmoor@mindspring.com (Kristen Immoor)]

At 6:17 PM 2/19/97, Alun Severn wrote:
>Then a week or so back I also bought the GG/Laredo set.
[Viola da Gamba/Violin Hrpschrd]
>I'm afraid the
>Grumiaux set hasn't been out of the case since. Although I had grown
>familiar with them through the Grumiaux set, it was the GG set that
>*revealed* them to me. And now I know I shall nver want to hear another
>version.

        Really? My Gould/Rose & Laredo set sounds like hell in a box. I am
going to have to assume that it's because I cheaped out and bought the old
Columbia edition rather than the Sony, but really the mastering and
production sound terrible. The violin fuzzes out the mid range, the sound
breaks up altogether in some places; it's really just awful. The gambas
aren't quite as bad, but the violin pieces are so atrocious, I find myself
avoiding the set altogether. If the Sonys are really that much better, I'll
just have to upgrade. Similarly, I'm about to be fed up with my Odyssey
Beethoven & Mozart Sonatas. The price was absolutely wonderful, but in some
places the sound is totally unprofessional. At first I thought I could live
with it because the overall sound quality is much more "immediate" than the
Sony 'super bitmapped' re-releases. I don't know if anyone else feels this
way about the Odyssey discs, it's hard to describe, but to me they just
feel so much warmer than the Sonys, even if they aren't as crisp. Still, it
would be nice to have a recording where the sound didn't flicker in and out
of sides of the headphones...


______________________________________________________________________________

"Yeah, well uhhh, I can relate to what you're sayin', man, but like, not
with any negative vibes, yuh know, cuz' as far as I'm concerned, when
you're dealin' with uh, middle Mozart there, you go mainly for the
beats..."      -Theo Slutz