Previn conducting Tchaikovsky three ballets. This version was my first near-complete view of Tchaikovsky's most famous ballet music. I got the two CD set music from a music sharing forum one and half years ago. Very luckily, the version I got was in flac. At that time, I was not very into lossless world, so, I converted the files into 128kbps just for saving my hard disk space. Yet, three months later, god knows what happened, I was turned over completely! I was searching online, ripping from my own collection, or ask any others to get my music library into as lossless as possible – well, I purchased a 500GB EHD, and that was partly spurred my mind into the lossless world.
I found the lossless version for most music from my library. Some music was too old to find, and I didn't really care. But, for the Tchaikovsky ballet music, I was yearning to own it in lossless. I had found a Karajan version in lossless later, but that version had only one disc, which meant it had less tracks than the Previn version. Also, I found other works containing the whole ballet music, but I just wanted exactly this one – my first touch!! Of course, I went back to the forum where I firstly got the files, but the links had already expired when I tracked it back…
Actually, at that time, I didn't know who conducted it. What I knew were only the track list, and the published year, which was 1990. I tried to search online by the two pieces of information, but not really a hit matched my needs. I myself thought it was done by magic: I began searching for this version for no reason in July – by the year and an ambiguous CD title, and I got it, simply.
Firstly, I didn't believe what I got. I compared the tracklist with my files, exactly the same; I checked the published year, 1990; the disc number, two. Seemed everything matched perfectly. Was this one really the one I was looking for?
I didn't really know, but I assumed it was. Looked at the price, around 14 CDN plus ~4 of shipment fee, and I could get two discs. Not a bad deal. I placed the order without more thinking.
This morning, I finally received my order. Almost two weeks of delivering from NY was not really fast, but it was still acceptable for me. Okay… time to rip it!! By the way, today was also my first time to use foobar to rip CDs, and it worked pretty well. The CD was ripped into flac directly! Amazing! Before, when I was still using wmp, I had to rip into wav and then convert, which means I have to tag the files twice… and I am lazy to get the EAC software, which has a good reputation. Anyway, foobar is good enough for me!
Finally, the last step, listen to it!!! Really, the music is EXACTLY THE SAME as my low-bitrate version!!! I was so excited! After one and half years, I regained the pretty music in lossless, and I really owned it! To be honest, this version was current my favourite among all my collection of Tchaikovsky. If plus the play count before I reset my lastfm, I've been playing the two discs for more than 20 times!!
Now, I was pretty satisfied.
Before I end this post, I have an extra story. I just checked the amazon page for that product again. When I ordered it, there was one new and two used available, and the price was 14CDN around for the new one. But now, the seller was the same, and there are two new and two used available, and – the price is around 34CDN for the new one!! Oh my god! I was so lucky! lol