After reading several outstanding reviews of Ed Pong's recordings, I decided to dip my toe in the water and ordered his tape of the Schubert Grand Fantasy and Saint-Saens' The Swan with Xiang Yu, violin and Yun-Yang Lee, piano.
The recording and performance are phenomenal. I loved the Schubert, but The Swan literally brought tears to my eyes with its beauty.
I decided to get "back into" RTR tape because of the various "you'll never believe how good this stuff is" reviews I read here, on other RTR forums, and in Stereophile and TAS. At first, I mostly thought of it as a way to re-live my college days with a Revox A77 recording Chicago Symphony concerts off of WFMT. But the quality of what I've acquired - tapes from Acoustics Sounds, Yarlung, Jonathan Horwitz's jazz stuff from International Phonograph, and now one from Ed, is just unbelievable.
I hear things on this tape from Ed that I've literally never heard before in a violin recording. The "air" (I guess that's what you call it) and harmonics of the bowing of a pianissimo note on the violin - it's almost like you hear the string vibrating before the note sounds. And you can hear quite literally how the violinist and pianist adjust to each other's playing to maintain tonal balance. The "you are there" realism is almost . . . unsettling . . .
Thanks, Ed, for your dedication to producing these recordings. I can already see where a chunk of my federal tax refund is going to end up: in Canada!
John C.
The recording and performance are phenomenal. I loved the Schubert, but The Swan literally brought tears to my eyes with its beauty.
I decided to get "back into" RTR tape because of the various "you'll never believe how good this stuff is" reviews I read here, on other RTR forums, and in Stereophile and TAS. At first, I mostly thought of it as a way to re-live my college days with a Revox A77 recording Chicago Symphony concerts off of WFMT. But the quality of what I've acquired - tapes from Acoustics Sounds, Yarlung, Jonathan Horwitz's jazz stuff from International Phonograph, and now one from Ed, is just unbelievable.
I hear things on this tape from Ed that I've literally never heard before in a violin recording. The "air" (I guess that's what you call it) and harmonics of the bowing of a pianissimo note on the violin - it's almost like you hear the string vibrating before the note sounds. And you can hear quite literally how the violinist and pianist adjust to each other's playing to maintain tonal balance. The "you are there" realism is almost . . . unsettling . . .
Thanks, Ed, for your dedication to producing these recordings. I can already see where a chunk of my federal tax refund is going to end up: in Canada!
John C.