damians78s Blog

On Wednesday I was privileged to attend the launch of the CHARM online sound archive. Professor Daniel Leech-Wilkinson introduced the presentation, talking about the focus and background to the project. Then Rob Cowan talked us through a selection of the things he’d liked on the archive, including performers like Mark Hambourg, Yovanovitch Bratza, Norman Allin, [...]

Well, my ISP sorted out the problem with mediafire, so I was able to update my site last weekend. This includes, as promised, a selection of recordings by the soprano Lilian Stiles-Allen, Hamilton Harty’s recordings of Schubert’s Rosamunde music (including both overtures), Henry Wood’s electrical recordings of the Unfinished Symphony, from 1926 and 1933, the [...]

I was tempted to express surprise that a month and a half have gone by since my previous post. But, given that I teach 16 to 19 year olds, and this was the half term leading up to exams, things have been somewhat hectic.
On Saturday May 8th, we went to see “The Gift of Music: [...]

On Monday we attended the London première of Rufus Wainwright’s opera “Prima Donna”. Its world première was at last year’s Manchester festival, in a production where Wainwright clashed with the director. This London run at Sadler’s Wells was a new production, with a new director.
It’s an accomplished piece for someone who has never written an [...]

I’ve once again updated my website, with the focus on Mozart.
I acquired another copy of the Columbia recording of the Jupiter Symphony conducted by Dan Godfrey, and have therefore produced a new restoration of this wonderful performance. There is a substantial overlap between sides 2 and 3 of the first movement, so I’ve included both [...]

I’m still not managing to post here as often as I would have liked. I probably never will.
Among CDs I’ve listened to recently, I finally got round to Mark Elder’s recording of Gerontius, which was highly enjoyable, though I’ll still go back to Sargent with Heddle Nash! Somm’s reissue of Boult conducting Walton’s First Symphony [...]

I’ve gone for a cellos and French works theme for the latest update to my site:
Franz André conducts Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals (1952) and Ravel’s second Daphnis and Chloe suite (1950). The Ravel suffers some crumbling of sound in climaxes, but otherwise sound is good. The double bass player in the Saint-Saëns isn’t as [...]

Earlier in the week I completed the latest update to my website, with a typically mixed bag of recordings.
The first is an unusual recording by the wonderful British baritone Dennis Noble, and is not listed in the discography of Noble which appeared in The Record Collector in 2004. The record label is a private EMI [...]

I had in mind that this blog would be rather more frequently updated than my website, and would include things I’ve been listening to. It’s been a bit more haphazard than that, unfortunately, but I hope to improve on that!
I listened to yesterday to the new Naxos Historical issue of Bartok’s American recordings – highly [...]

It’s taken me a little while to complete the first update to my site for 2010. I’ve taken the chance to look both backward and forward. Harking back to some of the anniversaries of 2009, there’s Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture and orchestral versions of the Spring Song and Bee’s Wedding, all conducted by Henry Wood. There’s [...]