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mauidan
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Myles B. Astor
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BobM
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So who is going to pick up this list now and keep it up to date?
mep
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Unless we can get a world-class medium to channel HP and have HP's picks from the grave, I would have no idea. By the way, the best mediums all seem to come from NY so maybe Myles can set up a session with the Long Island Medium or Kim Russo.
sharkmouth
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mmm... could be an Amy Winehouse & Jeff Buckley in the works :woot:
FWIW, I have all of them. Four or five selections on Harry's list came from me.
Me, too. I started back in the mid-70's and have all the records that ever appeared on the list. There were 600 records all together, some of them are no longer on the list. There were some really hard ones to get - The Penn State Glee Club album probably was the hardest. I didn't see it on the list. There were a few that made one appearance and then HP reconsidered and took them off. The most famous was the Mobile Fidelity Beatles Box which appeared and then disappear.
A neat story is that for my Decca book I did extensive interviews with several of the old timers at Decca and have become friends with some of them.
If you look at the first two listings on the TAS list - the Best of the Best Classical, you will see the first one is the Lyrita SRCS109 Arnold Dances. Decca engineered all of the stereo Lyrita recordings and John Dunkerley did that one. I told John about that recording and how I have used it as one of my reference recordings and he found the session sheets he did and gave me a copy of them. They are reproduced in the book.
The second one is the Decca HEAD 6 Gerhard The Plague, which was engineered by Ken 'Wilkie' Wilkinson and Mike Mailes in DC with Dorati conducting the National Symphony. IIRC, Mike said that it was his first session in the US. One of the National Symphony players at the session told him that RCA made some recordings as good or better than the Decca recordings. He mentioned Witches Brew and one or two others. Mike told me that he was very happy to tell the fellow that Decca had recorded those albums under contract for RCA and Wilkie had done most of them.
This list looks like it may be 15 years old (and not from the November 2014 date). So the recordings marked with a dagger are not new additions to the list.
Also, if you are looking for reissues that are on the list, particularly the RCA Living Stereo, I would recommend that you check out the reissues that Chad Kassam is currently doing. So far (and he is doing many of the RCAs on the TAS list) IMHO his reissues are superior to the Classic Records reissues, particularly the 33 RPM ones. The 45 RPM reissues that Classic did are much better than the 33's, in general, but Chad's are equal or better than the 45's in the 6 that I have.
I could go on and on, but I won't. I did rip my entire TAS collection onto 192/24, declicked, but can't distribute most of them because of copyright issues. Some of the pre 1964's are in public domain.
Larry
Myles B. Astor
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This is another album that was on HP's list in the early days (IIRC around #8) and for some reason fell off. It is a blockbuster and will test the mettle of any system (it'll give those subs a good workout). Plus the music is really interesting.
Amazon.com: Yazukazu Amemiya: Yasukazu Amemiya: Summer Prayer; Monochrome Sea. Morton Feldman: King of Denmark.: Music
One of my favorite HP stories was when I brought Emerald Forrest over to his place. HP looks at me with his typical scowl and asks, "why did you bring this piece of shit over?" I told him humor me and just put it on the table (that consisted of at the time of ML26 (?) amps and ARC SP10 preamp along with the Goldmund Reference table, Koetsu cartridge and IRS Vs. Now we know that HP wasn't the most mechanically minded (and Jeff Goggin, his equipment guy at the time was at the Summer CES) after nearly blowing my eardrums out when he dropped the needle on the record without muting the SP10 finally got the record playing. After his pants legs stopped flapping in the breeze, HP turns to me and says where did you find that album? Left it with Harry and he added it to his list but of course no attribution (as with the other albums I turned Harry onto).
Amazon.com: Yazukazu Amemiya: Yasukazu Amemiya: Summer Prayer; Monochrome Sea. Morton Feldman: King of Denmark.: Music
One of my favorite HP stories was when I brought Emerald Forrest over to his place. HP looks at me with his typical scowl and asks, "why did you bring this piece of shit over?" I told him humor me and just put it on the table (that consisted of at the time of ML26 (?) amps and ARC SP10 preamp along with the Goldmund Reference table, Koetsu cartridge and IRS Vs. Now we know that HP wasn't the most mechanically minded (and Jeff Goggin, his equipment guy at the time was at the Summer CES) after nearly blowing my eardrums out when he dropped the needle on the record without muting the SP10 finally got the record playing. After his pants legs stopped flapping in the breeze, HP turns to me and says where did you find that album? Left it with Harry and he added it to his list but of course no attribution (as with the other albums I turned Harry onto).
puroagave
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The 'British' RCA living stereos always commanded the highest prices back in the day, and its no wonder, the sonics were among the best. The others that come to mind are the Ansermet Ballet box, gounod/Faust, the fistoulari recordings, power of the orchestra and witches brew among others. the readers digest rachmaninoff/earl wild box is one of the biggest sleepers of a piano recording ever put to tape.
I have some of the recent APO living stereo releases, afaik Bernie mastered the first series of Classic reissues w/ SS gear and I agree with you, maybe its a tube vs SS thing but the APO releases are more 'vibrant' for lack of a better word. I also think they're cut at a higher level and thus sound louder.
puroagave
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Summer prayer is very good, i got a copy based on your reco. I'm not surprised Harry fell for Emerald Forest, there are/were many awesome film scores and recordings of film music that would make any list, JGH would often refer to it as "the only classical music written today." the 'wilkie' sessions with Gerhard are well known and been on HPs list since the beginning. Ying Tan is bringing them to the forefront--on 45 rpm vinyl no less--where they belong. Ying has a super collection of film music, he turned me on to a bunch when i'd make the trek to his apartment, this was well before Classic records when he ran Pacific Vinyl.
One of the problems with Chad's list of RCA reissues is that that 'British' RCA's are missing. My understanding is that currently the licensing is very tricky. After 10 years from their original RCA releases, the 'British RCA's' reverted back to Decca. Decca then released many or most of them in their cheaper Eclipse or even cheaper SPA series. They actually sound quite good (even though they were solid state releases) and are still dirt cheap compared to the original RCA's. When Hobson and Tam released their reissues they were able to get the rights for those titles from a combination of Polygram (which owned Decca) and BMG (which owned RCA). However, all the mergers have changed the equation. Decca is now part of Universal and RCA is part of Sony and getting both to agree has proven to be very difficult. I remember reading that Chad was able to get the RCA master tapes for his reissues. However, RCA doesn't own the Brit releases, they are all owned by Decca - Universal and are probably in Germany.
Larry