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United StatesFantastic recording
We truly enjoy this recording for the quality of detail and history that it represents
United StatesBeautiful
Beautiful performance and recording. Martzy's performance is warm and elegant. Grateful HDTT makes the recording available.
United StatesOne of a kind Bach
A style of playing unusual for those raised on authentic practices. Extraordinary passion and timbre bowed out from a searing modern violin. Unforgettable once you’ve heard her have a go at this score. It’s all there in the Bach, this is not new jam spread on old toast. But I guarantee he never heard such a thing!
One of the best transfer
I was about to purchase a Japanese remastered copy of the Johanna Martzy Bach Violin Sonatas & Partitas two weeks ago, but that copy was unfortunately out of print. I was then googling for recommendations of it and found this great transfer.
AustraliaA Well-transferred Classic
Thank you HDTT for releasing this well-loved recording in a fine transfer at an affordable price. These performances have been available on a number of carriers over the years, often at very high prices. As would be expected from recordings made in 1954-55, the recording is mono, but excellent mono nonetheless, which captures the violin sound very effectively, and the perspective in which it was recorded. It confirms my belief that good recordings are as much about the ear of the recording team as they are about the technology used. In this case the engineers were remarkably successful to begin with. Johanna Martzy’s playing is very precise, and largely objective in style, but she maintains an amazingly high level of concentration and involvement in the music over its duration. There are passages of wonderful legato style. These works are much recorded these days, but there should always be room in anyone’s collection for this set.
Description:
Title: Johann Sebastian Bach Sonatas & Partitas BWV 1001-1006
Artist(s): Johanna Martzy, violin
Recording Info: Transferred from a 15ips 2-track tape
Recorded at Abbey Road Studios, London by EMI Records 1955
Martzy is one of the most sought after violinists and if you wanted to buy – always assuming you could find them - perfect copies of the British Columbia LPs the Sonatas and Partitas first appeared on (33CX 1286-8) you could end-up paying more than $6500 for them and even the more modern Coup d’Archet (a defunct label dedicated to issuing live and studio performances by Martzy on CD and LP) and 180gm remasterings cost serious money. So for most digital will be the only option, of which - in amongst various Japanese and Korean versions - only those by EMI France, Testament and Hänssler are widely available and none of these CDs (let alone the appalling MP3 downloads) come close to reproducing what Martzy sounded like on LP, which is not the case with this remastering, which in both DXD and DSD128, played in native format, has far more presence, projection, body and better reproduces the Abbey Road acoustic. Rob Pennock
This is a Monophonic Recording
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