Silje Nergaard Nightwatch (2003) Sacd

These CDs serve their purpose well offering complete movements or sections of recordings available on Pentatone. The only listing of contents is on the back jewel-box cover; the booklet(s) are actually catalogs of what is available in the format. Each CD is given a full page in the booklet with complete track listings and performer informtion. I'm surprised each of the CD booklets doesn't list all of the multi-channel recordings (both new and RQR) on the label. One features excerpts from new multi-channel recordings; the most impressive sonically are those by the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra, New Dutch Academy, Russian National Orchestra and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra Dvorak/Tchaikovsky coupling. All of these are 5 channel recordings (left/right, front and rear, and center front).

Mutter's Beethoven Concerto was recorded live at the final subscription concerts of Karl Masur's long tenure as the New York Philharmonic's music director, and the beautifully played orchestral part is a tribute to his leadership. Mutter plays with a silken tone and astonishing technical command of her instrument–absolute ease in the stratospheric tessitura of the solo part, and an amazing array of microdynamic adjustments that display the infinite variety of pianissimos at her command.

The lengths to which TACET have gone to secure an all-valve (tube) recording chain for this disc might seem perverse to some, but I think that the sound quality that they have achieved is a complete vindication of their unusual approach. The Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, under their founder Karl Munchinger, were of course one of the stars of the Decca repertoire during the "Golden Age" of valve mastered recordings in the late Fifties and early Sixties, and this disc has the wonderfully warm string tone of the renowned SXL series LPs from that era.

Electric Warrior is the sixth album by British rock group T. Rex, and is widely considered to be one of the quintessential glam rock releases. Electric Warrior reached number thirty-two in the US; it went to number one for several weeks in the UK, becoming the biggest album of 1971. In 2003 it was ranked number 160 in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The album contains two of T. Rex’s most popular songs, “Get It On” and “Jeepster.” In the United States, “Get It On”‘s title was modified to “Bang a Gong (Get It On)” to distinguish it from Chase’s song “Get It On,” which was also released in late 1971. (The printing of the song title “Bang a Gong (Get It On)” on the back cover of original Reprise Records U.S. copies of Electric Warrior is obviously in a different typefont from the surrounding text, with the song’s original title retained when printing the lyrics.) “Get It On” was T. Rex’s biggest single and their only U.S. hit (#10).