Donald Scarinci wrote:

>Maybe you think Telarc is dull, but they produce some of the best and most
>advanced recordings available today.

Their sound quality is great, but the repertory abysmally dull.  For my
taste, if the music is too boring or too boringly performed, the sound
quality just doesn't matter:  I won't listen to it anyway.

The only really interesting item they recorded in the last few years is
the collaborative singspiel "The Philosophers' Stone", with three numbers
attributed to Mozart.  But that wasn't exactly Telarc's initiative.

Donald Satz wrote:

>The Boston Baroque is one of the fine period instrument bands around.
>They took a few lumps as to critical response to Bach's Mass in B minor,
>but I felt that the performance was about in the middle of the pack for
>period instrument recordings of this monumental work.

They can be fine, but they have bad days, too.  Their recording of
Mozart/Levin Requiem is rather awful:  muddy, lacking any clarity
whatsoever, boring.  I'm not sure I would put them in the middle of
the pack - more likely, slightly below.

-Margaret Mikulska