I had lunch with Paul last week and he spilled the beans on TP29 and 30.
TP29 is coming out shortly (according to Dan) and is a Reference Recording album, Mozart Piano Concerti 21 and 24 played by the late, great, pianist Eugene Istomin in the mid '90's with Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony. It was a record of the month at Stereophile.
TP30 is a brand new release of the two Brahms String Sextets, played by the recently disbanded Cypress String Quartet and guest viola and cello. They recorded it at Skywalker on tape this year. It is in the initial stages of being edited.
Both albums are around 60 minutes each, so the tapes will be quite full.
I never heard Istomin, who died in 2003. I have several recordings (including the HRx version of the Mozart Concerti). He played with Isaac Stern and Leonard Rose in the Stern-Rose-Istomin piano trio on Columbia, back in the '60's. One bit of trivia - he married Pablo Casals's widow, who has outlived both of them.
I know the Cypress Quartet and their engineer, Mark Willsher, who taught me how to use Pyramix software. He invited my wife Pearl and me to spend a day with them at Skywalker Ranch when they recorded the Barber String Quartet a few years ago. The Cypress had played in my wife's concert series at UCSF. One interesting coincidence. The violist of the group, Ethan Finer, looked familiar to me. Turns out he and my daughter learned Suzuki violin together 30 years ago when they were both little kids.
Larry
