A personal selection of Pristine Audio's finest releases of 2006 by Peter Harrison
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"With our historic releases I believe we can excite the listener - provide a 'wow' factor - in two ways. First, by releasing a transcription and restoration of a recording that's audibly better than any available up to now. And second, by bringing back into circulation a lost treasure - of composition or of performance. My five choices demonstrate, I believe one or both of these in abundance. And they are all recordings that I'll come back to, many times."
I'd come to know this piece intimately through restoring the Starker/Bogin performance (PACM042), and this one, made 20 years earlier provides a fascinating contrast in interpretation and performance style.
How could I not choose one of our Peter Katin releases? Although he told me that he "didn't really like" the music, you'd never guess it.
And as to what Peter Katin can still do with music that he does like, only modesty prevented me from selecting his new recording of Chopin, available here as PAKM500. Wow.
Here we have a triumph of a restoration by Andrew Rose.
Consider also the superposition of 'Dvorak', 'Czech', and '1938'. Is it my imagination or doesn't this performance have an intensity, a burning of the nationalistic spirit, that must have come from the events taking place in the year it was recorded? Magical music-making.
Unlike Andrew I'm no great fan of the voice as an instrument, and I don't understand Spanish. Yet this recording of Spanish song just grabs me no matter how many times I've heard it.
Try the first two minutes (which are solo piano) and if you can press the stop button at that point, you ain't got no soul. Good early-50s sound despite the occasional traffic noises off-stage!
