Kar Ming Said:

>I was browsing in a CD store last night in Perth and came upon several
>discs under the BBC Radio Series.  What appealed to me are the live
>recordings of these performances - no splicing etc etc (I hope).
>
>I requested a CD by Annie Fischer (Beethoven Sonatas) to be played over the
>speakers and I'm surprised by the very decent sound recording in this disc.
>And, oh yeah, Fischer is as marvellous as ever in Beethoven Sonatas (along
>with the EMI versions). The recordings are recorded in the early 70s.

I was in Germany a couple of years ago in Weisbaden a music student in my
lodgings swore the the BBC radio Tchiakovsky violin concerto recording was
the best of all.  He could not obtain it so engaged me to purchase 8 copies
in London to send to his friends.

I agree with you there are some very fine performances in the series but
it is highly variable.  I think the John Ogden version of the Listz piano
concertos is sensational.  The Dvojak 9th is nice too.  But beware there
are some bad ones.  Elgar symphony 1 has an appauling edit that misses the
beginning out.

Recently I came across of source of these bankrupt and bought many of them
for 1 each.  So I'll let you know if I find any gems.  I tried to act as
broker for the stock, offering it to a second hand dealer.  I was told that
the series was not worth bothering with because of the bad sound quality.

This not true for all the recordings but there are bad ones as I've
mentioned above.  Also, not all the recordings are live.  There are many
that were pre-recorded for BBC broadcast.

In summary then., the performances seem consistantly good but sound is
highly variable.

Bob Draper
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