Bartok - Quartets Flood - Poster's Note.txt
Source: Various non-Usenet file sharing sources (mainly Rutracker) or streaming services
Labels: Lots
Processing: Variable. Some metadata alterations. Sometimes single file albums have been split into tracks using Foobar. Sometimes the non-English part of bookley scans have been deleted or resized/filtered by me (I need to save space somehow).
Like much of what I shall post from this point onwards, these Bela Bartok SQs were incorporated into my collection at various times, from 5 years ago to 1 hour ago, and are in various stages of assimilation (ie non consitent file naming and metadata information like missing composer/conductor fields or composer incorrectly in the artist field). I simply have neither the time nor motivation to thoroughly process everything that comes come my 'modest' data pipe. A lot of my classcial music has been losslessly transcoded from Flac to Ape extra high to save space (this makes classical music about 10% smaller; solo pianos and dark ambient shrink by around 20%; pop music only ~5%). The disadvantage is that ape is much slower than Flac to decompress. I will try to convert back to flac before posting, but be prepared to handle 'apes' if I don't.
Recommendations: I haven't listened to and compared eveything, but I would recommend starting with either the Takacs Quartet version, The Emerson or the 2nd Juilliard recording (1962, and long out of print). I have read some people touting the first Tokyo SQ recording on DG, but I disliked it compared to the the ones I listed. As far as 20th Century String Quartets go, I recently saw people recommending Stenhammar and Bloch's compositions as well. Perhaps it's time to track them down and post as well?
This flood will be spaced out over several days; don't get impatient. If I don't post a certain version, it will be because I don't have it (I have most of the recommended recordings, it is sufficient for me).
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Here is the really good comparison/analysis of Bartok's Quartets that I could find on the WWW:
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