[Jenn]

We traveled to San Francisco this weekend to celebrate my birthday with
my inlaws and for some shopping. In Berkeley, we hit the great "Musical
Offering" for both lunch and CD shopping. I bought some more Bach
Cantatas (close to the full set now) and a new release in the RCA Living
Stereo re-releases: Berlioz: Harold in Italy and assorted Overtures with
Munch and the BSO. GREAT sound on this disk. HIGHLY recommended. At
Amoeba, I found the Cisco LP re-release of the legendary Shostakovitch
5th from Columbia with Bernstein/NYPhil. I'm not a big fan of most of
the old Columbias, but this one has a reputation for good sound, and I
like Cisco's work, so I went for it (the most important thing is the
great performance, which I already had on CD). The audio result is
mixed; really good timbres, only fair dynamically compared to the best
LPs and CDs. The surfaces are really good. On balance, far more
enjoyable than the harsh CD transfer from Sony, but not my favorite LP
by far. The performance though... Ahhhhh!