Posted by Terry Aikman on February 16, 2002 at 00:32:09:
So the other day i'm listening to my old solti/cso mahler 5 which I'm sure a good majority of you guys here have. Its been a couple of years since I've given the old thing a whirl and my goodness, the low brass sound pretty bad. Herseth is laying it down but the guys in the low brass are just all over the place with spread/uneven sounds with pretty poor rhythm. A previous post in regards to the playing of Jacobs made me think of writing this post. Of coures I'm not trying to discount all that the CSO has done. Some of their old recordings (i.e. Giulini Mahler 9 & Bruckner 9) are wonderful but there are others (bruckner 8, till eul.) that are just not very good at all low brass wise. In one till. recording the orchestra pretty much falls apart at one point. A lot of people think that old CSO is the end all of brass playing. Sometimes I think we should put an end to the myths and legends of the 'good ole days' where its easy to say that loud is better even if it becomes amusical.