Having time off work ill, though depressing and annoying, does mean that I get to listen to a little more music than usual. So I’ve continued to make headway in EMI’s Vaughan Williams collection (now on CD23), and I’ve also listened to the first half of the Zenph re-recording of Rachmaninoff playing his own works. It’s an interesting concept, analysing original piano recordings digitally, to recapture all the nuances of the performance including touch, pedalling etc. These are then performed on a modern piano and recorded using modern techniques. In listening to the recordings I found they had a similar effect on me to piano roll recordings – often convincing, but sometimes showing a slight stodginess in performance. I’ve also listened to the first disc of Howard Shelley’s 4th volume of Clementi sonatas, and it’s proved as delightful as the preceding volumes. I’ve also enjoyed the John Ireland 70th Birthday concert, issued by the LPO, from the 1949 Proms, with Boult conducting, and the live Don Giovanni from Covent Garden in 1962, with Siepi, Evans, Gencer, Jurinac, Freni and others, Solti conducting.

I’ve also been restoring a few LPs over the last couple of weeks, as they’re often a bit of light relief compared to restoring 78s. The two I’ve worked on most recently are an LP of Rameau excerpts conducted by Nadia Boulanger (almost ready for the website now), and Rousseau’s “Le Devin du Village”, a seminal opera in its day, and satirised in Mozart’s Bastien et Bastienne.