In 1977, Pinchas Zukerman led members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in performances of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, which were recorded by Deutsche Grammophon in what was then the state-of-the-art quadraphonic format. This predecessor of today's multichannel recording had its limitations, not least in the four-channel playback systems that failed to reproduce the sound quality and physical dimensions of the performances. Flash forward to 2014, when these recordings were remastered from analog through DSD processing ...
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In 1977, Pinchas Zukerman led members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in performances of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, which were recorded by Deutsche Grammophon in what was then the state-of-the-art quadraphonic format. This predecessor of today's multichannel recording had its limitations, not least in the four-channel playback systems that failed to reproduce the sound quality and physical dimensions of the performances. Flash forward to 2014, when these recordings were remastered from analog through DSD processing to multichannel digital sound and issued by PentaTone in the hybrid SACD format, and listeners now can hear the performances as they were intended. Of course, over the intervening years, there have been developments in historical performance practices, and as spacious and warm as Zukerman's interpretations sound, they are essentially conventional readings of the time that employ modern instruments, and the music practically cries out for more creative ornamentation, brisker tempos,...
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