Rochester Philharmonic Season Beginning [Not a review]

By -
As we mentioned earlier, we bought several sets of tickets to the local Philharmonic (we're going to some but not all of the performances).  It was a great experience, and we absolutely loved it.  I had lots of plans on evaluating the sonics to help with evaluation of gear, but upon the first note, that all got thrown out the window, and I can say we both got lost in the performance.

Jennifer Koh, whom I didn't know at all, played the violin so beautifully and expressively it was as if she was having a conversation with the orchestra - and the beauty of it nearly brought us to tears.

The performance following that, Mahler's Symphony No. 1, was one of the few I knew already, and it was really nice to hear it performed live.  Not being an expert on Classical music all I can say with any authority is that both of us loved it, and we're very much looking forward to future performances this season.

And we highly recommend everyone to pick up tickets to a performance or two to their local Philharmonic, Quartet or other Classical recital - you won't regret it!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Thorens MM002 and MM008 meet the Crosley C10 (Part 2 of 2)

By -
Image
It used to be that every single receiver or preamp had a built in phonostage.  The way it used to work is that you would by a turntable, plug it in, and start spinning records.  For the audio enthusiast, there was always low output moving coil cartridges, and the resultant step-up-transformer you could use to present a signal to the phono input, but the built in was always used.  When the CD came to dominate, that the good 'ol built-in phono input went away.  A minor proliferation of external phono stages began as analog declined, but it left the mass market's consciousness as the silver disc rose in domination.  Given the people sticking to their vinyl through the near death of the medium were mostly performance oriented enthusiasts.  The state of the art playback for analog rose considerably (both in performance and price) during this dark time.  Now that vinyl is beginning to flirt with becoming mainstream again, brands are introducing their own ta...
Read more

The Thiel CS3.7 part 2: Listening Impressions

By -
Image
The Thiel CS3.7's Driver ... pay no attention to the green turntable light that couldn't help but photobomb ... We were looking forward to the demo all week.  We showed up at around noon on Columbus Day - which allowed the salesman, Bob Cesarini, to spend about a week breaking in the speakers.  Given our experience with Thiel, and the fact that they take a long time to break in, this was a good thing. The speakers had about 75 hours or so, so while not fully run in, they would be much better than a "right out of the box" sound. Most of the ugly portion of the break in would be behind it. Bob told us that the factory claims 300+ hours are needed for them to reach their full potential, but at the point of the demo, we should be able to hear what earned them their reputation.  We'll see ... After Bob gave us the basic introduction to the speaker and his optimistic thoughts on the new owners and the direction of Thiel, he left us to our own devices. (Stereophi...
Read more

The Oyaide Tonearm Cable: Everything matters. Really.

By -
Image
We're using this cable right now, and wow do we hear more music. It took me nearly a decade to come to terms with the simple concept that seemingly innocuous things, such as placing pennies under speaker spikes, or swapping out one cable for another one, can have such dramatic effects.  Some you can explain by understanding a likely mechanism, and some ... you just don't know why, you just hear what.  As an electrical engineer, my mind has to deal with quite a bit of cognitive dissonance once in awhile over this.  And I just have to tell myself at that point that "as long as it sounds better, I shouldn't get too worried" when something that shouldn't make a difference, makes a difference. In fact, there is an ongoing debate, really heated sometimes, about various tweaks.  Like American politicians discussing US policy - there is an awful lot of shouting, yelling, hurt feelings, and anger with no resolution.  Thankfully your stereo doesn't end up shu...
Read more