| Review by Jonalogic August 16, 2010 (3 of 5 found this review helpful)
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Here is a quite lovely collection of music from Vaughan Williams, most sensitively conducted and extremely well played throughout. With a big-band and high profile conductor, we would all be justifiably raving. So far, so good.
How you react to the sonics depends on your sensitivity to the effect of Pulse Code Modulation recording and processing on string sound- and specifically massed strings playing above forte in their upper registers. Frankly, string sound puts a stake through the heart of PCM- it just doesn't do it right, rendering them as hard, dry, papery, non-liquid and gritchy*. Thus is the case here, I'm afraid, for the two inner string-laden masterpieces, the Tallis Fantasia and Greensleeves.
Here is a challenge. If anyone out there can find a classical CD of any persuasion, or an SACD recorded in PCM, with strings that actually sound like the real thing, I will publicly recant. After all, I'm a scientist, so one exception, any exception, suffices to blow any hypothesis out of the water.
By contrast, the fully orchestral Folk Song Suite and Wasps excerpts on this recording fare rather better, revealing a well-assembled recording, albeit clearly multi-miked, with good dynamics and decent transparency.
Putting my reaction to PCM on one side for the moment, this remains a most enjoyable SACD, and a bargain at this price. Just don't play it all at once. And be prepared for Membran's trademark insensitively short gaps between tracks and whole pieces. Why did they do this?
(* OK, gritchy = gritty and scratchy, obviously; but you guessed that, didn't you?)
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