SITE RATING: 8/10
SITE REVIEW:
One
of the most confusing and mysterious Messiahs to appear, all of my attempts to research
this recording have met with dead ends. First of all, the
conductor's name is misspelled on the CDs as "Serge Baude";
second,
there are no recording dates, and no listings of personnel (engineers,
producers, even soloists names are absent); and this is true of every
release I've found - all of the highlights discs that have been
released with the same sources have the exact same lack of information.
The only artist listed, "The Royal Music
College Edinburgh" does not exist. There is no Royal
Music College of Edinburgh, although there is a University of Edinburgh
that has a music school, but they list no recordings, and there is no
evidence that this is the same school. Serge Baudo's
presence on the Internet is negligible, with several recordings listed,
but no information about his current whereabouts, or even if he is
still alive (his birth date is 1927.) All of which is a great
pity, since this performance, whenever and whoever took part in it, is
worthy of a listen. The performance is polished, clean,
exceptionally stylish, and on par with other, more notable recordings.
But even here there is a caveat: I have purchased two copies
of this CD, and both seem to have physical flaws in the mastering.
The tempos seems to compress at certain moments, with the
tape
speed occasionally slowing down or speeding up. I noticed it
most
prominently on "For Unto Us A Child Is Born" which, when counting time,
beats would come in a second early, and then stretch out.
It's as if the tape source for the CD was flawed, or the
machine on which it was playing was not running at a constant rate.
It's an odd, unusual flaw. I'm still going to
recommend this recording, and hope that someone, somewhere can fill in
the blanks. ~ BDW
|
