Mahler MP3's by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra

[sperlsco]

As a former Chicagoan, I am NOT supposed to have anything nice to say about Milwaukee.  A year or so ago, I heard a radio rip of the Milwaukee Symphony performing a quite spectacular M2.   Milwaukee has an orchestra?  And they can play...Mahler?  Absolutely, I found. 

Yesterday, I was excited to see a post on the M-List about the Milwaukee Symphony doing commercial releases of their performances as MP3 downloads.  The price is cheap, around $5 for a full symphony.  The files are encoded as 320Kbps Mp3's, so the quality is much better than the downloads available at iTunes.  In fact, the engineered sound is really quite good on my Nomad Zen player, and even when I turn the files into CD's.  I purchased an M7 and a Saint-Saens Organ Symphony.  The SS is supposedly a binaural recording, and it does indeed sound great on headphones.    The M7 is also quite a nice performance.  There are several brass boo-boos throughout, but nothing too bad.  The orchestra plays very well, and has a wonderful transparency to their sound.  The only annoying thing is that the conducter, Andreas Delfs, stomps his foot loudly throughout the performance.  However, he chooses very nice tempos, for the most part. 

I recommend you all take a look. 



http://download.mso.org/app

[John Kim]

I sampled the M6th recording on the website and indeed it sounded pretty good. Its moderate-to-fast first movt. sounded very neat and well played, somewhat similar to Eschenbach's recording.

John,

[chris]

I believe I'm making the trip from Chicago to Milwaukee in June to see the MSO do M2....I'll let you know how they do. 

Next season brings some peformances to Chicago for locals and those willing to travel...the CSO is doing M1 and M6 with Haitink, Ravinia is doing M5 and M6 with Conlon and Kindertotenlieder with Thomas Hampson (if not Kinder, another lieder), and the Elgin Symphony is doing M5.

[barry guerrero]

I know that the last thing that the world needs is yet another M6 from Bernard Haitink. Yet, I would very much welcome a new one with the CSO. Perhaps if their upcoming M3 recording sells relatively well, they'll risk doing the 6th too. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed.

Barry

[John Kim]

No, Barry. The last thing the world needs is a new M9th from Bernard Haitink. This one is overdue. We all know that.

John,