We invited the press & some out of town guests to fly in on Friday and enjoy an intimate concert by Kyomi Audio's George Vatchnadze. The idea was to listen to George perform the Prokofiev 6’th Piano Sonata at his studio at the Music Department at DePaul University, then listen to the Exton DSD recording that night at his home on the Giya G1.
George playing one of the three Steinway B in his studio
After Beethoven completed his monumental 32 piano sonatas in the long form (four movements), most composers afterwards opted for the short form (single movement) to avoid comparison with the grand old man from Bonn.
Prokofiev’s sixth piano sonata was first performed in 1940, Europe was at war and most Russians felt that it was only a matter of time before they too would be dragged in. So it is no surprise that the Sixth Piano Sonata, the first of the War sonatas, has a profound vein of despair running through it. The Sixth is dominated by grinding dissonances and frequent modulation, further increasing the despair of the work. Throughout most of the movements, there is a lack of a key melody.
The first movement is explosive & disturbing, the second & third movements a little more melodic & romantic. George played this from memory. When we queried him afterwards if it was difficult to memorize, he said that the Rachmaninov Third Piano Concerto was in fact even more difficult, with over 25,000 notes for the piano alone.
Kyomi’s Giya G1 playing the Exton recorded DSD files of Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata #6 sounded stunning, playing through a Merging+ NADAC (behind the stool in the photo). George did extensive tube rolling wth Luxman’s EQ-500, TechDAS Airforce 3, Graham 9” Elite & a Koetsu rounded out the analog source.
Friday Night Musical Highlights were:
Chet Baker’s "Someday My Prince Will Come” recorded in Copenhagen in 1983.
Stan Getz Presents Jimmie Rowles ?– The Peacocks 1977 on Columbia
Oscar Peterson & Joe Pass - The Paris Concert 1978 on Pablo
George Vatchnadze performance / recording of Giya Kancheli’s 30 Miniatures for Piano. (To be released)
Laurence Dickie looking v pleased with his latest creation, the Giya G1 Spirit. Its 4" shorter than a G1 and almost 2" fatter by the woofers.
John Atkinson (editor of Stereophile) talking about his experiences with Laurence Dickie’s B&W & Vivid designs over the past two decades.
Doug Schneider (editor, founder of SoundStage) was extremely articulate talking about his reviews of the B1, Giya G2 & the B1 Decade.
The final production Spirit, now with a rectangular external crossover only arrived in Chicago on Tuesday, so there was barely 100 hours on this pair. But the new mid-range woofer is noticeable in that it has considerably less distortion than its predecessor. Due to the addition of a carbon fiver stiffening ring (just like the tweeters) first harmonic distortion has been moved up from 4.3kHz over over 10kHz . Those huge 11" woofers sounded terrific on Bob Marley's duet with Lauryn Hill - "Turn Your Lights Down Low." My latest mono vinyl compilation "Mono Jazz" sounded terrific on both systems - check it out on Tidal -
https://tidal.com/playlist/ae42c84b-9bec-46ee-a2c3-178c83b947b3