Thursday 6 February 2003

Six new Michael Rabin CDs! Great joy (though I only have three at the moment; the rest are following). The six discs cover Rabin's Bell Telephone Hour appearances (Donald Voorhees and the Bell Orchestra). Hearing Rabin is like meeting a good old friend again. His playing really was flawless, and his "slushy" style quite genuine and distinctive. Nothing on the Bell Hour is allowed to last more than 4 minutes or so (American radio audiences obviously were thought to have low attention spans) so everything is played fast, and isolated movements are played from concertos. The Voorhees accompaniments are slushy and Hollywood-inspired. The announcer makes mundane comments and manages to mispronounce almost everything. Still, Rabin is great! The appearances start from 1950 when he was 14 years old. And, unlike his studio recordings, the balance is less diabolical -- how one could throttle the recording producer who nodded through Rabin's incredible recording of the complete Paganini caprices, recorded so near the mike it makes listening a strident experience.
Six hours of Rabin! One of the great things about the CD-R revolution (and the copyright expiration for so many older performances) is that it makes it possible to hear many more hours of an artist than would have been permitted by just the authorised commercially-released recordings.

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