Tidal MQA Classical Gems

[Daverz]

32 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

Just listened to this. Agree. Another great recording. Maybe it’s nostalgia, but I still prefer Uchida, but this is right up there.

 

 

You must be pretty young, because my sentimental favorites would be Fleisher and Gilels.

[austinpop]

17 hours ago, Daverz said:

 

You must be pretty young, because my sentimental favorites would be Fleisher and Gilels.

 

Young at heart, at least!

 

Here's another excellent gem. I checked out the Sinfonia Concertante. My go to is still the Perlman/Zuckerman, but this is a fresh performance with excellent SQ.

 

[austinpop]

Another couple worthy of mention:

 

 

[Daverz]

4 hours ago, austinpop said:

 

 

Groovy.

[Norton]

 

OK, so it's only MQA 44KHz and a little known conductor and orchestra.....

 

 

but the Symphonic  Dances  is a great performance, running the gamut from real delicacy  to high drama,  with the SQ to match.

 

Haven't listed to the Bells yet (not a piece I'm familiar with) 

[RJeff]

Every one of the great Everest Stereo albums listed below is on Tidal in MQA. Those of you who read Audio Magazine in the 80s might remember Bert Whyte's reminiscences of the recording sessions. (I learned enough about studio technique to impress the hell out of an old girlfriend who was a recording engineer.)
http://evereststereo.com/ 

[Daverz]

23 minutes ago, RJeff said:

Every one of the great Everest Stereo albums listed below is on Tidal in MQA. Those of you who read Audio Magazine in the 80s might remember Bert Whyte's reminiscences of the recording sessions. (I learned enough about studio technique to impress the hell out of an old girlfriend who was a recording engineer.)
http://evereststereo.com/ 

 

Wow, lots of great listening there.  Thanks!

 

I like Ludwig's Ein Heldenleben (my copy is from HDTracks) more than the usual suspects like Karajan, Beecham, Bohm, etc.  

[austinpop]

3 hours ago, RJeff said:

Every one of the great Everest Stereo albums listed below is on Tidal in MQA. Those of you who read Audio Magazine in the 80s might remember Bert Whyte's reminiscences of the recording sessions. (I learned enough about studio technique to impress the hell out of an old girlfriend who was a recording engineer.)
http://evereststereo.com/ 

 

When were these recordings made? I'll certainly give some a listen.

[rodrigaj]

3 hours ago, RJeff said:

Every one of the great Everest Stereo albums listed below is on Tidal in MQA. Those of you who read Audio Magazine in the 80s might remember Bert Whyte's reminiscences of the recording sessions. (I learned enough about studio technique to impress the hell out of an old girlfriend who was a recording engineer.)
http://evereststereo.com/ 

Thanks for the heads up.

 

Everest Stereo albums were a mixed bag - like Vox. Some were outstanding recordings and some were awful. I am glad to see that some have somehow made their way to Tidal as Masters. 

 

The fun part now is finding them.?

[Daverz]

22 minutes ago, rodrigaj said:

Thanks for the heads up.

 

Everest Stereo albums were a mixed bag - like Vox. Some were outstanding recordings and some were awful. I am glad to see that some have somehow made their way to Tidal as Masters. 

 

The fun part now is finding them.?

 

According to Wikipedia:

 

Quote

Collectors have determined that the only Everest LPs worth having are those that were recorded and pressed while Belock was at the company.^{[citation needed]} Identifying these records is relatively easy: the first issues sport a silver/turquoise label (with the earliest of these having a wood dowel on the outside edge of the inner sleeve). The silver paper used on these covers usually becomes brittle and deteriorates with age. The second label is a purple mountain. The entire classical catalog of Belock Everests is relatively small, fewer than 100 LPs.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everest_Records

 

[firedog]

The Everest Bartok Concerto for Orchestra/Stokowski, Houston Symphony is very good. I think they were on to something with those 35mm audio recordings.

[miguelito]

On 4/6/2018 at 6:41 PM, Daverz said:

I don't have the MQA service, only the "lossless" service, but I'll often see duplicates of Warner stuff, like

 

https://listen.tidal.com/album/32966322

https://listen.tidal.com/album/74351532

 

Is one of those MQA?  I don't see any difference between them in the web interface.

 

...OK, figured out that I can already set quality to "Master" in the desktop app.  Unfortunately Airplay is stuck at 44.1k. 

If you have hifi (aka lossless) you have MQA.

[rando]

11 hours ago, austinpop said:

 

When were these recordings made? I'll certainly give some a listen.

 

They are not modern recordings by any means.  Everest high resolution digital catalog can be found here underneath the brief description of their history.  As noted, the recordings were as varied in quality as the master chosen and care given to any specific release.  Visual cues do exist in most cases if you can decipher them.

[Norton]

17 hours ago, RJeff said:

Every one of the great Everest Stereo albums listed below is on Tidal in MQA

 

I love these in MQA, all duly in my Tidal favourites, esp the various Copland works, Strauss, Manfred.

[austinpop]

Thank you guys for exposing this treasure trove of Everest tape transfers! 

 

I tend to favor modern recordings, but the couple I sampled so far (Sibelius 5/Finlandia and Scheherazade) have incredible SQ for a circa-1959 recording.

 

As for finding them, kudos to Roon 1.5. I just searched for "Everest tapes" and it pulled up the relevant list. After that, the "MQA" watermark on the album thumbnail was the last crumb to follow. I added all the interesting ones to my library and will be savoring them over the next few days/weeks.

 

[Norton]

Not sure you’ve got them all there, I can’t see Shostakovich 6,  Billy the Kid, Appalachian Spring or Tribute to Vaughan Williams.

 

You can also try searching under London Symphony  Orchestra (or see their entry in the MQA  master list  at Meridian Unplugged ).

 

The various DECCA analogue classics are really worthwhile in MQA too (e.g. Ashkenazy Rachmaninov, Kertesz Dvorak, Maazel Sibelius)

[austinpop]

This is only the first screenful. And some I did not add to my library, as they're not my cup of tea.

[Norton]

Fair enough.  I was adventurous (for me) and added Rattle/Schoenberg to my library, but haven’t listened  yet.

[rodrigaj]

@austinpop Thanks for the Everest Tapes search trick and...you don't need Roon to find all of these Everest albums.

 

Just type "Everest Tapes" in the search function of the Tidal Application and they all come up. 

[austinpop]

2 minutes ago, rodrigaj said:

@austinpop Thanks for the Everest Tapes search trick and...you don't need Roon to find all of these Everest albums.

 

Just type "Everest Tapes" in the search function of the Tidal Application and they all come up. 

 

Agreed. I just happen to use Roon.

[Norton]

The Reformation is one of my favourite symphonies.  Really enjoying the pared-back performance and excellent SQ from this set:

 

 

[Daverz]

On 5/23/2018 at 1:23 PM, austinpop said:

Thank you guys for exposing this treasure trove of Everest tape transfers! 

 

I tend to favor modern recordings, but the couple I sampled so far (Sibelius 5/Finlandia and Scheherazade) have incredible SQ for a because it's a circa-1959 recording.

 

 

FTFY.  That was the Golden Age of Stereo.

[Mark Dirac]

On 4/6/2018 at 9:12 PM, austinpop said:

All of these recommendations are from Tidal in the US.

 

 

Reason for recommendation: everything! Excellent recording, SQ, and a sparkling, spirited performance that is quintessentially Gustavo!

This is pretty awkward to find (at least in UK). Here's the link:

 

https://tidal.com/track/79414491

[austinpop]

34 minutes ago, Daverz said:

 

FTFY.  That was the Golden Age of Stereo.

 

Agree to disagree? They're good - for their age.

 

But the best modern recordings - like the BIS Vanska Sibelius cycle, for example - leave these recordings in the dust.

 

[austinpop]

I spent a very pleasant few hours sampling the treasure trove of Everest albums on Tidal in MQA. Thanks again to @RJeff for bringing these to our attention.

 

I "grazed" about a dozen albums, and I completely agree that recording quality varies from album to album. I still stand by my assertions that these recordings, while outstanding, cannot escape the technical limits of the time. For me, this is most evident on crescendos. Perhaps it's because I favor orchestral music, but it's on the crescendos (or should I say crushendos) that these old recordings show their limitations.

 

To be fair, I find the best of the Everest tapes on MQA to be head and shoulders above the much vaunted, but supremely disappointing (to me) Mercury Living Presence reissues on SACD.

 

Of the dozen albums I tried yesterday, here are a few standouts for SQ.

 

Outstanding

 

 

Excellent