Bruckner's 9th. Pristine Audio

As I have remarked before, the 7^th October 1944 performance of Bruckner's 9^th Symphony conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler and played by the Berlin Philharmonic is one of the great performances of all time. And the (live) recording is little short of miraculous given the date and the circumstances. The playing of the Berlin Philharmonic is something that one no longer hears, remarkable given that the Philharmonie had just been bombed and that the T34 tanks of the Red Army were rolling inexorably towards Berlin where they would arrive just seven months later; it was a bit like the band still playing when the Titanic went down.

I was therefore horror-stricken when, playing my CDR of the Pristine Audio transfer of the work yesterday, the sound suddenly featured the ominous click-click-click and tap-tap-tap of a damaged CD; and the third movement would not play at all! Very odd in a CDR I had played OK before and where they were no signs of marks or scratches. A frantic email to Andrew Rose of Pristine Audio found him on holiday, half way up a mountain. But within an hour I had a link to a new download and I now have the work on a brand new CDR playing happily. There is a lot to be said for buying from responsive small companies, and thank you Andrew.