Being, as I am, a devote of CD bargains --I don't believe the old motto
"cheap things are ultimately too expensive"-- I bought this afternoon,
in a newspaper store, the first release of "Classic Legends" collection,
containing 2 CDs with old recordings by the BBC Symphony Orchestra:

Mozart, Symphonies 35,29 & 38 (Boult, 1958)
Mussorgsky "Pictures..." & Tchaikowsky's 6th (Giulini, 1961, live recording)

This interesting pack costed me only $ 6.90, and the remastering has an
acceptable quality.  It came into the first issue of a very elemental
"Classical Music Encyclopaedia" by Robert Ainsley, edited in Spanish
translation by Editorial Folio of Barcelona.  I laughed a lot reading it.
Do you want a little pearl from the "cretinissimo" Spanish translator?:

"La primera persona que trazo una marca individual en el mundo del
plainchant fue el poeta y mistico Abbess Hildegard von Bingen, que realizo
un toque personal con los melismas..."

According to our genius:  a) Hildegard von Bingen was a guy whose
first name was "Abbess" (feminists, give up...), b) there's no spanish
translation for the word "plainchant" and c) he (or she, or whoever)
"made a personal touch with the melismas" instead of "he gave a personal
touch" to it.  There are many other severe grammatical errors in this
"Encyclopaedia" ("Viderusit omnes" for example, as the title of a "major
work by Perotin"), but it would be a hard and boring task to enumerate
them.  So:  Spanish readers...buy the CD's, but throw the rest into the
garbage.

Mr. Ainsley should be very angry.

Pablo Massa
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