Vladimir Sofronitsky plays Chopin "Barcarolle" Op. 60

Thanks truecrypt. This is the recording that made me throw most of my rock music records away.

This is very good. But IMHO no ones will be as wonderfully played as Bolet's.

People always relate Sofronitsky to Scriabin, and rightly so. But Sofronitsky's Chopin is equally magnificent. Whatever he plays, you can always tell it 's him, tome, he's a Chopin champion, along with Rubinstein Friedman and Tiegerman. Genius!

I have a wonderful ripping program called ExpressRip. You can set mp3 bit rates to be quite high. You can set flac at levels 1 to 8(best) and various bit rates. Believe me the flac files at level 8 and the highest bit rate are way out of the class of the best mp3 files. They should be - they're almost as long as the CDs relative when measured by Mb. I had been very favorably impressed by the high bitrate mp3s until I listened to the best flac. The Mb ratio is about 5 to 1.

Because flac is lossless (no loss of information) vs mp3, which is lossy (loss of information for less space taken).

RabidCh

I am aware of that. It was merely that the doubled bit rate for mp3 is so superior to the normal one that I was surprised at how much worse they still were than flac or, for that matter, the CDs themselves. It just goes to show how very bad regular mp3 at 128 really is. It may be an adequate replacement for CDs of rap and its ilk but it certainly isn't for anything that can really be thought of as music.

Gerry

This is MASTERPIECE !

This is poetic and I give it 5 stars. But in Argerich's Barcarolle, I see the man rowing in the Venetian channels, singing with the conviction and tenderness of love for his beloved who's there with him in the gondola. F-sharp major is such a bright daylight key.

THIS is what Chopin sounds like in the hands of an artist! You hear the soul of Sofronitsky and Chopin. I am in awe.....

Sofronitsky is excellent indeed. But for me, the signature Barcarolle will always be the lyric masculine Barcarolle of Argerich.