Zubin Mehta & Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra Holst The Planets XRCD24

XRCD24 24bit Super Analog!
Mastered by Alan Yoshida!
Written by Gustav Holst over a 3-year period in 1914 The Planets is a true masterpiece of Classical Music that has been continuously imitated over the years by many wellknown film score composers. The Planets features 7 movements based on the planets in our own solar system excluding Pluto and the Earth itself. This world renowned musical piece that always overshadowed Holsts other famous works of music is here conducted by Zubin Mehta and performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra From the thunderously charged emotion of Mars the Bringer of Wars to the faint and distant passages of Neptune the Mystic this release demonstrates the high quality of recordings made by the Decca Record Label in the early 1970s as well as the highly refined sound of the XRCD24 process Listen and Compare.
Holst's most famous work was recorded by Decca in 1971 at Royce Hall at the University of California, Los Angeles.
"It's ironic that JVC abandoned its XRCD discs* just after it finally got the transfers right or rather when it finally had Alan Yoshida doing the mastering instead of the Tokyo team that seemed determined to make the issues sound like both transistors and digital*. It turns out that XRCD as a trade name lives though not under the JVC logo. Several other companies are issuing recordings most notably FIM some of whose releases I have in mind. For a complete listing The Planets was one of the last three issued and it is just maybe the first time I've heard a CD that does justice to a Super Disc analog original".
"The specific cuts I use here are 3, 5 and 6 (i.e. "Mercury", "Saturn" and "Uranus") each a revelation in itself I wonder if the recording sessions took place over a period of several days because the other planets are not graced with the rightness of sound these three are I do know that Royce Hall isn't a recording engineer's first choice for acoustics and that what the London/Decca team did here was to take the orchestra off the stage and position it on the hall floor. The sonic effect it creates is that of a soundspace with no boundaries".
"For my money Mehta's "Saturn" is the best on record. He gets it right and right down to the heavenly ending of high bells and subsonic organ pedal points (these we use here to adjust the output level of the super woofers we are likely to encounter). The opening notes of "Saturn" played by the string basses are an effective test of your woofer's midbass clarity and authority gotten right you can hear the players in a row stretching from the front of the right speaker in a convex curve backward. There is also a particularly sweet reed sound (at 3:40 into the piece) where the winds truly sound like winds dimensional in body and extended in overtones a first for me on digital".
""Uranus" is as you might expect if you know anything about astrology (as Holst did) the orchestral showpiece with a little bit of everything thrown in even toward the last moments an upward organ glissando (Holst called this planet "the magician"). But at the moment I find "Mercury" as revealing of truth as the other two. It is scored swiftly and with silken string sound not to mention a host of bells and small percussive touches. It gets very close to the absolute sound".
"Another thing to listen for (and it's there even if your playback gear can't 'get it') is the amount of three dimensional depth around the high frequency percussion If there is a flat painted ship uponapainted sea effect your CD player has phase and filter problems and most do. Halfway or so through the piece there is a huge fortissimo with a trumpet ripping through that texture at full volume. Most of the CD players we have cannot "track" this well if at all. Only the new Meitner and the revised Lab 47 Pi/Tracer can" - Harry Pearson, The Absolute Sound, February 2008
Recording Credits:
Recorded April 1974 at Royce Hall University of California, Los Angeles
Producer: John Mordler
Engineers: James Lock Colin Moorfoot
XRCD Credits:
Executive Producer: Kevin Berg
This XRCD24 was produced by Akira Taguchi
XRCD24 Mastered by Alan Yoshida at Ocean Way Hollywood California

Features:

• XRCD24
• Produced by Akira Taguchi
• Mastered by Alan Yoshida at Ocean Way Hollywood California
• Executive Producer: Kevin Berg

Musicians:

• Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra
• Los Angeles Master Chorale
• Zubin Mehta, conductor

Selections:

1. Mars, The Bringer Of War - Allegro
2. Venus, The Bringer Of Peace - Adagio
3. Mercury, The Winged Messenger - Vivace
4. Jupiter, The Bringer Of Jollity - Allegro Giocoso
5. Saturn, The Bringer Of Old Age - Adagio
6. Uranus, The Magician - Allegro
7. Neptune, The Mystic - Andante