The Avant Garde Project is a series of 20th-century classical-experimental-electroacoustic torrents digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today. This is wild stuff, so check it out if you've never heard this sort of music before. The analog rig used to extract the sound from the grooves is near state-of-the-art, producing almost none of the tracking distortion or surface noise normally associated with LPs. 

AGP1-79 are now available for direct download in the archive at dream.cs.bath.ac.uk/AvantGardeProject

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AGP83 is our third devoted to music by Luciano Berio. I didn't include these transcriptions in the two earlier installments (AGP26 and AGP27) because the compositions are available in other recordings. It has since been pointed out to me that these are the only recordings of these works conducted by the composer, and so have documentary value that other available recordings do not. The Sinfonia recording is interesting in that only four of an eventual five movements had been composed at the time. The absence of the fifth and final movement may account for why this excellent rendition has never been re-issued on CD. Recordings of Berio conducting many of his other works are available on CD, and I strongly encourage you to get them.

The torrent includes a PDF file with scans of the liner notes from the two LPs (Columbia MS 7268 and RCA LSC-3189) from which these recordings were transcribed. Both recordings are rich and detailed. The transcription of Sinfonia is very clean. The transcription of Epifanie has some light, periodic pressing noise in the middle, one or two blemishes that were not entirely removed by declicking, and some mild tracking distortion in the last few minutes (not surprising, given that almost 30 minutes were crammed into one LP side). But overall it's delightful.

Equipment used for A/D conversion: Lyra Helikon phono cartridge, Linn LP12/Lingo turntable, Linn Ittok tonearm, Audioquest LeoPard tonearm cable, PS Audio PS2 preamplifier, Kimber PBJ interconnect, M-Audio Audiophile USB A/D converter. 

13 - Sinfonia Section I [6:39]
14 - Sinfonia Section II [4:52]
15 - Sinfonia Section III [12:20]
16 - Sinfonia Section IV [3:02]
17 - Epifanie [29:50]

NOTE: To the best of my knowledge, these recordings are currently out of print. If you know otherwise, please let me know ASAP, as I do not wish any artists to be deprived of the royalties that they so richly deserve.