Take three discs....

It's a bit of a round up of sorts here with not making  a 'proper' entry around the discs I have recently obtained

Edward Elgar is an English composer that I first listened to as a young child and started buying recordings of his symphonies cello and violin concertos as they came out in the nineteen eighties on cassette and then in the 90's replacing with the compact disc versions.

I had been looking for a decent modern recording of The Music Makers for a while and this Chandos one on super audio cd from 2016 ticks all the boxes as Andrew Davis really gets into the music in much the same way as the late Vernon Handley whose recording I bought back in the day.

Berlioz was a French composer who again held my attention, this time in my teens that I am slowly building  a collection of beyond the Symphonie Fantastique and this, his musical account of the tale of the Faust with its vocal parts is served will in this recent release in the London Symphony orchestras own recording from the Barbican Hall, London, performed live.

Transcribing works written very much with one instrument in mind for another often causes controversy inviting the question "What is to be gained from it?"  but one thing to bear in mind is a good number of composers did in effect produce other arrangements for other instruments themselves.

Ms Podger herself, a highly regarded Baroque violinist, has carefully done this to get around the restrictions of the violin not having the five strings of the cello and keeping the flow of the pieces.

In the opinion of many of us, she has succeed well here producing transcriptions that hold your attention - indeed she premiered them in concert before recording to much applause - caught in a spacious acoustic well reproduced in super audio cd.

* All the discs are hybrid Super Audio cds that play also on regular cd playing equipment.