Started to dig into the historical recordings I rediscovered a few weeks back finally, starting with the 6 discs of early concerto recordings with Isaac Stern on Columbia. Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven (the standards) with Bernstein, Sibelius and Ravel’s ‘Tzigane’ thrown in as well. These are all older mono recordings, and the violin tends to stand out quite a bit from the rest of the orchestra. Usually this would bother me, but it is part of the recording style from the period. And in this case it works out nicely… I have good recordings of all these pieces, but none of them are from a young Isaac Stern. The tone of his violin is a bit gritty, but it is hard to tell how much of that is the recording technology of the day or if it is extra sticky rosin on his bow. The Sibelius and the Ravel recordings stand out for me. ‘Tzigane’ is ALL about technique, and it is on brilliant display here. The piece feels fresh in this recording (not quite a show piece yet… still a very challenging work for the performer). And the Sibelius (with some of its darker tones, especially in the third movement) sounds great on the older recording. Plus – violinists just don’t play like this anymore… lots of fun.

In other news about the project, I just filled up the 250 GB drive that I started off with, and picked up a new TB drive to become the main drive. It was yesterday, when both drive were plugged in and I started to make the new backup (the backup is now the main drive) that I noticed something a little startling. The data transfer was SSSSSSSLLLLLOOOWWWW. Really slow. Just remembered that the old PowerBook must have USB 1 ports, and compared to the old Firewire drive data transfer is much worse. I plugged the two drives into my current laptop (with USB 2) for the initial transfer. This took about two hours (compared to the 7 days I estimate the PowerBook would have taken). I imagine these are the two drives I will end up with for some time now, and that the next component to go will be the old PowerBook. I’m actually amazed the thing is still ticking (going on 8 years now with a broken monitor and the original 1 GB of RAM in it!).