Tape Project Forum
Tape Project Albums => Tape Project Albums - general => Topic started by: classicrecordings on August 04, 2008, 02:04:56 PM
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Could those of you that have received this tape please post your impressions of it.
I'm sorry if this has been done before, but as you can see, all the previous posts have disappeared.
Thanks
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Another in what sometimes seems like an endless progression of masterpieces by engineers Wilkinson and Reeves. The Tape Project release reveals how a seamless collaboration between performers and recordists make magicians of all of them. This is a well known and broadly loved recording of Albeniz's Suite. Certainly a title that serves many of our requests for not only the best sound, but the finest issue of a revered performance. There is astonishing detail to be heard. On several of the pieces there is percussion that I've never heard before on the vinyl. And sure, this is your typical audiophile thing to say. But it isn't just that I can hear it now, it's that I can hear everything about the two or three strikes of palms hitting skins. I'm not sure what kind of instrument is being struck, but I think I can describe it in enough detail that, if the need were to arise, I could tell someone how build one.
There's plenty of impact and big moments to clean the cobwebs out of your speakers but when things get quiet I just about hold my breath as the the sound draws your attention away from the sweeping vistas and into a small drawing room where a pair of dancers negotiate ownership of of the wooden floor. It's very difficult to not be transported to the place and time that Albeniz envisioned as he wrote these pieces.
A wonderful selection that has layer upon layer of places to visit.
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A wonderful recording to be sure. I am doing a comparison tonight between the TP release and The Super Analogue Disc LP version. As good as the LP is played back on my Walker tt via the Bluelectric Magic Diamond cart, the resolution, soundstage and large dynamic swings of the tape have it all over the LP version I have. Granted the LP is a reissue of the London/Decca recording, it still makes a very fine showing of itself. With Kenneth Wilkinson at the controls, it couldn't be anything else.
The tape fleshes out nuance and detail in the music - like the castinets in the first half of the work that you can point to their exact location in the far back right corner of the stage. The string work that at times almost like a Baroque era ensemble, playing in a small room, to suddenly bloom into the large venue in which this was recorded. Bass lines have impact, but they have body as well. The drum whacks start and stop with no overhang or boominess. The bells (or celeste), I'm not sure which it is, sparkle with life and air.
A winner, any way you slice it...