John Marks

There's a fantastic new two-SACD/CD set of a demonstration-quality live recording of a rather obscure work you really should get to know, not only for its own merits, but also for what I believe is its underappreciated but major influence on music and on popular culture. The piece is by 20th-century composer Arnold Schoenberg, but trust me&#151;it's more than "listenable." It (or, at least, the music on the first disc) is beyond engaging; it is compelling&#151;a revelation, even. The work is <I>Gurrelieder</I> (Songs of Gurre), Gurre being a castle in medieval Denmark that was the setting of a real-life doomed love triangle, the story of which has since loomed large in the moodily brooding artistic consciousness of Danes. The 19th-century Danish poet Jens Peter Jacobsen wrote a collection of poems based on medieval legends, including this one, and a German translation by Robert Franz Arnold provided Schoenberg's dramatic texts.

February is traditionally the month for music features, so I start this column with some recordings you really should hear. This year I had a greater-than-usual number of worthy candidates for "<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/Records%202%20Die%204">Records To Die For</A>." Which discs got named as R2D4s and which got column coverage was, to quote the Iron Duke, a near-run thing.

The companion loudspeaker to <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/thefifthelement/the_fifth_element_57">Denon's RCD-CX1 SACD/CD receiver</A> is the SC-CX303 ($1200/pair). The SC-CX303 is a ported two-way with a 1" soft-dome tweeter and a 5" carbon-fiber&#150;cone woofer. Denon claims a sensitivity of 86dB and an impedance of 6 ohms. Instead of a formal frequency response, Denon instead gives an unreferenced figure for frequency extension that, at 35Hz&#150;60kHz, is neither helpful nor credible.

The venerable British company ATC Loudspeaker Technology was founded in 1974 by Billy Woodman, and is famous within the professional community for developing the first soft-dome midrange driver, and for their well-regarded line of active (powered) studio monitors, the user list of which is a veritable <I>Who's Who</I> of mastering engineers. ATC loudspeakers are all still made in the UK, and were a favorite of the late <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/j_gordon_holt_19301502009">J. Gordon Holt</A>.

In October 2005's "<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/thefifthelement/1005fifth">The Fifth Element</A>." I said of the Harbeth HL-3P-ES2, a descendant of the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/361">BBC LS3/5A</A>, "Gloriosky, these little speakers are just great to listen to!" Later, in <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/1293harbeth/index5.html">A… 2007</A>, John Atkinson endorsed that remark.

When I was a kid, I saw the Marlon Brando remake of <I>Mutiny on the Bounty</I>. I'm sure you know the story&#151;lots of bad-guy/good-guy tension between Captain Bligh and Fletcher Christian. There's also an overlay of class conflict, but with a twist: The up-and-comer is the sadist, while it's the aristocrat who is nature's nobleman.

There's an old Russian folktale about a farmer who goes to a fair. He buys a bread roll from a vendor. He eats it, but he's still hungry. So he buys and eats another roll, and then another. Still hungry. Next, he buys a donut from a different vendor. At last, he's no longer hungry. The farmer then says to himself, "I wasted the money I spent on the rolls&#151;I should have just bought the donut first!"