November 18, 2017

Mahmud Mirza: Classical Sitar [Conifer CFR 121] An LP recorded and released in England in 1984

Here is a delightful LP featuring two side-long alap performances from the sitarist Mahmud Mirza.

I quote from the information provided by the producer of this LP, Paul Keeler, for a YouTube video:

"Ustad Mahmud Mirza was born in Delhi in 1935. At an early age he was taught the sitar by his maternal uncle Ustad Hyder Hussein Khan who initiated him into the Seniya gharana an instrumental tradition founded by the descendants of Miyan Tansen the court musician to Akbar the Moghul emperor.
"He was later initiated into the Kirana gharana by his second teacher the vocalist Pandit Jiwan lall Mattoo; a student of the renowned vocalist Abdul Wahid Khan, with whom he studied the ragas in depth over many years. Mirza first performed in public when he was 11 and at the age of 13 he was the youngest musician ever to be accepted on the staff of All India Radio. "In the late sixties Mirza made his first appearance in London where he now resides. He has performed in many of the famous concert halls of Europe and the US and is known as an outspoken defender of the pure tradition in an age when this art form has suffered due to the trend of commercialization."

side 1:
Raga Kalawati (alap) 20:17

side 2:
Raga Alhaia Bilabial(alap) 19:20








Equipment used in transfer: 
Preparation: Ultrasonic cleaning for 20 minutes in pure clean water
Turntable:  Audio-technica AT-LP-1240
Cartridge: Audio-technica AT440
Pre-amplification: Vintage refurbished Pioneer SX-780.
Recorder: Sony PCM-M10 at 24bit/96kHz resolution
Software: AudacityClickRepairand xAct



(the highest resolution I am capable of recording)

(after decoding into wav, can be burned to a CD)

(highest quality compressed audio file)


8 comments:

  1. Thank you sooooooooooooo much. Nice that you found the time to post something again. Hope there will be more posts. All the best.

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  2. Thank you for all this marvelous music.

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  3. Thanks a lot Richard, and very happy to see you come back to post. I hope there will be others gems in the future from your fantastic collection! Thanks for your blog.

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  4. I have just discovered your blog. Amazing work, thank you so much for your careful work. The recordings are excellent. Please keep at it, so much appreciation here.

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  5. I have just discovered your blog. Thank you so much for the careful and wonderful work you are doing, this is truly a treasure chest. Thank you.

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  6. Thank you for the kind words, Joel. If you have just discovered my blog, that means you probably haven’t been reading Tawfiq’s blog (see the blog list at the right of the screen). He covers more musical ground than just Indian Classical, but it is all at a very high level of quality.

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