Solti/Culshaw Ring

[ChrisH]

HDtracks is now offering the 24/48 remaster of the Solti/Culshaw Ring for download.

https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file=artistdetail&id=10505

For those who are interested in the new box-set, this what you would get on the blu-ray audio disc. Allegedly this is the best sounding version since the original LP's.

[James Meckley]

Thanks for posting this information. This is the most important component of Decca's new Deluxe Edition, and I was hoping it would become available as a separate item at some point. However, unless I'm missing some special package deal, HDtracks is asking $180.00 for the four 24/48 audio files. For just $40.00 more Amazon will sell me the entire Decca Deluxe Edition, which includes the Blu-ray Audio hardcopy of these files, the remastered redbook CDs, the Deryck Cooke Introduction to the Ring CDs, the Golden Ring DVD, John Culshaw's book The Ring Resounding, and much else of interest.

Priced at $180.00, this files-only offering from HDtracks seems like a non-starter.

James

[ChrisH]

James, you are correct. It's $180.00 for the files. The other downer, at least to me, is that you can't play .flac back gap-less. The Blu-ray is superior for the fact alone. 

You could burn them to DVD-A, but at that price I think I'll wait and see what happens. I already have the Cooke disc, Ring Resounding, and the BBC doc.

It's even crazier that you can get the Met/Lepage ring on Blu-Ray for only $139.00 or the Valencia Blu-Ray for under a $100!

[waderice]

My Christmas present to myself this year was the Decca reissue of the 100th(Solti)/200th(Wagner) anniversary of the Ring.  I have had the Solti Ring on open reel for years (the Magtec/Stereotape issue, which sounds great), and the other accessorial parts of this recording either on reel or LP, and considering that it is getting more and more difficult to get parts for existing reel machines and entire new reel machines for that matter, I decided to go ahead and get this new Decca reissue.  And I'm glad I did.  There was a lot of controversy on problems with earlier CD editions (among them an off-pitch Rheingold), and things such as that caused me to hesitate buying any of them.  Again, I'm glad I waited.

I don't yet have a high-quality theater sound system for my high-definition TV, but at least, I can play the Blu-ray disk of the complete Ring on my TV's Blu-ray player.  It would be pointless to say how good it would sound in this format, considering the equipment available on which to play it, but I can definitely say that the regular CD version sounds just as good, from what I've heard thus far (and in some places, better) as the Magtec/Stereotape edition I have.

In addition to the Deryck Cooke commentary on the Ring motives, there is an additional CD that contains some early Wagner overtures by Solti/VPO, the Siegfried Idyll, and the Kinderkatechismus, a short choral piece written by Wagner for Cosima.  There is also the BBC documentary on a DVD showcasing the 1964 recording of Götterdämmerung.  As far as printed material is concerned, there are complete libretti, the Culshaw Ring Resounding book, and other goodies that haven't been issued before.

It would be interesting if the regular CDs had been reissued as hybrid SACDs, but considering that the Blu-ray disk is part of the set, that would have been superfluous and certainly made the price more expensive.

I ordered my copy before the reissue date, so cost to me was under $200, before sales tax, from Amazon.com.

Wade

P.S. - Vehemence, in order to play back the operas track-by-track without gaps, you would first need to convert the .FLAC files to .WAV files before burning to CD.  In the Nero CD burning program, you can preprogram the burn to not have gaps between tracks.  I'm unable to say what could be done in the instance of DVD-A files.