Novella

RENAISSANCE HAS ALWAYS BEEN ONE OF MY FAVORITE BAND'S, SINCE I FIRST STARTED LISTENING TO THEM SO MANY YEAR'S AGO..ITS GREAT TO SEE THAT I CAN STILL GET THE MUSIC I LOVE, TODAY FROM AMAZON🤗

Very good sounding and complete. Nice package and inserts. So good.

Wow. Been awhile since listening to a new release of older material brings goose bumps. The Royal Albert Hall performance is outstanding. Ashes Are Burning is incredible. Can today's music be so moving?

Great collection of songs. Have always loved this record.

Love their music

Great

I enjoyed the music, but I didn't need an extra two disks of live performances. I would have preferred a single CD at a less expensive price, but none were available on Amazon.

I bought all of these Renaissance Esoteric remasters because I LOVE Renaissance and the beautiful voice of Annie Haslam. The EQ on these CDs are truly awful. Pay no attention to other reviews claiming the are EQ'd beautifully -- they are not. I strongly suggest you by-pass the bonus tracks here and buy an earlier version of this CD. You are bound to get much better, brighter sound with some bass drive. This set sounds muffled, like it's playing under a blanket -- and I have an excellent sound system, folks.

This is a review of the Esoteric Recordings / Cherry Red Records 2019 release of Novella by Renaissance. This is the 3 disc CD set in the clam shell package. I won’t go over the attributes of the band, because as anyone who is reading this already knows, they were a gifted and fabulous band especially at this time in their career, with the music being of very high caliber in the progressive classical rock genre. This review is from an Audiophile perspective and focuses on the original recording (CD1), not the live recordings on CD2 and CD3. To note, the following high end audio equipment was used for the review: Marantz SA7-S1 SACD / CD Player, McIntosh C2200 tubed pre amplifier, Sim Audio Moon W5 power amplifier – all three interconnected with balanced XLR high end audio interconnects. Speakers were Martin-Logan SL3 electrostatics. Headphones were the AKG 701 utilized with an Antique Sound Labs HB-1 triode headphone amplifier.I was eagerly looking forward to this release and the other Esoteric remastered albums from Renaissance, hoping that there would be some dramatic improvements sonically over the past releases of the Novella album. For the most part those expectations fell short. For reference, the Sire Records / Warner Music - Made in Germany CD, is my existing version from 1997.Cutting right to the issue, noticed through the headphones on the 1st track “Can You Hear Me” Jon Camp’s bass lines are more well defined and Terry Sullivan’s drum rolls across the soundstage are also more noticeable and welcomed compared to the Sire version. On “The Sisters”, Michael Dunford’s acoustic guitar has a bit more life than on the Sire recording, however on both the Esoteric and Sire version’s, Annie Haslam’s vocals are too light on this track. The cymbals and castanets are light and lacking in emphasis on both Sire and Esoteric versions of “The Sisters”. This could have been made to sound much better.The remaining tracks offer about the same, with the most notable improvement overall being the bass lines definition (not necessarily deeper bass – but more defined) on the Esoteric recording. Overall, I’m disappointed that those involved with this new release didn’t give a greater effort in the remastering process to enhance the sound to a much greater degree that this music truly deserves. The emphasis seems to me, to be largely providing the extra live recordings and albeit a very excellent packaging. The bass definition aside, I’m left with not hearing a huge difference between the Sire and Esoteric versions I’ m sorry to say. I don’t regret buying this, but as I say I’m a little disappointed with what could have been.

Excelente edición del clásico disco de Renaissance...

dabuten

Hats off to Esoteric Records for keeping this wonderful music alive - they are a reissue label that take on less well known music and give it the royal treatment (usually deserved. For example they have reissued most of the Procol Harum back catalogue - they, like renaissance, were for a time more popular in North America than in their native UK. Both bands are sometimes misclassified (IMO) as "prog" - to me they're more ... what ... art-rock, neo-classical (?) - whatever. Beautiful music, any road.Novella was not Renaissance's most popular album, so Esoteric took a chance issuing a deluxe boxed set. The original album certainly stands up, and with improved sonics over the Repertoire issue of a few years ago, make it worthwhile for fans. Probably not the place to start for newcomers: Sheherezade and / or Ashes Are Burning would be better choices for an introduction to the band. Speaking of which, the real attraction here is the inclusion of the entire Royal Albert Hall concert from the time of the release of Novella (1977). The entirety of Ashes and several other concert favourites (many of which appear on the Carnegie Hall live album, which has also been resiissued and remastered by Esoteric in expanded form). Many of the same selections, yet different - the RAH is a little rawer than the slick Carnegie concert.Having seen Renaissance at Massey Hall in Toronto (sadly without orchestral accompaniment) around this time, I can attest to the fact that they were superb in concert. Adding the Royal Albert to coincide with the original Novella (plus two single edits) was a brilliant move.Highly recommended.

This is another Esoteric reissue album of this wonderful English progressive rock band. It was reissued now in 2019 with two bonus CDs with a show at the Royal Albert Hall. It is wonderful! Anyone who likes the band should have it. In addition to the CDs, there are the inserts of the time and revive the album covers. Great! Note 9.0.