Synaphaï: Gene Gaudette's Blog

… as my blogger pal Scoobie Davis would say. The light at the end of the tunnel is visible at last, and within the next couple of weeks you can expect to read my reviews of:
• a significant Sviatoslav Richter release from Budapest Music Centre (plus another coming from Musical Concepts [full disclosure: yes, I'm the reissue producer]);
• the first installment of an important reissue series focusing on the "New York School" from Wergo; and
• the best no-holds-barred portable digital audio player I've yet heard.

I've just learned via Stephen Baggaley, a Facebook friend in Australia, that one of my favorite conductors, Sir Charles Mackerras, died a few days ago. I have a pile of his recordings on Vanguard, Hyperion, Telarc, RCA, and at least a dozen permutations of EMI, but the sole concert I saw him conduct was memorable — an incandescent performance of Berlioz's L'Enfance du Christ with the Orchestra of St. Luke's (the soloists included the incomparable and still sorely missed Lorraine Hunt Lieberson). Australian ABC will be broadcasting a tribute to the maestro Saturday (late Friday in North America -- link to their mp3/m3u stream here).

I'm about halfway through listening to Budapest Music Center Records' marvelous 14-disc collection of live recordings by piano titan Sviatoslav Richter. A couple of reviewers have not been too kind to this set, and I think they need to clean out their ears.

In celebration of the American Independence Day weekend — and because it was toward the top of the massive "yet-to-be-played" pile — I fired up a Naxos CD release of symphonic music by Roy Harris played by the Bournemouth Symphony conducted by Marin Alsop (catalogue number 8.559609).