Warszawa 1944 Vol.ii (repost)

These recordings were made in wartorn Berlin by one of the past century's greatest conductors, Wilhelm Furtwangler, who was one of very few international caliber artists who remained in Germany during WWII. Combine Furtwangler's passionate conducting with the sad context of war and you've got an utmost interesting and pertinent package.

Like the first volume of this series, this gathers rare recordings from throughout the bulk of Greg Lake's career, spanning the late '60s to the mid-'90s. Lake might be one of the most famous musicians associated with progressive rock, but you'd have a hard time taking that impression away from this CD if it was the first or only sampling of his music you heard. Rarities collections can't serve as a fair career retrospective, of course…

These live performances were recorded for broadcast during WWII in Germany, and while the sound is not up to modern standards it is surprisingly good for its time. The microphones in the concert hall were wired to a small, windowless control room, where they were primatively "mixed" and the signal sent via telegraph wire to the radio transmitter studio, where it was recorded on early Magnetophone tape recorders. The tapes were captured by the Soviets after the liberation of Berlin and transported to Moscow, where they languished for many years. Some performances were released by the Soviets, but the tapes were eventually returned to Germany and reprocessed in the 1980's.