Author: Bill Dodd
Bill is Senior Music Reviewer at NativeDSD. He lives in the Portland, Oregon area. He is an avid photographer too! Along with his early interest in broadcasting and high fidelity audio, he was exposed to classical music in small doses from age 5, was given piano lessons from age 9— Starting with Bach and including Gershwin. Successful morning personality in San Francisco at age 22. (true). Sang in choirs in high school and college. Although the broadcasting experience was all in popular music, his personal listening has been mostly classical his whole life—along with others including Benny Goodman, Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Joni Mitchell, The Who, and Led Zeppelin.
The Cobra Catalog
This month, NativeDSD’s Label of the Month is Cobra Records. Cobra Records is an independent “fair trade” label with acoustic recordings in the highest possible quality. Label manager, producer and recording engineer is Tom Peeters. With over 20 years experience for different label companies and international artists he is a well known, involved and much […]
Fabulous Fifths
Is it a crime to listen to ALL of the Fifth Symphonies by the various composers that are available at the NativeDSD Music Store today? Well even if it is, Senior NativeDSD Reviewer Bill Dodd decided not to plead the fifth! He walks you through his favorite interpretations of Fifth Symphonies by Beethoven, Mahler, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, […]
Off with the V!
You might recall, in my blog post from this past October I wondered: “Is it Rachmaninoff or Rachmaninov?” About 75 percent of the listings at the NativeDSD Store use -ov, and the rest use -off. I tended toward the -ov, but good old Microsoft Spellcheck prefers -off. Searching can be an issue, so I suggest […]
Mostly Rachmaninov
Is it Rachmaninoff or Rachmaninov? When I was a kid, people weren’t too sure about how to spell Tchaikovsky. In those days you could find it spelled Chaikovsky and Tchaikowsky along with Tchaikovsky which seems to have won the battle most places. But… Is it Rachmaninoff or Rachmaninov? Of all the albums on Native DSD, […]
Extreme Beauty Ahead
I’ve certainly covered a lot of wonderful recordings in doing 28 of these blogs, but occasionally there are some that get left behind. So I’ve spent the last few days looking. And I found some great ones! … Caution! Extreme beauty ahead… Arabella Steinbacher, backed by Lawrence Foster and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo, […]
Dance The Night Away
I don’t often listen to suites from Tchaikovsky’s beloved ballets. Over the many years I was a mainstream commercial broadcaster I overdosed on those parts of The Nutcracker that are ubiquitous at Christmas time. But I recently decided to put on the complete ballet and it turned out to be a wonderful discovery. Discovery #1 […]
Requiems: Crossing Over, Saying Farewell
In my last DSD Discoveries entry I compared the three recordings of Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem available at NativeDSD. This time I thought I might dig around for Requiem settings from other composers. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine” is the Latin from the ancient Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead. In English: “Grant them eternal […]
Discover five Classical Titles
It was a dark, drippy morning. Cable news was telling me that things were massively embarrassing, nonsensical, and other-worldly. Let’s face it. It was not the best of mornings. But on that morning, I decided to give a complete listen to a recent DSD discovery: Ludwig August LeBrun (1752-1790) was something of a musical superstar […]
Strings and Things
Whether you call it a bull fiddle, a bass fiddle, a contrabass, a bass viol, a string bass, a double bass, or just a bass; that giant-sized stringed instrument has been providing the bottom end of music for centuries. But (picking one of the above) the double bass has rarely been thought of as a […]
Surprises and Mind-Benders
Isn’t Bach amazing? So much music! So much precision! Truly Bach was a landmark composer. Knowing that, I was still not prepared for the ethereal beauty of Peter Dijkstra leading the Netherlands Chamber Choir in six Bach Motets. If you find Bach a bit on the mathematical, straight-laced side, you will be equally surprised by […]
Just Can’t Get Away
Some things you just can’t get away from. Over the years I’ve acquired a rather silly number of recordings of Mussorgsky’s Night On A Bare Mountain (orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov) and Pictures at an Exhibition (orchestrated by Ravel). They get included with other works a lot. And I do mean a lot! Then there’s Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. […]
Russian DSD Discoveries
Three of my favorite composers are Russian, and they were contemporaries. Sergei Rachmaninov, Sergei Prokofiev, and Igor Stravinsky all left Russia in their younger years, with only Prokofiev returning. Both Rachmaninov and Stravinsky resided in the USA for a long time and eventually became US citizens. They lived in Los Angeles at the same time, […]