Great New Canadian Bands?

This may be in the running for "most boring headline ever" right after number one, "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative": "What are some great new bands in Canada?" What the heck, it's Saturday and what better do we have to do? Don't answer that! The first clip, by July Talk, they describe this way:

Their dynamic self-titled debut from late 2013 is a dramatic expression of he-she blues-wild and razor-edged alt-rock excitement. Think sweet-and-sour Metric-meets-Tom Waits, though I’m never quite sure which of singers Peter Dreimanis and Leah Fay is the sweet and which is the other. They both have star power, and the Toronto quintet’s inventive videos advertise a striking live presentation. No flavour of the month here – sky’s the limit.

Ok, sure it's a Canadian newspaper talking about a Canadian band, so of course it's a puff piece. You know you are just a tad backwoods when you are always supportive of local talent. But it's not bad, really. A thousand times more listenable (and watchable) than, say, Nicki Minaj. Mind you, I don't think I would describe a repeated eighth-note bass line as "razor-edged alt-rock excitement". It reminds me of someone, though I can't think who at the moment. But really, no trace of Tom Waits here, sorry. The next clip is by Steph Cameron. Here is what they say:

Here comes a B.C.-based songstress, finger picker and free spirit. From her debut album Sad-Eyed Lonesome Lady, Cameron has been likened to Dylan and Mitchell, but if I was in the comparison business – and I suppose I am – I’d see her as a young and bluesy Maria Muldaur. There’s a breezy longing to her fluid, folky material, and even if her characters are rumblin’ and tumblin’, one can hear the swagger as a front. Then again, when a suicide ballad has a line like “Give me a kiss and a good shotgun shell,” anything is possible. Johnny Cash smiles in hell.

Well, ok, but when I see the phrase "B.C.-based songstress" it makes me think of the satirical Sarah Binks, Sweet Songstress of Saskatchewan. A few too many resonances with Bob Dylan's "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" while not matching the quality. She's certainly cute enough and I'll bet she lives on Saltspring Island. Next up is Legato Vipers with "Gangly Dancer" and frankly, this one makes me long for Nicki Minaj:

I doubt these Ontario surf-rock boogie-meisters would know a surfboard from an ironing board. Hell, they probably wouldn’t even know an ironing board. Which means wrinkles, which is what Legato Vipers brings to the classic art of bad-ass beach music and careening psychedelic twang.  Their initial LV album glistens with stylish staccato and switchblade attitude – a soundtrack to a Tarantino lucid dream. Surf is so up.

Here's a hint, if you see the phrase "Ontario surf-rock boogie-meisters" just run! There is no surf in Ontario, just hoar-frost. Plus, instrumentals went out with the Ventures:

Regarding the video, if you are going to shake your ass, I think you have to at least do it better than Nicki Minaj. Now here is some razor-edged, alt-rock, songstress, surf-rock music that works:

At this point, I was starting to lose my will to live, so I didn't risk listening to the rest of the clips. There may be some great new bands in Canada (in fact, I'm sure there are), but the know-nothings in Toronto writing for the Globe and Mail probably don't have a clue who they are. Let's refresh the palate with some Bob Dylan, shall we?

Retro Record Review: Vivarte 60-CD box

Partly to celebrate my new and improved sound system, I ordered a copy of the big box of CDs from Vivarte, Sony's early music label: the Vivarte Collection. I certainly haven't listened to all the discs yet, but I have browsed through the first 24 in some detail and sampled a couple of others. This is a great collection! An incredible amount of outstanding music at an excellent price (from Amazon it worked out to about $1.16 per disc or perhaps 1/10th of the original release price).

A huge plus is the inclusion of a 245 page booklet (in fairly small print) with all the original liner notes. In the case of the six symphonies included by Joseph Haydn, those notes were written by H. C. Robbins Landon, the world's leading Haydn scholar. You don't realize how much you miss liner notes until you start reading some good ones. They are particularly valuable in the case of some of the more creative recording projects, like the one on music from the court of Gaston Febus (1331 - 1391) which I dare say few of us know anything about! Speaking of creativity, this is much in evidence in not only the selection of repertoire: Bach lute suites on lute, Beethoven string trios, Heinrich Schütz, Psalmen Davids (all 26 on two discs), a whole disc of Nicolas Gombert, two discs of lute music by Sylvius Leopold Weiss, the whole of Haydn's Die Schöpfung on two discs, three discs of Telemann Paris Quartets (which might be a couple more than you really need), and on and on and on.

The collection focuses on certain artists such as Anner Bylsma for the cello music (often playing on a spectacular intact Stradivarius cello), Lutz Kirchhof for the lute music (whom I have not run into before, but who is very capable), Bob van Asperen for the harpsichord music, Gustav Leonhardt for the organ music, the Huelgas Ensemble with Paul van Nevel for the Medieval and Renaissance ensemble music, Tafelmusik with Jeanne Lamon for the earlier orchestral music and Bruno Weil and The Classical Band for the later. These are all very fine artists and the performances are generally to be admired.

But it must be noticed that the recordings represent a slice of the history of the early music movement. They seem mostly to originate between 1987 and 1998. The overall producer and recording supervisor for the whole series is Wolf Erichson who seems to have been absolutely tireless around 1992 as recording after recording credits him with supervision. One of the artifacts of this era, as Richard Taruskin has noted in some of his reviews, is that there was a certain strictness, perhaps even a rigidity, about ideas about tempo. Things are a bit looser these days, I suspect, but back then, it was very much the thing to take tempos briskly and with little or no rubato. The reason for this was acknowledged to be to reclaim all this repertoire (in this series extending as far as Schumann and Brahms) from the excesses of Romantic interpretation with its long, flowing legato lines, too flexible tempos and especially, too slow tempos. I recall reading a Jan Swafford comment on a new recording of the St. Matthew Passion, that it turned one of the most poignant moments in history into a cheerful, uptempo dance! I noticed this myself in some of the orchestral pieces conducted by Bruno Weil. The first movement of the Great C Major Symphony by Schubert was pretty much ruined by a too-fast tempo in my view. Mind you, the last movement really seemed to benefit from a very brisk tempo, so there you go. But in other cases, I really don't think the ideal is to have the sensation of being frog-marched briskly through really beautiful music as if you are being taken to a booking for possession!

But this is something I just ran into a couple of times, so not a crucial issue. Mind you, there are lots of pieces I have not heard yet so your milage may vary. Here is a look at the complete contents of the box:

Click to enlarge

It's Christmas, do yourself a favor and pick up this very refreshing and enjoyable collection at a bargain price. The plusses: huge collection of familiar (Vivaldi Four Seasons, Bach Brandenburgs) and unfamiliar (Schütz, Gombert and lots of other Medieval and Renaissance composers) music with a minimum of warhorses and a maximum of fresh and underexposed repertoire, outstanding performances on the whole, focus on some excellent performers and original instruments. Minuses: a limited number of performers whom you will encounter again and again, some ideological rigidity in some performances.

One of the interesting things about this collection is that it demonstrates how 20th century taste (for sharper sonorities, crisper rhythms and brisker, stiffer tempos) transformed the core repertoire of the 18th and even into the 19th century, overruling the aesthetic preferences of the Romantic era. Taruskin makes the point that early music movement performances of Bach were made to conform, essentially, to the taste of composers like Stravinsky. Whether you fully agree or not (and I don't think I quite do), it is something to ponder as you listen to some of these discs.

Here is a little sample of the music of Sylvius Leopold Weiss, friend of J. S. Bach and excellent Baroque lutenist composer. Played by Lutz Kirchhof:

Music Is Invisible

One of the strangest things about music is its invisibility. Music is literally nothing but compression waves in air, and hence invisible. Oh sure, you can call the score music, but that is no more the actual realisation of the work of music than, perhaps, a photo of a musician playing: both are mute.

I was thinking of this as I was listening to some music last night. A photo of the scene would have revealed nothing but a guy sitting in a chair, gazing at the ceiling! But a great deal of music was being heard--all invisible. It made me realise how much we 21st century folks rely on visual images when we listen to music. Much if not most music nowadays is listened to in conjunction with moving images:

Sorry if that made the point a little too strongly! But you see, I think that the linking of music so tightly with imagery has resulted in the defining down of the music. If you want to make a lot of sales, I guess you put up the most striking imagery, which is often sexual. This puts the imagery first and makes you select music to go with the images and not the reverse. So this is what you end up with. Rather the opposite of the real nature of music, which I think is more transcendent:

Friday Miscellanea

In this piece on David Hockney I ran across this interesting passage:

‘Nobody’s taking any notice of the avant-garde any more,’ Hockney notes. ‘They’re finding they’ve lost their authority.’

He’s probably correct about that. For the past decade or two, it has been hard to say what the cutting edge might be. In a world without rules it is impossible for anyone to break any. ‘They thought they would get authority by damaging the other, earlier establishment,’ Hockney suggests. ‘But by doing that you damage all authority.’

Hockney himself has never been a member of the avant-garde, or any other team; more an expeditionary force of one, determinedly pursuing his own explorations. The centre of his interest has always been what he calls ‘the depiction of the visible world’. And his crucial skill has been drawing, which he was thoroughly taught at Bradford and practised late into every evening, thus developing an extraordinary virtuosity.

He laments the neglect of drawing in recent art education. ‘People had been drawing for 40,000 years, and they gave it up in 1975. It’s almost funny. But they couldn’t give it up really. You can’t: it’s always back to the drawing board!’ By that, he means that any new way of seeing the world will have to be produced by the human eye, heart and hand, working together.

 One wonders about the situation in music.

* * *

A soupçon of philosophy? Reading about the revival of interest in the music theories of Hugo Riemann, I ran across this:

a "tonal idea," as Riemann seems to be conceiving it, is an amalgam of a Fregian "thought" and an "idea". It is both objective and subjective at the same time: objective in that another person can hear and grasp it, but subjective in that it is nevertheless a mental occurrence, an object in consciousness. ["What Is a Function?" by Brian Hyer, in The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Riemannian Music Theories, p. 129]

What Riemann is referring to by a "tonal idea" are the harmonic functions subdominant, dominant and tonic. Yes, they are heard objectively, but they are still ideas, not simple objects in the world. As soon as you start really asking yourself what is meant by the idea of harmonic function, you can get very perplexed (a typically philosophical reaction). The Frege mentioned is Gottlob Frege (1848 - 1925) a very important philosopher of language and logic.

* * *

Here is something kind of interesting: the Wall Street Journal has an article about a Boston start-up that, basically, organizes house concerts for starving music students. Wait, is that right? Yeah, pretty much:

Users sign up to attend free events on Groupmuse’s website, which provides information such as the age range of attendees and whether the event is BYOB. The events are free, although organizers request donations for the musicians.

Groupmuse began in Boston, where it has hosted over 275 events, but it is now aggressively expanding into New York City. Last week, there were four Groupmuses in New York and 18 world-wide, including in Canada and South Korea.

The WSJ presents it as being about "Chamber Music for the Millennial Generation" but it really sounds like another way of exploiting classical musicians early on in their careers when they can be convinced to play for the "exposure". To which I always want to say, don't Jerry McGuire me, "show me the money!" It is a pretty interesting article, though, for two things in particular. One is that the piece played in the particular evening reported on was the String Quartet No. 8 by Shostakovich. Another is that the piece that turned on the founder of Groupmuse to classical music was the Grosse Fuge by Beethoven, played in another home setting. Now there's a couple of pieces that leave a mark on the soul!

* * *

A few days ago I posted that I was upgrading my sound system to a Harmon/Kardon integrated unit. The system arrived yesterday--pretty good as I only ordered it last Saturday--so I can report on the sound. I spent about five hours listening to a variety of music from solo piano to full orchestra. The system looks a bit like an undiscovered Cylon model, especially with the string of blue indicator lights on the right side and the featureless black front. Or maybe a big, big brother to a black Bose system. The readout screen, which is on the angled top, is impossible to see if you are sitting down a few feet away. You can only read the track and timing if you are actually standing in front of the unit, looking down. Too bad, because sometimes I just browse through a CD and I like to know which track I am at. Also, with long pieces, I like to check the timing as it can be a clue to the form. The system is a high-quality, no-frills setup, something Harmon/Kardon is known for. Mind you, in a concession to the 21st century, they have an add-on dock that plugs in for your iPhone or iPod. Not compatible with iPhone 5, by the way, but with just about everything else. If you leave that off, then the system is a perfect design: pretty much a featureless black oval with some lights on the right and an angled plane on top with the readout. In the bottom middle is the CD slot. The machine smoothly sucks in the disc and, when it is ejected, holds it firmly until you remove it so it won't fall on the floor. What I am saying, is, the dock and readout aside, this is a beautiful, well-designed system.

The sound is excellent. I'm not an audiophile exactly, but it is great to listen to. Everything is very clear and spacious, great top end and low bass, really good definition and presence. Just a lovely system. Seems very worth the reasonable price tag.

* * *

Tom Service at the Guardian has an article up about conductor Herbert von Karajan that might be worth reading. It contains a number of clips of him rehearsing and conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. The Guardian has completely revamped their classical music site and you can find Tom's symphonic and contemporary surveys at the bottom of the page.

* * *

Courtesy of Norman Lebrecht we have this rather odd, but fascinating, rendition of the Rite of Spring (the first few minutes, at least) on Caribbean steel drum orchestra. Yes, that's right. Go have a listen! What is really scary is that the musicians seem to be playing the whole thing from memory! Is that because they don't actually read music?

* * *

Violinist Kyung-Wha Chung's return to the concert stage in London after more than a decade due to an injury was not entirely without incident. She got a two-star review in the Telegraph and made the news because of her berating a child and her parents due to coughing during the performance. I think that while it is proper for the performer to take notice of excessive noise from the audience, it must be done with grace, not venom. Segovia, confronted with paroxysms of coughing during a concert, would, between pieces, take out a handkerchief from his pocket and cough discretely into it as a model for the audience. Narciso Yepes, trying to deal with a crying baby in the back row, took a very leisurely few minutes to tune between pieces during which he tracked down the offender and glared at her until she took her child out. I'm sure there are lots of other methods.

* * *

That's it for this weeks Friday Miscellanea and I want to end with one of the pieces I listened to last night on my new sound system:

Compare and Contrast

One of my commentators left a great comment on a post the other day. He asked some very interesting questions, a couple of which I responded to, but others I didn't have time to. So I would like to take up the rest in this post. The part I didn't respond to read:

I think these compare and contrast posts are some of the best posts that you share here at the music salon. Its one thing to talk about differences in phrasing, but it is so much more valuable to be able to hear that difference as well. You make a very clear case by contrasting Ms. Isbin’s performance with Mr. Williams. It seems to me that guitarists must work very hard at becoming a “good technician” on their instrument due to the nature of the guitar. I think showing how the musical intention (or lack thereof) comes through above and beyond the technical performance is a component of music appreciation and education that isn't talked about much outside of professional music circles. Do keep sharing these kinds of posts, I find them so interesting!

In my own musical upbringing, it wasn't until I started working with a vocal teacher that I became aware of how important our intentions are in how we phrase all the “right” notes on the page (i.e. don’t play Bach like you hate him!). Once I gained an awareness of this aspect of music, I felt like I had discovered this whole other world – reading this post really brought me back to that happy place and time.

 It's funny, the compare and contrast method, that I have used all my career in music, mostly for my own development, does not seem to be widely known. I never much noticed that, as it came completely naturally and instinctively to me. Back when I was a performer, if I were going to learn a new piece there were two general paths I took. One is to simply sit down and do a study of the score. If it is a new piece, then this is the only option. Julian Bream has talked about taking a new Peter Maxwell Davies score with him camping and sitting in his tent studying it without a guitar. I can see that. But for most repertoire, there are many recordings available and perhaps even the occasional live performance in your area. The other path is to listen to different performances of the piece and compare them. This is the method I used when I was learning new repertoire.

Let me describe it in a bit more detail. Typically, I would hear a recording or performance of a piece and say to myself, "great piece, I have to learn it". Sometimes it would be just too difficult, especially earlier in my career. But if that were not the case, the next step would be to get the score. I would study the score with and without the guitar. (What this means is that without the instrument you look at the score and try to figure out the general structure, how the phrases are organized, the harmonies and so on. Then with the guitar, you go through and check how all of this sounds.) After this initial study, then I would likely try to find several different recordings of the piece and compare them. What is the usual tempo, for example, is one thing I would find out. How do the different players handle the phrasing and dynamics?

This can be very illuminating. One strong example that comes to mind is the Passacaglia from the Three Spanish Pieces by Joaquin Rodrigo. For a long time guitarists would only play the first piece, the Fandango. Segovia had recorded it, then Williams, and though difficult, how to play it musically was fairly clear. Then a few guitarists picked up the third piece, the Zapateado. Though technically difficult, it is not difficult musically. But for a long time no-one played the middle piece, the Passacaglia. Then Bream recorded all three, taking a quite slow tempo for the Passacaglia, and suddenly it was obvious how that should be played! Here is a fine live performance by Jerôme Ducharme of that movement:

It does not come together musically unless you take a fairly slow tempo.

So that was how I used comparing and contrasting different performances in my own musical development. But it is a great tool for demonstrating subtleties of musicianship and, incidentally, for revealing aesthetic truths. But it is rarely found in any mainstream forum. Why is that? It is because it is so revealing. Therefore, not to be too dramatic, there is a kind of conspiracy to keep it off the radar!

The economic base of the business is what supports most mainstream commentary on music. This economic base depends on music sales of recordings, sheet music, instruments and electronics. What gives a real punch to sales are rave articles about this or that recording, artist or sound system. (Sheet music sales are less affected by this.) So what you see in the media are puff pieces (non-critical praise) of such and such an artist or recording. Occasionally you will see a review of a recording or concert that is partly negative, but these days even those receive some push-back.

It is of no economic benefit to the business to have listeners--consumers--critically comparing different artists and recordings, therefore that sort of thing just doesn't appear.

But it is, of course, of enormous benefit to the listeners, consumers, music students and musicians as it enables them to become more aesthetically aware.

One of the most thorough-going comparisons I have done here at the Music Salon was of different recordings of a Bach gigue for solo violin. That was provoked by some remarks made by Nigel Kennedy about Bach. Here is that post.

Oddly enough, it was lessons with a voice teacher that also led to my awakening with regard to musical interpretation.

Just for fun, here is my recording of the Zapateado by Rodrigo:

Concerto Guide: Mozart

This post is part of a year-long project that will present fifty or so concertos in weekly posts. The inspiration for the project comes from a couple of year-long series at the Guardian presented by Tom Service. One was a very useful one on contemporary composers and the other was on the symphony. The latter was a bit less useful as it brought out the fact that Tom, while a good fellow, is basically a journalist so he is always looking for some sensational "news" to tell us. In the case of contemporary composers this is less a failing than with the symphony where you need more of a historical sense.

So far in my series on the concerto I have looked at Corelli and the origins, Vivaldi, and three Bachs: J. S., J. C. and C. P. E. Bach. Today I am going to start a series within the series as I begin to look at who is perhaps the finest concerto composer of all: W. A. Mozart.

It is not necessarily the case that history is a progress. Perhaps the finest poetry ever written was by Homer, 800 years BC. Sometimes the greatest achievements come in the first flush of creation, when all is fresh and new. That might have been the case with Homer, whose great epics were almost the first to be written down simply because the Greeks had just caught on to this whole writing thing.

Similarly, the 500 concertos of Antonio Vivaldi stand almost without peers, save of course for the far fewer, but very fine, ones by J. S. Bach. The next great wave of concerto composition comes with Mozart. There are several reasons why he was such a great composer of concertos. First of all, the classical style, newly constructed largely through the efforts of Haydn, was fresh and offered immense possibilities in a new musical grammar. Second, Mozart picked this up almost instantly because, as his father wrote to him: "you can imitate anything." Third, and most important, I think, Mozart was, from his early teens, a master of opera (he got his first opera commission at age 14). Why is this important? Because the way of structuring an opera aria had a lot of influence on how concertos came to be structured: they both have the texture of an overwhelmingly prominent solo voice or instrument, accompanied by an orchestra. Mozart is perhaps the only composer in music history who was equally the master of both opera and instrumental genres, so he was uniquely positioned to write the finest concertos.

I think that you could make the argument that, ever since Mozart, nearly every composer has tried to outdo him in the concerto genre and some, like Beethoven, Brahms and Mendelssohn, have come close. But I think you might conclude that no-one has outdone him both in quantity and quality and variety of concertos.

Mozart had a lot of financial incentive to write concertos, especially for his own use, as his Lenten concert series, which he originated, was very profitable (as we learn from his father's letters). Mozart wrote over thirty concertos for piano and orchestra (even a few for more than one piano) and these are among his finest creations. He also wrote five concertos, also possibly for his own use, for violin and orchestra while he was still in Salzburg. This makes him the only composer I know of who was virtuoso enough on more than one instrument to be able to write concertos for himself. There is also the unusual concerto, the Sinfonia Concertante, for violin, viola and orchestra that he also wrote for himself to play, but this time on the viola!

Apart from all this, there are numerous concertos for wind instruments including flute, oboe and four for French horn, written for a friend. These are lesser works, though with beguiling details.

So, as you can see, I have my work cut out for me. I will be spending at least five or six posts on the Mozart concertos starting later today with the Sinfonia Concertante. In the mean time, here is one of his minor concertos (which Rosen calls "hack work"), the one for flute and harp, demonstrating that even Mozart's hack work is pretty good:

Sound Reproduction

I have just decided to upgrade my sound system because I am doing a lot more listening these days and, especially with orchestral music, you need a decent system. For several years I have used an Aiwa micro hi-fi component system with a built-in cassette player that I bought mainly because I had some old concert recordings on cassette. Most of these I have transferred to CD so I probably don't need this system any more. It is ok, but there are probably better available.

The scene today is really different from when I was starting out in music. With the help of a friend I actually built my first decent stereo amplifier/receiver from a kit. Took several days and a lot of soldering. I forget the brand. Who was it used to offer amps in kit form? We also built our own speaker cabinets and I remember it was from a Wharfedale kit. They provided the speakers (two per enclosure) and the plans and you had to build the cabinets. I see from Amazon that they are still in business. Alas, not long after I put this quite decent component system together, I went to Spain for a year to study guitar. So I sold it.

I replaced it with several lesser systems over the years. Short of funds when I moved to Montreal in 1990, I bought used components from a repair shop. But, realizing that my speakers just could not do the job of transmitting clearly what was going on in the bass with Shostakovich symphonies, I broke down and bought a good set of Cerwin-Vega speakers. They were excellent. So good in fact, that when my wife and I threw a party for the McGill triathlon club, people from two houses away were phoning the cops. I think it was the Rolling Stones at maximum volume!

But again, when I moved to Mexico, I had to give them up. For a few years I didn't do very much listening and got by with a speaker bar that fitted onto the bottom of my computer monitor. Then I got some very crappy cheap speakers that plugged into my laptop. They were low end Logitech speakers and I can't recommend them because of a serious amount of distortion.

My iMac has a pretty good built in speaker system, but I have upgraded it with a Bose Mini Soundlink, that is excellent for the size:

But that is just for listening to stuff at/on the computer. For real sit-down listening to CDs, I am getting something better. It's a weird situation these days. Twenty or thirty years ago, when I lived in Canada, I always knew of a store where the audio buffs went to buy their serious component systems. Mind you, back then it was all Shure cartridges and heavy turntables and big speakers--vinyl, dude, vinyl! Apparently it's all coming back. A good friend of mine, music director at a big Canadian theater festival, used to have a really serious sound system and he said he really preferred analog and vinyl to the relatively new digital CD sound. The point was though, that digital CDs sounded better on cheap systems.

Anyway, I wasn't quite sure what to look for in the current environment and where I live there are no stores for audiophiles, just Radio Shack with crappy boom boxes:

Amazon to the rescue, of course. But the problem is that most sound systems are cheap ones. So how do you find a good one? Turns out that some of the old famous names are still around, like Wharfedale. I thought of Bang & Olufsen, but Amazon shows only one system (with terrible reviews) for a thousand dollars that doesn't ship to Mexico--and a bunch of cables. Hmm, browsing around, turns out Klipsch is still around and makes some nice components. But I was looking for a small, though good quality, system. I considered the Bose systems, they make a nice compact one that is well-liked, but I finally decided on this one from Harman Kardon:

Mmm, nice. Contains two 30-watt bass reflex speakers. I just ordered it on Saturday and they say it will be delivered on Thursday. You have to love Amazon.

I am quite eager to set it up. Wait, there is no setting up these days, with all those speaker wires and stuff. Remember getting out your knife and trimming your speaker wires? These days it is just open the box and plug it in. I'm getting that eager feeling to hear what it sounds like. Back in the day, when I got a new sound system or speakers, I had to go back and listen to all my favorites all over again, to see what more I could hear. This year, my favorite record is actually the box of the complete Haydn symphonies with Dennis Russell Davies conducting the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, so it might take a while!

And that gives me my envoi:

Why don't you treat yourself and upgrade your sound system?