London Jubilee

One of those bargain lines from London Records in the early 80’s, the London Jubilee label made up the bulk of my early classical music purchases. As these performances were my first exposure to a lot of works, they have stuck in my mind as sounding ‘right’ as far as performances go. That tends to happen when you get familiar with a particular recording. Luckily most of the releases were of classic performances by major artists, so no bad records, and quite a few excellent ones too. I am working on getting a discography together of the Jubilee line, although they never made it to CD, some of the recordings are still around in different incarnations. To be honest, when I am in a ‘vinyl’ mood, I break out these old recordings, and still enjoy them a lot. Nice big artwork, and good liner notes on the back cover. PS: If you have any release info or artwork from this line, it would be greatly appreciated if you would send it to me : basicrep@gmail.com

Beethoven Piano Sonatas

Quite a while back I found a CD release of an old LP of Beethoven Sonatas by Wilhelm Backhaus on the London Records Jubilee label. The LP was the first I ever had of the Moonlight, Pathetique and Appassionata Sonatas, and I think I could not have had a better introduction to these works.

There is now a 2CD release of the above sonatas while adding Les Adieux, Pastoral, Tempest and the Waldstein Sonatas. The recordings range in date from 1959 to 1964, and the sound is warm and cozy, and a little on soft on the treble, but otherwise a great collection. The CD release is an import, but I just noticed that it is back in stock at Amazon again for the time being. Well worth getting this collection even if you have other recordings of these works, because Backhaus is a great performer from the older days.

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Albinoni: Op. 9 Concertos

Albinoni may be best known for his Adagio for Organ and Strings, used in the movie Platoon. The Adagio is an arrangement by musicologist Remo Giazotto, who discovered a fragment of a work while researching for an Albinoni biography. While a beautiful work, if that is all that you know of Albinoni, you are missing a lot. The closest comparison may be of the works of Vivaldi, and the recommended works are baroque gems.

Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music give an original instruments performance of the Opus 9 Concertos. This is apparently the first recording of this work on period instruments, and is a full price 2 CD set. Well worth the price, though. Also available as an MP3 Album.

The 2 CD Budget Set by I Musici is also a good recording, and includes the famous arrangement of the Albinoni Adagio. The recordings are from the 1960's, and are of a more romantic vein than baroque. Available in a bargain MP3 Album.

Barber Violin Concerto

Why buy a cd from a performer you do not know, with an unfamiliar conductor, and with one of the works unknown to you? Well, on a whim, I decided I needed more Barber in my collection, and chose this cd with 19 year old [at the time, in 2000] Hilary Hahn. I tend to be suspicious of very young violin players. Their technique may be flawless, but the performances are missing soul. Not so here. Hahn’s tone is smooth, but not too sweet. While razor precision does not fall in the perview of these two works, there is some great violin playing on this disc. Hahn’s playing has emotion, and she brings the music alive, instead of treating it as a dusty tome that has to be played just right, in order not to offend. I will be expanding my collection of Hahn recordings to be sure, and am interested how her performances of more familiar works will hold up.


 

 

Basicrep.com Reorganization

I have been very lax about updating composer listings, and have decided to merge everything into the blog. You will be able to bring up any composer name or work type from the Category listings. This will let me easily add recommendations for particular works, and allow me to spend time on the Music Label Line pages as well as some basic recommendations I have wanted to post for a while. If you access any of the Composer Pages directly, you will may be forwarded to the Blog posts on that composer or the composer page. It will take me a while to get everything reorganized. The original composer pages will be kept online for those composers that do not have blog posts yet, but the releases recommended are getting out of date, and many of the records are out of print again. It is a tremendous amount of work to keep up with the current releases, and hopefully this will allow me to post a lot more often, and offer a way to give reviews and thoughts on the works. Also, with the changes lately, some of the images in the older blogposts have broken, so sorry about that, will try and get them fixed ASAP :) - Jim