As you know, I've gone through most of the Sibelius symphony cycles on CD - have my favorites and have my non-starters that I never need to hear again. I've heard the historic mono cycles, too. But what I'd never heard was the first stereo complete cycle - why? Because it's never been issued on CD. I decided I needed to hear it as everyone raved about it - so I went to eBay and found the boxed LP set, but also found a reel-to-reel tape. The speed, sadly, was 3 3/4 rather than 7 1/2 but it was cheap and I bought it. I then had it transferred into AIFF files (high quality), which took two months due to scheduling, but I got it this evening and am listening to the first symphony and despite the slower speed it sounds pretty good, just crunchy on the loud passages, but the performance is quite wonderful and now I'm looking forward to hearing the rest. The conductor is Akea Watanabe with the Japan Philharmonic. He recorded the cycle again for Denon in the 90s, but that's not supposed to be anywhere near as good as this, and the cheapest copy of that OOP CD is $250!
