SF Symphony Mahler Project Will Be on Vinyl – Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony plan to release a limited edition 22 LP set of their seven-time Grammy award-winning Mahler Recording Project in April of next year. The discs – over 18 hours of music – will be 180 gram virgin vinyl, only 1000 copies will be sold, and the boxed set will retail for $749. The set will include an exclusive bonus 45 rpm disc of MTT and pianist Susan Graham performing the piano version of the Mahler Rückert-Lieder. A hardbound book of liner notes, bios, texts and archival photographs of Mahler is included. A standard CD box set of the complete Mahler Recording Project will also be issued in 2011. A pre-order with a $75 deposit to the Symphony’s eStore at sfsymphony.org/mahlervinyl secures a copy of the vinyl set. The first 250 sets will be autographed by MTT.
LA Opera “Recovered Voices” Series on Blu-ray & DVD – Conductor James Conlon leads a new series of videos on the Arthaus Musik label, distributed by Naxos. The “Recovered Voices” series is devoted to works of composers who were affected by the rise of the Third Reich. Placido Domingo – General Director of the LA Opera – points out “The striking beauty and incredible diversity of these works has made their neglect during the last eight decades of one of the great injustices in music history.” The first releases will be a double-bill of Alexander Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg and Viktor Ullmann’s Der zerbrochene Krug, as well as Walter Braufels’ Der Vögel. The suppression of these composers and musicians by the Nazi regime caused the greatest single rupture in what had been a seamless transmittal of German classical music. Conlon has devoted himself to extensive programming of this music in North America and Europe. The LA Opera series was inaugurated in 2007 with a $4 million contribution from board member and philanthropist Marilyn Ziering.
Dirac Dimensions Auto Audio Technology – The Swedish firm Dirac Research is a world leader in room correction and soundfield synthesis. They have launch Dirac Dimensions – the most advanced digital signal processing solution ever engineer for automotive high fidelity, which is now available in the 2011 Bentley Continental GT. It uses the car’s existing speakers to deliver the advantages of soundfield synthesis, including multiple-input multiple output control of the entire soundfield. Frequency response, spatial attributes, impulse responses, and the acoustic summation of all the speakers are optimized jointly to deliver the most realistic audio reproduction possible. Based on results obtained with the Dirac Dimensions Measurement and Design Tool, engineers are able to analyze the acoustic properties within any car, and to then “draw” an optimal listening environment – placing virtual speakers at desired locations and defining other target parameters. The result is balanced and accurate sound seemingly decoupled from the physical speakers and extending beyond them in every direction.
Apple Buying Into Sony? – Sony experienced a surge in its stock prices in Japan due to speculation that Apple might use some its $55 billion cash reserve to buy into the struggling consumer electronics company. Analysts say that an Apple acquisition of Sony could make sense while giving the U.S. company a direct line into the living rooms of millions of people around the world, as well as access to a content and TV company. Due to the tremendous success of its iPhone, iPod and iPad devices, Apple is currently sitting on a multi-billion dollar cash pile – one of the largest in the world of any technology company. Other observers said that Apple has never paid more than $500 million for an acquisition, and they doubt they would do anything as far-reaching as buying Sony.
