Classical Music for Aficionados

Don't have that CD but think the approach will work and will tell you a good deal about the timbral accuracy of the audio system. Check this out with my systems regularly for piano CDs as well as the tapes made in my studio on a German Grand. It is VERY difficult to capture completely the timbre of an instrument you know well. Not even tuned studio equipment will always produce perfect results. The free software app REW can do a lot to check out the accuracy of your system but it requires measurement mics and a quality converter.

Have two CD cases recently where the timbre of the instrument has been caught extremely well: 1. the 9' Steinway Ashkenazy uses in his Rachmaninoff Concertos (Decca) and 2. the Geissenhof violin Kurosaki uses in his Beethoven violin sonatas (Accent). For me, the first is a plus, the second a minus. The extreme clarity of the Geissenhof is sabatoged by the dry style Kurosaki prefers.

My experience has been that violins in particular differ more than many acoustical instruments in their overall timbral quality and often it is worthwhile to check multiple offerings though online 30 second samples to find an instrument you can appreciate. Recently did this with the Franck violin sonata and settled on Perlman's violin and performance.

Time to get this thread moving again.

Have thought of several challenges for you astute pundits. The first is the answer to the question "what is the most difficult orchestral work?"

The rules require that it be played more or less regularly and that it be instrumental only (no solo concertos either -- we'll make that another category). Sorry, Mahler 8th lovers...

So I'll start off the sweepstakes with two examples: Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra and Strauss's An Alpine Symphony. The first has intricate contrapuntal textures and associated rhythmic complexity -- and each orchestral section is treated like a concerto instrument, thus the name.

The Strauss has tremendous bombast along with its technical demands as well as Herculean length and orchestral size. Neither of these opuses is comfortable for the average orchestra.

But you folks can come up with better examples, so I leave it to you to tell me the most difficult orchestral composition. And if you have an orchestra and conductor that tamed the beast, so much the better.