Reaching for piano and orchestra, I selected (perhaps unsurprisingly to regular readers) the Beethoven concertos: but not my ‘go to’ Benedetti Michelangeli 1st which is always such an acid test of a system’s musical coherence and communication, flow and purpose. Instead, I found myself placing the Krystian Zimerman Emperor (with Rattle and the LSO – DGG 483 9971) in the player’s tray. This has always been an interesting but frustrating recording, made during Covid, the ‘socially distanced’ orchestra going some way to dissipating Rattle’s often heavy-handed approach, but ultimately lacking the concentrated sense of purpose and cohesion demanded by Zimerman’s poised, quicksilver playing, with its sure-footed temporal integrity but light touch. Revisiting the performance, using the Nordost QB8/III, I heard all of those familiar musical and presentational characteristics, arguably laid bare by the QB8’s combination of graduated dynamics, clarity and immediacy.
So, switching to the Reflex Ultra block, I was expecting increased body and presence, but I wasn’t ready for the switch-up in terms of spatial coherence, temporal integrity and musical flow. The Reflex Ultra revealed the extended depth in the orchestral stage, the almost square layout. Yet it did so without making the elements of the orchestra disjointed or detached. The sense of a single, overarching acoustic helped bind the orchestral playing into a single, purposeful whole, instilling exactly the coherent quality I’d always felt was lacking. Zimerman’s playing gained grace, poise and fluidity, his fingers dancing across the keys, his lines precise, delicate and beautifully proportioned, where the Nordost block had made more of the spaces between notes and phrases, creating a more mechanical effect. But underpinning the whole presentation was its sense of top-to-bottom continuity and balance. Just listen to the second movement and the way in which the pianist’s subtle left-hand shapings support and echo the bolder, poised clarity and precision of the right, separate but never separated. The sparse, instrumental murmurings of the orchestra are just as well balanced and placed, in terms of weight and timing. There’s an unambiguous spatial clarity to the unusual proportions of the stage, again a result of the even way in which the system is handling musical energy across its entire range.
Has the Reflex Ultra revealed the true nature of the recording? I don’t think so. But its inherent coherence and natural harmonics are making more sense of what is there. The Nordost block delivers greater clarity, detail and immediacy. Its dynamic discrimination is more explicit (ever a Nordost trait) arguably leaning more to the leading edge of notes – something the significantly more expensive QB10 corrects. The Acouplex block is centring the energy and weight of notes more accurately and ultimately, presenting them (and the notes around them) more naturally. This enhanced sense of pattern is what binds the disparate elements in the Zimerman recording more closely together. It doesn’t transform the content. It just makes more sense of it. I’ll still take the ABM recording over this one – which also sounds wonderfully alive and present on the Reflex Ultra – but the Acouplex block makes the Zimerman disc a far more worthwhile (and less frustrating) listen, allowing me to really enjoy his characteristically clean and fluid playing, supported rather than intruded upon by the orchestral accompaniment.
