I didn’t get round to blogging it, but I updated my website www.damians78s.co.uk about a week ago.

From time to time, the faults or flaws in my restorations of 78s or LPs force me to revisit the transfer in question. In this case, my previous transfer of Walter Süsskind’s late 1950s Pye recording of Handel’s Messiah was hampered by the poor quality LPs I worked from. I’ve since acquired a rather better set, and I’m working on restoring this recording once more. Frustratingly, on my first restoration, I neglected to make a note of those areas where the pitch was a problem. For example, the last section of “But who may abide”, beginning at the final Prestissimo, needs to be slowed down by 2.5%, presumably the result of a poor edit in the original recording.

I also have a number of Daisy Kennedy sides to work on, thanks to Cheniston Roland of Violinland, and my own collection. I hope to get all of these recordings onto my site within the next few weeks.

On the listening side of things, I’m steadily working through the complete Brahms set from Brilliant Classics, now enjoying his many choral works. I’ve also listened to the first of Malibran’s issues of Mengelberg’s 1944 Paris live recordings – thrilling performances, though the sound has lots of room for improvement