Challenge Classics

Audiocrack

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Well said. Wish I could snap my finger and we would do a lot more of that.

Anyway, thanks to you I have been enjoying the music I bought from CC. I post the brief feedback on one of them here: http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...hases-I-enjoy)&p=365909&viewfull=1#post365909. I can put a copy here if you like.

Thanks for this reply and link, Amir. Had not noticed the link. Happy to read that you like the sound quality of the Challenge Classics and Turtle files/recordings.

Btw, I mailed Challenge Classics about the download speed. They were somewhat amazed but replied that if this would happen again they can be contacted and they are happy to solve any possible issue. Both Bert van der Wolf and Brendon Heinst can be easily approached and reply very promptly to mails.
 

Audiocrack

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I listened to the mch SACD rip of the Challenge Classics Christmas Oratorio. Very fine, both sonically and musically. Comes in an oversize case with lots of extra information in three languages. $10 from Berkshire Record Outlet.

Larry

Although I have not made an A/B comparison myself yet don't you think, Larry, that a sacd rip will sound (clearly) inferior to the 'native' dxd files or dsd 256 files of the same recording?
 

amirm

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How do I find Bert and Brendon. On Challenge Classics site?

For now, there were other issues post download. The files do not have album metadata! No album art, no artist art. Had to find and manually add to those. Worse yet, every album has its own naming convention, random folder names, etc which made for a horrible half hour unzipping and properly labeling them in my music folder. For such a small catalog, it should not be hard to re-do these.
 

Audiocrack

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How do I find Bert and Brendon. On Challenge Classics site?

For now, there were other issues post download. The files do not have album metadata! No album art, no artist art. Had to find and manually add to those. Worse yet, every album has its own naming convention, random folder names, etc which made for a horrible half hour unzipping and properly labeling them in my music folder. For such a small catalog, it should not be hard to re-do these.

If you go to the bottom of the www.spiritofturtle.com website you can find the mailaddresses and other useful information. Anyway, I will give you the mailaddress of Brendon: brendon@spiritofturtle.com
 

Audiocrack

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Challenge Classics new album of the month is Schubert's Winterreise by Christoph Prégardien and Michael Gees. This album is available against a 25% discount. If I remember correctly this album was very favourable reviewed, not only interpretatively but also sonically (I am pretty sure the superb recording quality was explicitly mentioned). Will try to find this review and post it a little later.
 

Audiocrack

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On www.HRAudio.net the following review by John Miller can be found of the Schubert recording I mentioned in my previous post:


"Review by John Miller - April 1, 2013


Prégardien and Gees have reached the last of their readings of Schubert's song cycles for Challenge Classics with a new Winterreise. After their enlightening performances of Die schöne Müllerin (1823) and Schwanengesang (1828) - not strictly a cycle - I was keenly awaiting Winterreise, and must say right away that the wait was well worth it.

Prégardien has made a number of recordings of Winterreise, and clearly thinks deeply about it. Not only has he recorded a very fine version in 1998 with Andreas Staier (his other current regular partner) on fortepiano, but his experiments include a controversial chamber version with the Pentaèdre wind quintet (including an accordian!) and a "composed interpretation" by Hans Zender and Klangforum Wein. Thankfully, here we have pure unvarnished Schubert.

In his sage booklet notes, Paul Korenhof reminds us that German poet and schoolmaster Wilhelm Müller published 12 poems entitled Winterreise in 1823 when Schubert was composing Müller's Die schöne Müllerin songs. The final 12 poems came a little later, and in 1827, the year before his death, Schubert set the whole series as a song cycle. The Müller story is another "wandering" one, so beloved of Early Romantics, and one bound to attract Schubert, himself a restless man; he lived at more than 20 addresses in Vienna during his life.

Note that the cycle of poems was called Winterreise without the "Die". This is subjective, not objective wandering of young man who has somehow been ejected from his beloved's house, and told never to return. He embarks on a seemingly imaginary course, his mind visiting from time to time the happiness he had with his lover at various emotive locales. Cast out in the snow and bitter Winter weather, he feels himself being led pitilessly to his grave, accompanied only by a crow - and its companionship, he tells himself bitterly, was only to feed on him.

This performance is available on DVD and BluRay as well as on SA-CD. On the BluRay disc Prégardien and Gees discuss their somewhat different "takes" on the often metaphorical and imaginary episodes in the story. Having played the piece regularly in recital, they approached the recording with an agreed "Third Way", which seems to work splendidly. Eschewing the common view of the piece for the last decade being that the whole cycle is about death, they celebrate the happy, gentle and rural material, while not playing down the darker aspects of Winterreiser. Rather than being obsessive-depressive, the story illuminates a number of psychological conditions in a fascinating and subtle way.

Prégardien's tenor register is still holding up well, although there sometimes is a touch of a baritone register which helps some of the darker passages. As in his previous SA-CDs, he has a wonderful array of tone colours and vocal production which depicts with ease the full gamut of emotions experience by the young protagonist. Gees is an exceptional partner and pianist, using Schubert's masterly and often highly original accompaniments to support and sometimes supplant Prégardien's superbly clear lines. In this performance, there is a real feeling of spontaneity; sometimes there are surprising and moving outbursts of emotion which make some other versions sound placid. Without going into detailed comments song by song, I shall just say that this is a new and stunningly vital reading of Winterreise which leaves one exhausted at the end, just as Schubert himself said after performing it.

This magnificent performance is presented completely naturally in DSD by Northstar engineers, from the famous Galaxy Studios at Mol in Belgium, where the studio sits on huge springs to filter out any form of LF noise. Voice and piano emerge almost tangibly from a silent "black" acoustic, which 5.1 makes thrillingly three-dimensional. The disc is stored in a paper envelope at the back of a 63 page stiff-backed book, which has the lyrics displayed in thankfully decently large print in German and English - very compact and handy when listening.

The ambiguity of Müller's stories and the depth of Schubert's settings leave plenty of space for varied interpretations. Some of the "classic" Winter Journeys, e.g. by a pioneering Fischer-Dieskau, are now available on SA-CD (at a price), but I still have a soft spot for the youthful Davislim and his golden voice. However, Prégardien and Gees (and their engineers) should now go into the top rank; they have maturity, spirit and experience behind their very moving, sometimes startling, version

Copyright © 2013 John Miller and HRAudio.net"
 

Schallfeldwebel

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Just ordered the SA-CD from Bert. In the past I made several recordings for Challenge Classics, maybe the Bach serie of the late Jacques van Oortmerssen some of you know here.
 

astrotoy

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Although I have not made an A/B comparison myself yet don't you think, Larry, that a sacd rip will sound (clearly) inferior to the 'native' dxd files or dsd 256 files of the same recording?

It could very well sound worse. However, I looked on the Spirit of the Turtle website and it looks like the download for the mch they are selling is DSD64, the same as the SACD. I checked a few more titles that I have as SACD's and all of them appear to be DSD64 only in mch. The stereo versions often have higher res, but the mch versions don't. Looks like you can buy the stereo or mch or combi, similar to NativeSACD. If I am not mistaken, if you buy the combi, then you cannot get the higher rez versions of the stereo as part of the combi price, which means if you want the highest rez stereo plus the mch, then it would cost nearly 50 Euros for the two. Thanks, Larry
 
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Audiocrack

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Just ordered the SA-CD from Bert. In the past I made several recordings for Challenge Classics, maybe the Bach serie of the late Jacques van Oortmerssen some of you know here.

Thanks much for your reply. Would be nice and interesting to hear somewhat more of your background and involvement with Challenge Classics in the past.
 

Audiocrack

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Hi Larry,

Challenge Classics is of course a relative small independant label. The advantages of this are (i) that the people behind Challenge Classics, Bert van der Wolf and Brendon Heist, can be approached easily, (ii) that they are very service minded and (iii) that individual solutions can be offered if customers have certain specific wishes.

So WBF members who would like to order one or more Challenge Classics dsd 128 or dsd 256 recordings in multichannel, should write a mail to Bert or Brendon. They will take care of this.
 
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Audiocrack

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the music and how they are capturing it on these challenge classic albums is a revelation to me.

Very glad to hear that you like them so much, Spazmatron. In which format are you ordering the Challenge Classics files? As mentioned before - and the reason why I started this thread -: To my ears Challenge Classics dxd and dsd 256 files belong to the very best recordings I have heard so far. They are indeed amazing.
 

Audiocrack

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only sacd but my cdp seems to be doing a good job with them. cheers

Well enjoy yourself!

Btw, I recently bought a sacd from Challenge Classics (with music of Schubert) in order to compare it directly to the dsd 256 and dxd file of the same music I recently bought from Bert. Believe me, the dsd and dxd files sound clearly superior to the sacd version. So hopefully you will be able to listen to the Challenge Classics files in one of these formats somewhere in the future because I promise you: you will be truly amazed because the Challenge Classics recordings are even (and clearly) better than you think they are.
 

Audiocrack

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I am a Bruckner 'fan' so I bought all four Challenge Classics Bruckner dowdloads with Jaap van Zweden as conductor (in the dxd and dsd 256 formats) that are available at the moment. I more or less assumed that the other Bruckner symphonies would be recorded as well by Challenge Classics. However, Bert van der Wolf informed me today this will not happen because these symphonies were already recorded by a Japanese company. What a pity; the Bruckner files that are available sound splendidly (though)!
 

Audiocrack

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Give us the list of albums please :).

Allow me to react as follows. As a (primarely) classical music lover I love large orchestral pieces by composers like Bruckner, Mahler, Shostakovich, etc. One of the main reasons I have opted for (very) large loudspeakers like my Genesis 1.1 and the Tidal La Assoluta transducers is that you need a certain (loudspeaker)size in order to be able to portray large orchestral music in a (somewhat)realistic way. The afore mentioned music forms a large part of my music collection.

One of the reasons why I am so impressed with the Challenge Classics recordings is the way in which they portray such large orchestral pieces. Of the symphonic pieces I bought so far from them I like - from a sonic point of view - in particular:

1. Mahler, symphony no. 4, Het Gelders Orkest conducted by Antonello Manacorda and with Lisa Larson as soprano.
2. Prokofiev, symphonies nos. 3 & 4, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra with James Gaffican as conducter.

Of these recordings the Mahler is probably the most 'accessible'. Both recordings are stunning sounding.
 

Audiocrack

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Give us the list of albums please :).

The four Bruckner recordings by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jaap van Zweden are:
1. Symphony no. 1.
2. Symphony no. 3.
3. Symphony no. 6.
4. Symphony no. 8.

All four recordings sound very impressive! These recordings as well as the ones I mentioned in my previous post can all be found on www.spiritofturtle.com website
 

bonzo75

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I am a Bruckner 'fan' so I bought all four Challenge Classics Bruckner dowdloads with Jaap van Zweden as conductor (in the dxd and dsd 256 formats) that are available at the moment. I more or less assumed that the other Bruckner symphonies would be recorded as well by Challenge Classics. However, Bert van der Wolf informed me today this will not happen because these symphonies were already recorded by a Japanese company. What a pity; the Bruckner files that are available sound splendidly (though)!

I watched Bernard Haitink do his 7th, awesome. I am interested in a good recording of 7th by Celibidache if you know any
 

bonzo75

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How does Challenge classics compare to Channel Classics?
 

Audiocrack

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I watched Bernard Haitink do his 7th, awesome. I am interested in a good recording of 7th by Celibidache if you know any

Celibache is a very, very special conductor and rather overlooked after he ' lost' the contest with Karajan about who was going to conduct the Berliner Philharmonic orchestra. I do not own any Bruckner symphonies conducted by Celibache; I never liked the sound quality of the available EMI cd versions of some Bruckner symphonies by Celibache but his tempis are very intriguing indeed. So sorry Kedar, but I do not have any Celibache Bruckner recommendations.
 
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bonzo75

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Celibache is a very, very special conductor and rather overlooked after he ' lost' the contest with Karajan about who was going to conduct the Berliner Philharmonic orchestra. I do not own any Bruckner symphonies conducted by Celibache; I never liked the sound quality of the available EMI cd version of some Bruckner symphonies by Celibache but his tempis are very intriguing indeed. So sorry Kedar, but I do not have any Celibache Bruckner recommendations.

Yeah, his symphonies seem slower but they have a magic. I feel like I keep going deeper into his Bruckner 7, great from the word go
 

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