Lastest: Belafonte at Carnegie Hall

[fuwen 0]

A very interesting audiophile CD to recommend:

 

The Weavers Reunion at Carnegie Hall 1963

 

Vanguard Records

 

 

As you can see it was a life recording done at the famous US Carnegie Hall in the year 1963. You can even see the mikes used on the CD cover. The recordings were really good and easily put many modern recording to shame!

 

Particularly like track 2 Rambling Boy and track 9 Guantanamera.

 

Rambling boy was sung by a male singer with later on echos from the audience. Ona good system you can feel the existance of the hall when the audience sang.

 

Guantanamera was a interesting recordings with the whole group singing. BTW the Weavers is a group of 7 male and female singers.

 

The music I would say is folk songs and oldies. Incidentally our very local Audiophile company Chiang Huat was involved in the remastering of the recordings into CDs. I felt that the recordings were very forward and not sure if I can say the recordings make my HD600 sounds like Grados!

 

I believe there is only a gold CD version. So far no XRCD or SACD version.

 

Thanks for reading.

Edited December 28, 2004 by fuwen

[cmk 0]

One of the best recordings around, even better than many modern "audiophile" recordings.

 

Excellent recommendation.

 

I have both the CD and LP, and the latter is so real, that you'd think they are in the room singing.

Edited March 15, 2004 by cmk

[hacknet 0]

yup, i`ve got that cd too. doesn`t sound too bad... quite good detail.

[fuwen 0]

I just bought this SACD after seeing my friend's recommendation and was so happy after listening to just the first track.

 

Ultimate Mancini

concord records

 

Well, the first track is the Pink Panther Theme (extended version). Perhaps is the memories this song brought rather than the audiophile quality that made me so enjoy this track. The 'chickyness' of the theme, imagining the pink panther walking down the street (have not seen the pink panther cartoon for very very long), full of brass instrument, basically siok!

 

I got my SACD version from New Disc Village in the recent Hifi Show organised by Sight and Sound Journal, mine was the 2nd last copy. Not sure Ernest bringing some more or not. The SACD case is a bit odd size, not the normal squarish one but rectangular a bit like the DVD-audio type.

 

Of course u can also get the normal redbook CD version.

[Firefox 0]

Fuwen: That's one of the albums you played when we were over at your place the other time right? Very nice album. I was trying to figure out which it was to no avail. LOL..

[fuwen 0]

Another very very good old recording:

 

Belafonte (the singer) at Carnegie Hall. Recordings were done in 1959, live at Carnegie Hall, but certainly can put many modern recordings into shame. This is one of the few times where the recording microphones happened to be at the right time and the right place to capture an inspired moment of performance.

 

I am not sure how to classify this performance but I think can consider as folk songs all over the world. The familar ones like The Marching Saints, Day O, Jamaica Farewell, the very funny Mama look a boo boo, another very funny Man smart (u can even hear Belafonte turned his head while singing), the romantic Come back Liza, Danny Boy and etc, and the last track Matilda, the famous uncut Belafonte live 11 minutes performance where u get full scale involvement from the audience, the musicians and everybody else in Carnegie Hall.

 

Available in CD and SACD version.

Edited December 28, 2004 by fuwen

[N@Z 0]

I heard that album on an audiophile speaker set-up several years back. It is truly an amazing recording as fuwen described. What grabbed me was the sense of soundstage & Belafonte's rapport with the audience.