I think there's some synchronicity going on here with JW just recently adding his review that praises the sound of this recording to the hilt. If you go back and check my review contributed a few years back, I came to a very different conclusion about this disc than Joel did, but then I wondered whether he was speaking about the album as a whole, or just referring to one of the two concertos that appear on this release. In the past, these recordings appeared on different RCA CDs, although the two were recorded at, IIRC, the same time, but in different locations.
Quite apart from reading Joel's review just now, it was this very SACD that I had returned to recently. I confess that my reaction to its sound quality hasn't changed much since I wrote that review. This recording never was considered to be among the best sounding of the shaded dogs, but there's no denying that Cliburn's way with the music here places this among the the best of many. I have been speaking of the Tchaikovsky here, but turning my attention to the Rachmaninov, I find the sound quality improves dramatically.
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