Way back in the early ‘90’s I worked for Sony Classical in NYC. My first job was to document recording dates/locations, production teams, musicians, publishing credits, etc. for the entire Columbia/Sony Classical catalog. It was used to pay mechanical royalties and to confirm public domain status. Ever since then I check recording locations and dates before playing a CD…just a habit I suppose. As you can see, I’m lazy when it comes to actual locations and usually just include the city/country when I post…
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I’m surprised you didn’t go mad doing that. The venue is important for obvious reasons, but without the exact building …
If you want a detailed archive, here are 80 years of Decca recordings.
From about page 15 there is a list of over 100 venues used in London alone.
One of the most interesting entries is at the top of page 88. FFRR, which transformed music recording, was first used on 8 June 1944, 2 days after D-Day. It was a classified war secret, developed by Decca for detecting enemy naval traffic, and its use was not announced until a year later, after the war in Europe had ended.
FFRR was first used in Kingsway Hall, in Holborn, which HMV had used extensively since 1926. Major studios used it into the 1980s. The two main London orchestras made over 700 recordings there.
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Having just arrived at the venue, i realise it’s not in London, it’s in Westmister. A different city. There’s a clue outside.
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Toblach, Italy
March 2016
arias by Handel, Monteverdi, Purcell, etc.
with Il Pomo D’oro and Maxim Emelyanychev
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Finally got a chance to hear this Warner version of the Du Pré performance of the Elgar concerto. The cello sound is great, as is Du Pré’s performance, but the surface has some unfortunate pops, and worse, the orchestra sound gets occasionally tubby and congested in loud, dense passages. But overall it’s not terrible. Not the best, but far from the worst.
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Sorry about the disappointment! On some used records, I had to do ultrosonic and classic cleaning to reduce pops etc.
This one’s NOS - it had never been opened. I’d try an ultrasonic cleaning, but I don’t have one. I’ll give it a scrub on the Okki Nokki this week to see if it helps.
I ended up a little more pleased with it than I expected from the first few minutes, which is when I posted (I need to stop being so impulsive). The rest of side 1, and all of side 2 were dead silent, it’s flat, and it’s punched/pressed on-center, so I figure I’m ahead of the game just from that. And 90% of the time it sounds pretty decent. As I summarized elsewhere on the interwebs, it’s not the best I’ve heard by any means, but it’s also far from the worst. I’m just happy to have a DuPre recording that isn’t tinny sounding. She’s underrepresented in my library.
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Henry Wood Hall, Trinity Church Square, London SE1 4HU
(By Borough Station or take the 172 bus)
May and June 2020, in cold weather with no heating.
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I hope it was worth the wait.
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Oh, definitely. I didn’t have anything else to do. 
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CD on Bridge
Released in 2000, no recording dates listed
Excellent set of Davidovsky (1934-2019) chamber works including Synchronisms No.10 for guitar and electronic sounds with David Starobin.
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Welcome to the forum @PERDIDO!
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Oddly enough @Craig_Burgess, my Testament copy just arrived today. Came from Germany and took two months - but a good clean copy. Enjoying now
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Welcome to the forum thanks for posting this album. Led me to learn about Ms Cerquetti’s interesting but short career. Quite a voice, sad she didn’t record more
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Congratulations!
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