This (Dvorak's Stabat Mater by Robert Shaw produced by Telarc) is one of my favorite full symphonic+choral classical music recordings. It's an amazing work, musically. It's not one of the better known classical works, but I think it stands up to any of the major compositions of the classical/romantic era.
I also have come to consider it one of the critical tests of a sound system. As much as I love my "Flint MTM" system (with Soundhound crossovers), I still feel like there's something missing when I play this recording. And I don't get that feeling with almost any other recording. So I have to wonder, is this a limitation of my own system, or of the recording itself? Usually Telarc is reliable enough I wouldn't doubt the recording quality. But I have this same sense with both my speaker system and my headphones - both of which I've spent A LOT of time tweaking and optimizing. But this Dvorak work demands a sense of scale that my systems just can't reproduce. And yes, I've listened to this same recording on Batman's HT where scale is not an issue - it's just BIG. But my impression was, as far as I remember, about the same, that it was awesome but lacking that last 1% that would truly make it out of this world amazing.
So maybe it really is just the recording, that didn't quite capture the sound of the grand scale of this work, especially the final movement. Musically, I certainly can't find any reason to fault Shaw's recording. It was one of the last he did with his choir and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. The soloists are amazing. The music and the interpretation are amazing. It's just that I feel in the finale, there should be just a tad more there.
Well, it still brings tears to my eyes when I listen to this seriously, as it did just now tonight. I just can't help but wonder if there could be something more I can do to bring this recording "to life" or if this is as good as it gets. Flint, when's your next GTG?
