I found a video on YouTube that has a longer and more detailed version of the above promotion.  It has extracts from some of the different types of music in the collection.  I suspect that some people who say they don’t have an interest in classical music might find there is far more to enjoy in this collection than they would expect.  You only have to watch TV talent shows such as Idol (now dropped in Australia), X-Factor and Australia’s Got Talent, or any of the overseas versions, to see that audiences who would probably say they don’t like opera, give standing ovations to anyone who sings an operatic aria well.  One of the most popular arias in these TV shows is Nessun Dorma from the opera Turandot by Puccini.  The Decca boxed set has 3 versions of the aria.  One is in the Turandot opera highlights CD (Pavarotti and Sutherland), and the other two are in Carreras Domingo Pavarotti in Concert recorded in Rome on 7 July 1990.  This recording of The Three Tenors is not the same as The 3 Tenors in Concert recorded in 1994 which is spectacular in its own right.

Here is the longer video, in non-HD soft focus, with a more detailed sampling of music in the collection:

The first CD in the boxed set is The Three Cornered Hat by Manuel De Falla, with Ernest Ansermet conducting L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.  Bear in mind that the boxed set is a limited edition, and many of the CDs in the collection may no longer be otherwise available, which makes the set even more desirable.  The first album in the collection is available from iTunes for A$16.99.  You can also buy this album from Amazon .com for prices ranging from $34.99 to $249.99 for a used CD, as can be seen below.

Here is the first track from the above CD, the first in the collection.  There are 14 tracks and only two feature the singer – Teresa Berganza.  The first track is one of them.  Note the quality of the sound if you have good audio card and stereo speaker system as part of your computer.   If you don’t have one a good computer stereo system, you are missing out, and should treat yourself, if you enjoy music, games or video or movies on your computer.   A good system doesn’t have to be built into your computer – they can be connected by Firewire or USB.   An external audio interface and stereo speaker system with sub-woofer will work with your current and future computers.

The Three Cornered Hat – Introduction

(Don’t forget the volume control on the left.)

If you’d like to find out more about the boxed set, I strongly recommend you visit Decca’s own website, which describes The Decca Sound collection as follows:

The Decca Sound – a unique celebration of artistic achievement and technical excellence

Throughout its 80 year history Decca has always remained focused on a single aim — to capture great performances by legendary artists in the highest possible fidelity.

“The Decca Sound” is a deluxe limited edition of 50 CDs of legendary classical recordings in some of the best sound quality ever committed to disc. The inspired collaborations of great artists, gifted producers and dedicated engineers have resulted in a treasure trove of award-winning and critically acclaimed recordings. This special edition brings together a truly representative selection of these legendary performances for the first time.

Click here for the Decca website and relevant page.  The page lists all the 50 CDs and the tracks on them. In most cases you can click on the arrow to hear an extract from each track.  In all cases you can click on the name of the track to get details about the track – the music, the performers, when and where it was recorded and by whom, and when it was first released.

One of my delights in exploring the collection was to find that CD #48 is a CD I’ve previewed many times on iTunes, but have been unable to find anywhere to buy as a CD.  It’s the highlight of an opera by Puccini, not often performed or recorded.  I have the full opera on order from Presto Classical.  La Fanciulla del West – an opera by Puccini set in the gold rush days of California.

Here is the final aria of the opera.  I include it because I think the singing and music is sublime, but also because it reminds me of some other Puccini operas, such as Tosca and Turandot, and in parts even the final scene of Aida by Verdi.  What do you think?  The English name of the opera is Girl of the Golden West.

Here below is track 7 in the highlights of La Fanciulla del West from the boxed set – Quello che tacete.   This opera by Puccini was commissioned by, and first performed at, the Metropolitan Opera in New York on 10 December 1910 with Enrico Caruso singing.  Listen very carefully and you might pick up hints of part of a song you may have heard before in a famous musical and movie made of it.  When the countdown timer reaches the 30 seconds to go mark, the phrase in question becomes clear.  Do you recognise the musical with a similar phrase?   If so, please make a comment.  Or make a comment if you recognise the phrase but can’t put your finger on where you’ve heard it before.  I think it’s a sublime phrase.

The Decca Soundboxed set is available online from Amazon and Presto Classical, and is currently available at many of the good record stores, such as Discurio and Readings in Melbourne.  I imagine the same would apply in other cities.  The current price in Australia is about A$139.  The Amazon.com price is US$123.17 plus shipping.  The Presto Classical price is currently A$159.50 plus A$4.15 postage.   When I bought my set back in October the price at Presto was A$131.76 plus $4.15 postage.  All of these prices are a bargain for a set of 50 high quality CDs which Presto Classical describes as:

A limited-edition 50-CD set of legendary recordings celebrating the world-renowned DECCA sound.

Classic-status pioneering stereo recordings from the past 55 years and starring a galaxy of internationally-acclaimed artistic talent.

Each CD is presented in a sleeve with original cover art.

Where an original release may have been of short duration due to limitations of the LP a bonus work featuring the same artists has been added.

A 200-page booklet documents the development of stereo recording as it developed in the 1950s through to modern digital recordings; there is an article on Decca artists and repertory with particular reference to the artists featured in the set.

Full recording information on each disc is included and there are numerous photographs.

If the idea of a 50 CD boxed set of classics seems too overwhelming, you could try The Decca Sound highlights set which sells for about A$25.  It’s great value.  For the price of one CD you get 5 CDs.  You can audition it in iTunes, but don’t buy the set for the iTunes price of A$53.99.  You can buy it from Readings or other record shops or Amazon or Presto for about $25.  This set is a good introduction to the full boxed set.  Even if you eventually buy the 50 CD boxed set, the highlights set would still be useful as an introduction to many of the CDs and music in the full set which you might otherwise never get around to playing.  It’s a worthy compilation in its own right.

Update:  1 February 2012

Almost two weeks ago I noticed that iTunes sells the The Decca Sound (50 CDs) as well as the Highlights set of 5 CDs.  The price of the Highlights set remains at A$53.99 for the 5 CDs.  Based on that price, one might expect that the iTunes price for the whole collection of 50 CDs could be A$539.90 – but it’s not.  It’s A$14.99 for the whole collection.  Mind you, the 50 CD collection is treated as one album, and as a result the tracks are not in the order of the individual CDs and are sometimes scattered and even if the tracks for an album are together, they might not be in order.  Still, you can’t argue with A$14.99 for 817 tracks, and the search facilities and sorting by columns features in iTunes are a help.

By the way, the price might be small, but the collection isn’t.  It’s about 7.1 GB according to my iTunes folder before and after downloading the “album.”

The featured image for this post is the CD cover of the new CD by Fiona Joy Hawkins called Christmas Joy.   The album is about the Christmas season, and features some traditional carols, such as Jingle Bells.  But her version, played on the 102 key Stuart & Sons grand piano, is unique.  You can listen to it later down this post.   For now, here is a short version of Flight of the Snowbird.

Here is the full piece, from the CD:

Flight of The Snowbird  

In the next piece Fiona Joy Hawkins plays her own very Australian arrangement of Jingle Bells.  It features two instruments made in Australia.  The first is the Stuart & Sons piano.  The second?  No need to tell you what it is, as you’ll recognise it yourself.  It fits with the Australian outback scenery in the video above.

Jingle Bells  

Finally, the title song of the album.  This piece shows off the spectacular sound of the Stuart & Sons piano

Christmas Joy  

Part of the story is to tell you how I discovered this recording.  Only 10 days ago on Saturday, 10th December, I received an email from Wayne Stuart, the piano maker.  He mentioned three CDs in the email, of which Christmas Joy was one.  He wrote:

2011 Grammy Nomination for Best Category in Composition Arrangement Engineering and Producer of the year

Fiona Joy Hawkin’s latest album “Christmas Joy” is a beautiful combination of music for the Christmas season. Co-produced with Grammy Award winner Corin Nelsen and acting production advisor Will Ackerman of Imaginary Road Recordings. Hawkins performs on a Stuart piano, backed by an impressive array of musicians and singers: Philip Aaberg, Will Ackerman, Heather Rankin, Charlie Bisharat, and Eugene Friesen. The eleven tracks include four originals and seven perennial Christmas favourites.

www.fionajoyhawkins.com.au

A Selection of Stuart & Sons Pianos from Wayne Stuart on Vimeo.

Coming back to Jingle Bells, apart from the piano and orchestration there is also something rather unusual about this arrangement of the carol.  I’d be interested to learn whether you spotted it, and if so, whether you noticed it when you first played the song, or whether, like me, you enjoyed the music so much that you didn’t notice it until you’d heard it many times.  To be honest, I only noticed it after publishing this post, while reviewing it online and listening very carefully.

However Philippe is a counter-tenor.  The following video is about Michael Maniaci who describes himself as a soprano.  By the way, because I began dabbling into learning Italian in January 2010, I know that Maniaci is pronounced – Mahn-ee-AH-chee.

With counter-tenors and male sopranos the subject of three posts, I think it’s time to reveal to you some of the other singers and songs I came across for the first time this year.  I mean singers other than Fleet Foxes (see my  post on 1 November) and the pleasant young Johnny Ruffo from The X factor.  I mean the singers of Mahler’s lieder.

I’ve written before that this year I finally discovered Mahler, after the seeds were sown in my mind from listening to a cassette tape in the mid 1970′s.  However, instead of gradually dipping my toes in the water, I bought two collections of all his works.  One of recordings originally issued on the DGG label and the other of recordings originally issued on EMI.  I’ve found that I not only enjoy the symphonies, but have also come to enjoy the Lieder.  Yes, on first hearing  - rather than listening- the Lieder seem to be gloomy cheerless songs sung in German.  But when I opened my mind, and actually listened to the deeply beautiful voices, with the wonderful German language sounds so carefully enunciated, and the sublime orchestration, I began to appreciate these superb songs.  When I say “deeply” beautiful I mean it both colloquially and literally.  The male voices are baritone and the female voices are mezzo-soprano, in the songs I’ve listened to so far.

When I was a student at Mount Gambier High School in the early 1950′s, the Headmaster (Mr Campbell) took one our lessons, and in it he talked about enjoying everything you can  in life.  He said that people who say they are bored with something or other, are really saying that they don’t understand and appreciate whatever it is that bores them.  I have never forgotten that, even 60 years later.  It’s as true today as it was then.  And so, with that in mind, I have in recent posts begun presenting videos and music that some visitors to this site might not enjoy.  Well, not at first at first.  But perhaps they might watch and listen with an open and inquiring mind to try to discover for themselves what it is that I and so many others like so much.

I’ll start off with a video of Sir Thomas Allen singing the Mahler song I have so far come to enjoy most – Die zwei blauen Augen.  It took a while before this song grew on me, as they say.  Or perhaps more accurately, it took a while before I grew into the song  and began to appreciate it.   But once I connected to the song, I loved it.

By the way, Sir Thomas Allen is a very interesting person, and you can read about him in this article in Wikipedia.  I have to confess that I’d never heard of him before I began writing this post.  That seems strange to me  now that I learned that he is an internationally renowned operatic singer regarded by many as one of the best lyric baritones of the late 20th Century.   Well that probably explains why I’ve never heard of him before writing this post.  He’s a baritone.  All the great opera singers who have become household names, such as The Three Tenors – Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras – are tenors.  These days we now have  popular ensembles such as The Ten Tenors singing a mix of pop, rock and opera.  And we had Anthony Callea.

It’s not only the tenors who are household names, but some of the operatic arias written for tenors.  The most famous aria these days is Nessun Dorma which achieved world recognition after the performance by Luciano Pavarotti at the 1990 World Cup in Italy.

I can’t think of the name of any baritones or arias written for them – other than those below.

In case you don’t read the Wikipedia article about Sir Thomas Allen CBE, I’ll mention that apart from his long career as an opera singer, he starts a new position on 1 January 2012 as Chancellor of Durham University.

Below is another version of the same song, with Thomas Hampson as the baritone.   The conductor is Leonard Bernstein, one of the great exponents of the works of Mahler.  This recording is the one in my DGG complete works of Mahler.

And finally the same song (Die zwei blauen Augen) again.  This time it’s from my EMI boxed set of the complete works of Mahler. The singer is Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, a German lyric baritone now retired (he was born 10 years 5 months+ before me.   He is regarded as one of the great singers of the 20th century.

    Die zwei blauen Augen sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

Unlike opera, where the arias are sung by characters in a drama who are either male or female, the Mahler lieder seem to be frequently sung by either male or female.  However, it seems to me that the singers, male or female, usually sing lower than tenor and sopranos.

While writing this post I came across a work I’d never heard before.  That of course is a confession that I haven’t yet listened to either of my complete works of Mahler in full.  It’s a song that’s growing on me the more that I listen to it.  I’m sorry to say that in my ignorance, I didn’t realize that this is one of the greatest Mahler songs – Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen.

The first is sung by Magdalena Kožená, a Czech mezzo soprano, married to the Sir Simon Rattle, the great English conductor.

The following version is sung by the Swedish mezzo-soprano Katarina Karneus.

An extract from this song can be heard in the following Vimeo video from Le maître de musique (The Music Teacher) - a 1988 Belgian film:

The following image is the cover of my boxed set of the complete works of Mahler on the EMI label.

By the way, you can buy Mahler: The Complete Works – 150th Anniversary

• from Amazon for US$44.78
• from Presto Classical for A$36.15 (as I write)
• from iTunes for A$25.99.

All are great prices for 16 high quality CDs of some of the most beautiful and spectacular music ever written.

I’ll quote extracts the first reviewer on Amazon.com (leaving out his list of all the CDs) dated 1 July 2010:

It was bound to happen sooner or later: pretty much everything known by Mahler put into one box (16 cd’s). Of course, one could argue endlessly about what performances of the various symphonies EMI could have/should have chosen. But what this set has going for it are a series of outstanding renditions of the various song cycles and vocal works. In addition to having the Thomas Hampson/Wolfram Rieger (piano) “Five Ruckert Songs”, disc 16 gives us a survey of numerous “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” performances – possibly THE most gorgeous orchestral song ever composed – captured by EMI over the years. That list includes Janet Baker, Christa Ludwig (twice), D. Fischer-Dieskau, Thomas Allen, Brigitte Fassbaender, and Katarina Karneus. But rather than yack on and on, I’ll simply leave you a list of what this box contains.

……………….

Needless to say, this set captures many of the biggest names in the Mahler “biz” ever: Barbirolli; Horenstein; Furtwaengler (his one and only studio recording of Mahler); Bruno Walter; Kathleen Ferrier; Klaus Tennstedt; Simon Rattle (opinions vary, but they chose some of his better work here); Janet Baker; Christa Ludwig; D. Fischer-Dieskau; Brigitte Fassbaender; C.M. Giulini; Chicago Symphony (caputred in the Medinah Temple); Berlin Phil.; Philharmonia Orch. (the Walter Legge years); E. Schwarzkopf; the incomparable Fritz Wunderlich (“DLvdE”) – the list goes on, so most of this set is pretty much self recommending. Even if you already own some Mahler, if you don’t have many of these performances, you probably ought to indulge yourself with this set.

The writer finished with the following comment:

No one need be reminded that we’re in the middle of summer and an economic recession. But when the holidays roll around, few things will say “Merry Christmas” better to music lovers than this box. Ponder that thought. It’s better than yet another “La Boheme” or Beethoven cycle, not to mention Lady Gaga.

Hmmm.  I’d never thought about this before.  This set would make a stunning present and at very reasonable price.  The only problem is that I don’t know if any of my friends (other than the couple who introduced me to the Lexus) even enjoy classical music, let alone might enjoy the works of Gustav Mahler.

By the way, to put Mahler’s timeline into context, he was born on 7 July 1860, and died on 18 May 1911.  Hence the EMI album released last year commemorates 150 years since his birth.  Earlier this year the 100th anniversary of his death was recognized.  His widow Alma died on 11 December 1964 – barely two months before I’d been with Elder, Smith & Co., Limited and then Elder Smith Goldsbrough Mort Limited for six years.  My father died in July that year.

The above is Part 1 of the video from The Last Night at the Proms at the Albert Hall in London, in 2008, with Helene Grimaud playing .  Get ready to play part 2 below, the moment that Part 1 finishes, to try to preserve the continuity.

You may have noted similarities to other works by Beethoven, including his Symphony No.9 (the Choral Symphony, written many years later). If you enjoyed the work, you might enjoy the following 4 min 40 secs of another performance – Daniel Barenboim and Berlin Philharmoniker. It’s dramatic.

What have the above videos got to do with the Olive O4HD?  The answer is that soon after writing my post about the Olive O4HD on 30 January, I bought one, and today I finished recording my CD collection to the Olive.  I had decided that free CD samplers and CDs from the covers of magazines such as Classic CD and Classic FM, usually contained an unrelated collection of tracks, mostly only part of a work; so they didn’t count as part of my collection, and I didn’t record them to the Olive.

With my whole CD collection now on the Olive, I have now begun listening to the sampler and magazine CDs, perhaps for the first time, to see if there is any music that I really like.  And on the very first Classic CD (No. 25) that I played, I came across the final 9 minutes of the above work.  I loved it immediately.  I’d never heard it before, but the 9 minute sample has been in my collection since 1999 as far as I can work out from checking out the Classic CD 25 heading. The reality is that I would never have discovered or played that CD except for the fact that the Olive has caused me to look at every CD I can find in my home, and in doing so I came across the Beethoven Choral Fantasy.

Following on from that, I’ve discovered Beethoven’s Triple Concerto.

Who knows what else I might find in the coming weeks and months when I listen to the sample CDs.  This post also has something else to do with the Olive O4HD.

It’s for those who like to jump to the verdict before they start reading the review. In short, I’m thrilled I bought the Olive O4HD.

In my post last week, about the Emperor Concerto performance, I neglected to mention the conductor – Antony Walker – an Australian now mostly working in the US.  For me, his conducting of the Sinfonia Australis orchestra was very engaging, as he so clearly enjoyed and respected the music, soloist and the orchestra.  He has his own website at www.antonywalker.com if you would like to read about him.  His list of recordings  includes the CD set of the complete Beethoven Piano Concertos with Gerard Willems, Sinfonia Australis and the Stuart & Sons grand piano.  But his recordings also include works as diverse as Carmina Burana; Handel arias sung by David Hobson (see note below*); Handel’s Messiah; Missa Solemnis, and many other choral works, and works with soloists.  With so many choral works to his credit, it should perhaps come as no surprise that he was the Choir Director for the movie Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

*David Hobson is an Australian tenor.  His website is www.davidhobson.biz and  you can read a brief outline of his performance history on the About page, which includes grand opera, and Gilbert and Sullivan.  Some TV viewers might remember him more as a contestant on Dancing With The Stars several years ago, and was one of the professional singers paired with an amateur singer as a coach in the It Takes Two (Aussie version) series that mercifully only lasted 3 seasons (2006-2008).  But I remember him mostly for his performance of  The Impossible Dream at an AFL Grand Final several years ago.  It’s one of my favourite songs, and it was the best version of it I’ve ever heard.

33 Variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli, Opus 120, by Ludwig von Beethoven – commonly known as The Diabelli Variations – is a new work to me.  And it seems that I’m not alone in this.  It is apparently not a well known work, despite its importance.  For that reason I’m not going to comment on the interpretation and playing by Gerard Willems, or on the sound of the Stuart & Sons piano, until I’ve heard other versions of this work.  I have two on order from Amazon in the UK.  I’ll make a further post once the CDs arrive and I’ve had time to listen to them and from some impressions.

In thinking about this, I should remember that quite often I don’t like something on first acquaintance (be it a person, a type of food, a movie, a TV show, or a piece of music), but on further and repeated acquaintance I begin to appreciate the qualities I didn’t recognise on first meeting.  This could be the case with the Diabelli Variations, and the performance by Gerard Willems.  Some of it I liked immediately, in my first play, and some of  struck me as loud playing  just for the sake of it, with no musicality.  As I say, that was my first impression of the whole work when hearing it for the first time; and it just happened to be Gerard Willems playing it on an extended Stuart piano, because it was the piano that attracted my interest in the first place.  I was keen to take every opportunity to hear the piano.

Until the other two CDs arrive, I will give a little demonstration of the reason as to why I’ve become interested in hearing different versions of the Variations.

The following audio track is the 25th Variation as played by Gerard Willems.  He plays the variation in 65 seconds, so you might even listen twice, if the piece is new to you, to become more familiar with it (and note the tempo) before you listen to Brendel’s version.

Now listen to the same 25th Variation played by Alfred Brendel.

Wow!  Two very different ideas of the tempo Beethoven had in mind when he noted marked the score of the variation to be played “Allegro”.  Now perhaps you’ll understand why I’ve ordered two other Diabelli Variations from Amazon to see how they play the work (but not the Brendel, as this seems to be unavailable directly from Amazon).

Here is another version by the English pianist Paul Lewis. I like his interpretation of the Variations.

As to the price of the Diabelli Variations on CD, here are two notes:

My Diabelli Variations by Gerard Willems cost me A$27.99 from the ABC Shop at Chadstone  Shopping Centre in Melbourne.

But check out the price of the same recording at Amazon.uk.  The 61.99 Pds converts to A$99.18.

By contrast, in Melbourne, just one of the two other Variations I ordered costs $32. To go into the city to buy it, I would not only have to devote a large part of my day to do it, but I’d also have to a pay $20 a parking fee. Total cost $52. By contrast, night I ordered that and another Variation from Amazon UK, and the total cost of the 2 CDs plus shipping was A$29.

If one has been collecting CDs for as long I have (about 25 years), the collection can grow to unmanageable proportions. I have CDs in various plastic cabinets, and on shelves and in piles scattered throughout 3 rooms in my unit, and even in places I’d forgotten that I’d stored CDs – until I did a thorough search last week. My concerns over the years have been that I have no idea where to find most of the CDs if I want to play a particular one, so it’s too daunting to do a search. I find that getting up to put on a CD and changing it when it finishes, is tiresome, so I don’t do it often (and especially in the case of works that spread across several CDs. And perhaps the biggest concern of all, at my age, is that I will probably never get to hear most of my CDs again. It’s just too hard: and it’s not so easy and convenient to play them that I’ll do it because I can, and can quickly and easily explore the depths of my collection.

Enter the second exciting gadget I came across on Thursday. In this case I read about it in an article in The Age Green Guide headed “Music lovers don’t cut corners” (see featured image).  For the record, I didn’t read the article in the physical newspaper.  I read it on my iPad in the digital edition, which is a 100% facsimile of the actual newspaper.

I’ll quote parts of the article that aroused my interest:

Music lovers — those who can pick Pavarotti in 1965 from Pavarotti in 1985 — have always had a love/hate relationship with iPods and the electronic music storage they represent.  Most of them wouldn’t touch an iPod with a five-metre baton.

This is because the signal is compressed so more music can be squeezed onto the hard drive and in this compression process, much of the original signal is deleted, especially in the upper range. The music sounds similar, yet is not the same.   It sounds as if it’s all there and yet it no longer brings tears to your eyes. All the nuance has been lost.

But what music lovers secretly like about iPods is their convenience.  An album, or a particular track, can be found in seconds and played immediately.

The music is categorised and indexed automatically. And it’s all in one place.

Now those serious about their music can have it all; the music quality of a CD with the convenience of an iPod.  Modern solid-state hard drives have the capacity to make electronic music storage a viable option for people who refuse to compromise on sound quality.

The unit is shown above.  Here’s a further description:

Store up to 20,000 high-resolution HD tracks (6000 CDs) in 24-bit on this award winning music server – with more than 250 times the resolution of CDs, you’ll hear the HD difference immediately. Experience it right out of the box, the Olive O4HD includes over an hour of music with 12 of the best Chesky Records’ HD Tracks for Free!

Everything from 24-bit HD files to 16-bit converted CDs will be at your fingertips. Convenient storage, easy touchscreen access and the ability to play it all in any room of your home with the addition of an Olive 2 (see below). Now you’ll enjoy your music collection more than ever.

You can even turn your screen into an oversized color display and use the Olive remote control to see music details or select songs from across the room. It’s a great alternative to navigating with the touchscreen or our iPhone App.

Why does it sound so good?

The Olive O4HD will deliver exceptional sound quality from all of your digital music sources. Maximize your signal transfer with the 24k gold RCA connectors and use the Olive O4HD as an outboard DAC. With 24-bit/192kHz oversampling, noise and distortion are ultra low resulting in incredible purity in both high frequencies and low-level detail.

A quote from a review:

Exceptional sound; approachable and easy to use; quality build and finish; sheer value…this is 21st century hi-fi: the Olive O4HD is superb to live with and listen to’ (What Hi-Fi magazine February 2010)

All this plus a free iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad app to control playback (as well as the supplied remote control).

The Olive O4HD has a wonderful final trick up it’s sleeve.  You can add a slave to every room in the house where you have a system through which you can play audio – and you can do it wirelessly with your Wifi network.  Wunderbar!

For this feature you need an Olive Melody 2 in each room where you want it.