“Britten’s Orchestra” = BENJAMIN BRITTEN: The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra; Sinfonia da requiem; Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia from “Peter Grimes” – Kansas City Symphony/Michael Stern – Reference Recordings multichannel SACD RR-120SACD (HDCD on CD layer), 60:46 [Distr. by Allegro] *****:
I already raved about this one in it’s standard CD version back in December, saying it was unfortunate it wasn’t in hi-res surround. It’s only the third SACD from the longtime audiophile label based in the San Francisco area. And the music and performance thoroughly deserve the added clarity and detail offered by the SACD format, as well as the surround sound. Although the CD packed just about the maximum fidelity one can achieve with that now-near-obsolete format by using HDCD encoding, and I have a deck that properly decodes that codec, the SACD of course does it much better.
Don’t know what else I could say to add to my first review, except that everything sounds even better, and the concluding Storm from Peter Grimes is just about the most dramatic musical storm that has ever been recorded. Bravo everyone concerned with this magnificent production, and especially Reference for recording this fine American orchestra on this and their earlier album “The Tempest.”
– John Sunier
Don Henley – Building The Perfect Beast – Interscope Records
Interscope Records releases a vibrant re-mastered 180-gram double vinyl of Don Henley’s enduring solo album.
