Bruno Walter – Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C Minor “Resurrection” (2024) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Bruno Walter – Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C Minor “Resurrection” (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:20:39 minutes | 493 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Fra Bernardo

The Symphony No. 2 in C minor by Gustav Mahler, known as the Resurrection Symphony, was written between 1888 and 1894, and first performed in 1895. This symphony was one of Mahler’s most popular and successful works during his lifetime. It was his first major work that established his lifelong view of the beauty of afterlife and resurrection. In this large work, the composer further developed the creativity of “sound of the distance” and creating a “world of its own”, aspects already seen in his First Symphony. The work has a duration of 80 to 90 minutes, and is conventionally labelled as being in the key of C minor; the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians labels the work’s tonality as C minor–E♭ major. It was voted the fifth-greatest symphony of all time in a survey of conductors carried out by the BBC Music Magazine.

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NBC Symphony Orchestra, Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter – Brahms: Orchestral Works (Live) (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

NBC Symphony Orchestra, Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter - Brahms: Orchestral Works (Live) (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz] Download

NBC Symphony Orchestra, Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter – Brahms: Orchestral Works (Live) (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 02:07:55 minutes | 1,23 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Archipel

The NBC Symphony Orchestra was a radio orchestra conceived by David Sarnoff, the president of the Radio Corporation of America, especially for the conductor Arturo Toscanini. The NBC Symphony performed weekly radio concert broadcasts with Toscanini and other conductors and served as house orchestra for the NBC network.
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Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter – Beethoven: Symphony 6 (1958) [SACD Remaster 1999] SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter – Beethoven: Symphony 6 (1958) [SACD Remaster 1999]
SACD ISO Stereo: 1,63 GB | 24B/88,2kHz Stereo FLAC: 760 MB | Full Artwork | 3% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Sony Classical # SS 6012 | Country/Year: US 1999, 1958
Genre: Classical | Style: Classical Period

Review by drdanfee December 17, 2005  

BRUNO WALTER + BEETHOVEN 6 = GENIUS, HEART, SOUL. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, NO MATTER WHAT.

By the time conductor Bruno Walter got around to recording this reading of the Beethoven Sixth Symphony, almost everybody who was anybody in classical music of that era agreed that he practically owned the contemporary performance rights to utter preeminence in this work.

The phrasing is sung, instead of snapped in the modern Beethoven style that owes so much to three or four decades we have spent in recreations of period instrument playing. The tempos are flexible, as if breathing. The flexibility of phrasing and tempos is always rooted, as deeply as possible, in the bedrock of the symphony’s harmonic argument, and then to equal degree in the dramatic and narrative flow.

In short, people don’t conduct Beethoven like this any more.

But no matter.

However much our own thought and period instrument experiences may have come to inform how we now think the composer is expressing himself, to hear this recording again is to appreciate with new zest and new heart that Beethoven’s importance is inseparable from the kind of humanity that Bruno Walter and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra find in him, exactly through his music.

By the way.

All the comments about tape hiss being preserved make me wonder what kinds of equipment people are using to play this SACD.

Probably if you are listening on headphones, you will be that much more aware of the background noise inherent in the master tape. But the music is so staggeringly figural that I cannot believe anybody would fail to notice it, lost in favor of that (minimal) background tape noise.

I wonder how people manage, listening past all the other everyday noise that threatens to intrude upon our home systems? The miracle of listening to recorded music is part and parcel of the brain’s miraculous abilities (bio-psycho-acoustically) to process the signals the ear is receiving, and to focus one empathic attentions on the point, which is the music.

Now, some musical training of some kind probably helps this kind of ability to focus or pay attention. But anyone who can manage to hear their friends talking to them on an outside, busy, noisy urban street, has the basic brain ability to shut out competing noise in favor of paying attention to the other person talking.

Listening past tape hiss or other (minimal) master tape residual noise … well it is just like that.

In any case, this reading is a peak all its own in the mountain ranges of recorded Beethoven Sixth Symphonies. Anyone who can’t hear the music yet should just take a break and come back later. No matter who else records this symphony,… and there have been and will be some deserving candidates;… this particular recording will continue to stand on its own, and can therefore be very highly recommended.

The rating says five stars. I say: there are too many stars to count. Get this SACD, and listen to Beethoven the humanist who plumbed and characterized all those joys and struggles we have come to call the human condition. SA-CD.net

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Bruno Walter, Columbia Symphony Orchestra – Beethoven: Symphonies No. 6 & 2 (1958/2016) DSF DSD128 + Hi-Res FLAC

Bruno Walter, Columbia Symphony Orchestra – Beethoven: Symphonies No. 6 & 2 (1958/2016)
DSD128 (.dsf) 1 bit/5,6 MHz | Time – 76:19 minutes | 6,01 GB
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time – 76:19 minutes | 1,60 GB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Digital booklet

Walter recorded the Beethoven symphonies in stereo for Columbia in 1958-59, taping Nos. 2 & 6 in Los Angeles with orchestra of freelance and studio musicians who rose magnificently to the occasion. Walter was in his eighties, but that didn’t stop him from grabbing these works by the throat; there is no mincing around, no effusive lingering over phrases, no ponderous trudging either.

Bruno Walter knows how to conduct Beethoven. His recording of the 6th Symphony (Pastoral) is simply the finest on disc. From the opening passages of the first movement, one is in for a real treat. Actually the entire Beethoven Symphony cycle conducted by Bruno Walter is an essential to add to one’s Classical collection, but for starters, I would recommend this particular recording.

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Bruno Walter – Mahler: Symphony No. 1 in D Major “Titan” (Remastered) (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Bruno Walter - Mahler: Symphony No. 1 in D Major

Bruno Walter – Mahler: Symphony No. 1 in D Major “Titan” (Remastered) (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 52:03 minutes | 2,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

For many years Bruno Walter was a friend and collaborator of Gustav Mahler, and his interpretations of the composer’s symphonies are generally considered unsurpassed models. The „official“ studio recordings of Mahler’s works, however, were made towards the end of his life and perhaps do not give a good enough idea of the Bacchic frenzy that characterised the German conductor’s early interpretations of them. In this beautiful 1939 live recording, instead, the Bacchic frenzy is all there, fascinating from the first measures and reaching an apex in the powerful and impressive Finale.
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Bruno Walter – Dvorák: Symphonies Nos. 8 & 9 (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Bruno Walter - Dvorák: Symphonies Nos. 8 & 9 (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz] Download

Bruno Walter – Dvorák: Symphonies Nos. 8 & 9 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:17:34 minutes | 3,25 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

Bruno Walter recorded the Eighth in southern California in 1962, at the end of a glorious career in the opera pit, on the podium, and in the studio. A finer valedictory could scarcely have been possible. This sunny, ebullient account is full of real grazioso phrasing and has a wonderful lightness of touch, yet shows plenty of muscle from a man who was 85 at the time he conducted it. The playing of the Columbia Symphony is inspired, and the recording, now more than 50 years old, remains exemplary for its balance and extraordinarily good sonics.
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Zino Francescatti, Pierre Fournier, Bruno Walter – Brahms: Concerto for Violin & Cello (1960/2015) [Official Digital Download DSF DSD128/5.64MHz + FLAC 24bit/96kHz]

Zino Francescatti, Pierre Fournier, Bruno Walter – Brahms: Concerto for Violin & Cello (1960/2015)
DSD128 (.dsf) 1 bit/5,64 MHz | Time – 00:32:49 minutes | 2,58 GB
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time – 00:32:49 minutes | 531 MB
Genre: Classical | Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © HDTT

~ Brahms Concerto for Violin & Cello – Zino Francescatti,violin – Pierre Fournier,cello – Bruno Walter conducting The Columbia Symphony Orchestra (Pure DSD) ~

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Bruno Walter & New York Philharmonic/Columbia Symphony Orchestra – Schubert/Beethoven, Symphonies 8/5 (1999) {PS3 ISO + FLAC}

Bruno Walter & New York Philharmonic / Columbia Symphony Orchestra
Schubert: Symphony No. 8 / Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 (1958) [Reissue 1999]

PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 57:36 minutes | Artwork (PDF) | 2,35 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Full Artwork (PDF) | 1,19 GB
Genre: Classical

Just like the other three Bruno Walter releases in Sony Classical’s current crop of SACD reissues, this classic Beethoven/Schubert coupling benefits from the DSD transfer, which reproduces as faithfully as possible the musical content of the original reel-to-reel master tapes. The reviewers have noted elsewhere, the cost is a small amount of tape hiss, eminently preferable to the so-called “no noise” digital editing which tampers with the musical signal as it tries to remove noise. Here is a transfer which presents the original intentions of the artists in the best possible light, capturing the acoustic signature of the recording venue (American Legion Hall in Hollywood) perfectly — warm, reverberent, yet transparent, ideally matching Bruno Walter’s interpretive idiom. (more…)

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