Arnold Schoenberg - Pierrot Lunaire (Avant Garde Project 175) torrent

The Avant Garde Project is a series of 20th-century classical, experimental, and electroacoustic torrents digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today. This is wild stuff, so check it out if you\\\'ve never heard this sort of music before. The analog rig used to extract the sound from the grooves is near state-of-the-art, producing almost none of the tracking distortion or surface noise normally associated with LPs.

AGP1-157 are available for direct download at

AGP148-174 are now available at http://ubu.com/sound/agp/index.html.

AGP169-174 are also available at http://thepiratebay.se/user/human2011.

NOTE: All of the AGP installments since 163 are 24-bit, 44.1 kHz FLAC files. The extra bits of quantization reveal more realistic detail using a 24-bit DAC and good audio equipment. To burn these tracks to CD, you will first have to convert them to 16-bit files. This is easily done using the converter tool in Foobar2000 or other software.

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The Avant Garde Project celebrates its dodransbicentennial (quartoseptcentennial?) with the only out-of-print recording of Arnold Schoenberg\\\'s Pierrot Lunaire that I could find in my stacks. It is sung/recited by Mary Thomas with The Fires of London, and was released on LP on Unicorn Records RHS 319 in 1973. Pierrot Lunaire had a special place in the repertoire of The Fires of London in that they were originally named The Pierrot Players when they formed in 1967. The LP also includes a recording of Schoenberg\\\'s Chamber Symphony in an arrangement by Anton Webern for the same instrumentation that is used for Pierrot Lunaire.

These works were recorded in July 1973 in Wigmore Hall by Angus McKenzie and Tony Faulkner. It is a clear and natural recording that is also just a bit dark, as though it were recorded with a single microphone pair. You may notice in quiet sections in the middle of the Chamber Symphony a very light recurrent squiggly noise, which I think is caused by the tape mis-feeding the tiniest bit in a reel-to-reel player, either during recording or playback. It\\\'s not obtrusive, but maybe that\\\'s why this otherwise worthwhile recording of important works by Schoenberg has not been re-released on CD.

Mary Thomas - reciter
Judith Pearce - flute and piccolo
Alan Hacker - clarinet and bass clarinet
Duncan Druce - violin and viola
Jennifer Ward Clarke - cello
Stephen Pruslin - piano

Pierrot Lunaire is conducted by Peter Maxwell Davies. The Chamber Symphony is performed without conductor.

I didn\\\'t scan the LP cover because plenty of information about Pierrot Lunaire and the Chamber Symphony are available on the internet. Maybe I will by the time the installment appears on Ubu.

Equipment used for A/D conversion: Linn Akiva phono cartridge, Linn LP12/Lingo turntable, Linn Ekos SE tonearm, Audioquest LeoPard tonearm cable, PS Audio PS2 preamplifier, Kimber PBJ interconnect, M-Audio Audiophile USB A/D converter.

01 - Pierrot Lunaire, Side A, 1-18 [27:27]
02 - Pierrot Lunaire, Side B, 19-21 [5:55]
03 - Chamber Symphony, op. 9 arranged by Anton Webern [20:21]

NOTE: To the best of my knowledge, these recordings are not currently available commercially. If you know otherwise, please let me know ASAP, as I do not wish any artists to be deprived of the royalties that they so richly deserve.