| LATEST REVIEW | ALFRED HERTZ
at the SFSO Vol. 4
plus recordings by
Gabrilowitsch in Detroit
| PASC233 65:06
Congratulations are due to Pristine Audio and to Mark Obert-Thorn, the restoration engineer, for this concluding volume of the four disc series of Alfred Hertz's San Francisco recordings (see reviews of Volume 2 and Volume 3). They've proved timely and important. Hertz's recordings have been unsung for many years, and whilst he is not unique in that respect, the first class transfers and intelligent programmes have enabled us to listen to a conductor of significant gifts. It's true that he was not entrusted with major symphonic repertoire, and that's a loss to posterity. How, for example, would he have handled, had he been granted the opportunity, Brahms's First Symphony, or - and given his role in the work's history it's a teasing matter - an act of Parsifal? A look at the programme in this disc, augmented by Ossip Gabrilowitsch's Detroit Symphony recordings, might suggest disappointment at the relatively lightweight and colour-conscious nature of it, but we must be grateful to be listening at all, given the paucity of surviving documents of his conductorial art.
Capriccio Espagnole is a vivacious way to start proceedings, with some perky solos from the orchestra's principals, not least its concertmaster and brass players, clarinet and harp. The percussion is gratifyingly audible for an early electric dating from April 1926. I assume the first side-break came at 3:44, but you'd need to listen hard to make the suggestion, as the side-joins have been very well dealt with. Caprice Viennois is treated as a portentously sultry opus, stretching out expansively to fill the length of the side. The sugar content is high. Meanwhile Liebesleid was orchestrated by Hertz himself. It's rather let down by the booming bass, which undercuts the lilt, and is rather too muscularly Grand Hotel, though rather engaging to hear nonetheless. The Moszkowski was arranged by the ubiquitous Rehfeld and in the case of Luigini Hertz strikes a Stateside equivalent of the kind of potpourri dished out by Dan Godfrey with his band in Bournemouth. Finally we have the Glazunov Valse de Concert which straddled both sides of Victor 6826. Since I am on a side-break kick, if 3:39 is the break it's a good place to have it.
The Gabrilowitsch recordings are cut from rather a similar cloth. Brahms' Academic Festival Overture is the most important of the pieces and it wears requisite grandeur, well captured in Orchestra Hall, Detroit in April 1928 and so recorded at the same time as the last of Hertz's discs. Gluck's Orfeo evergreen is heard in the Felix Mottl arrangement, and note too that the splendid flautist is John Wummer, who had been with the orchestra for only three years and was to stay until 1937. Then he went to greater fame with the NBC. The Russian duo of Altschuler and Tchaikovsky share one side of a disc, but of more artistic worth is the Waltz from the latter's Serenade for Strings. This is a very personalised and highly characterful affair. The Chabrier is another double sided disc (Victor 1337) and has pretty good sonic detail for the time, including a nice 'distant' brass passage. We have most of Gabrilowitsch's piano recordings available in transfers, but it's good to have his recordings as conductor available and so sympathetically transferred.
This has been consistently excellent work on behalf of Hertz, and I'm curious as to what's next from this team.
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb International
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Now our All-Time
Best Selling Release
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| | Bruckner 9, Furtwängler |
| Original Release Notes:
"Last week we issued one of Furtwängler's greatest
wartime recordings, the Beethoven 9th from 1942.
This week - and by much popular request by those
who heard the Beethoven and loved it - we've
endeavoured to work the same magic on what is
perhaps an even greater performance from the same
era - the conductor's only recording of Bruckner's 9th
Symphony.
Long regarded as one of the greatest interpretations
of it ever to be captured for posterity, the Pristine XR
magic has worked here to completely transform the
cramped historic sound into something marvellously
fresh and immediate. This is truly a recording that no
music lover should be without."
15th October, 2010
Furtwängler's Berlin
Wartime 9ths
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| CHRISTMAS SPECIAL |  | "With Christmas nearly upon us, here's a splendid "album" to download that not only stirs up a little nostalgia for times long gone but is also a fine showcase of some of the transfer engineers working for Pristine Classical. "A Very Pristine Christmas" contains 18 tracks and demonstrates the remarkable skills of Dr John Duffy, Peter Harrison, Ward Marston, Mark Obert-Thorn and Pristine's founder Andrew Rose. The music, all with a Christmas theme, was recorded between 1923 and 1957 - and there are some gems..."
Gramophone, 2009
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CONTENTS
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Editorial Pristine Classical hacked! The full story
Furtwängler His last ever Beethoven Choral Symphony
1-week offer Our 10 top downloads of 2010 - 15% off FLAC
PADA Artur and Theresa Schnabel - 2 Schubert songs
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Editorial - Hacked: the full story
It started with a curious e-mail received on Sunday afternoon - someone was having difficulty with a PADA subscription and found he couldn't view the site. What was going on? I hadn't planned to spend my Sunday online trying to fix things, but was left little alternative - it's one of our busiest days of the week and we were suddenly out of business. Worse than that, I didn't know why, how, or when this might be reversed.
For various reasons we have two hosts for our site - much of the MP3 and FLAC data is held with one company, while another hosts the words and pictures that make up Pristine Classical. The former has 24-hour phone and live chat support, the latter only offers this Monday-Friday, office hours. All I could do was send an e-mail support request and cross my fingers that someone might be there offering skeleton support.
By the evening I had a response - the hacker hadn't actually done much damage, merely inserting a code file which redirected visitors to Google. Unfortunately, in their efforts to get us back up and running, the technical guys had replaced a number of our files with older back-ups. Suddenly we were back to January 2009!
Much of this was easily updated, but the databases which hold the e-mail addresses and log-in data of our PADA subscribers were not held on my own PC, and with these files also reverting to 2009, two years of new subscriptions had effectively been wiped out.
Fortunately the web host's 6-hourly back-ups, held in store for 14 days, allowed us to order a complete copy of the site as a snapshot of what was online just before the hackers struck. It wasn't a cheap option, given the relatively small amount of data we needed to get back for PADA, but it was the only way we could get back online. Finally on Thursday morning I was able to restore the final group of deleted passwords and get everyone working again.
What have I learned? Not why we were attacked, that's for sure! I do now know how to spot the signs of this kind of attack and how to resolve it - the same operation carried out this weekend would most probably be fixed in minutes without any loss of data. But I'm also very relieved that we have those regular automated back-ups to fall back on. I'm also glad to say that, because we do not process any payments or personal data on our own site, nobody's financial, purchase or personal details were available to whoever decided to play their little game with us.
Oh, and we've changed all our passwords...
Andrew Rose, December 17th, 2010
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BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 9 'Choral' in D minor, Op. 125 [notes / score]PASC 261
Recorded live at Lucerne Festival, Switzerland, 22nd August, 1954
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, soprano
Elsa Cavelti, alto
Ernst Häfliger, tenor
Otto Edelmann, bass
Lucerne Festival Choir
dir. Albert Jenny
Philharmonia Orchestra
conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler
Short Notes
This recording was originally intended to kick off our Furtwängler season this autumn; instead it brings to a close one of the most successful single-artist runs we've ever had. Enthusiasm for Furtwängler and these newly XR-remastered recordings has proved exceptional.
On the surface, this wonderful recording should have been easy to remaster - but it's taken no less than seven attempts to uncover the very finest sound possible from this fine broadcast performance, made just 3 months before Furtwängler's death and amidst a major cycle of Beethoven symphonic concerts.
Very different in temperament to the 1942 outing with which we started the series, this remains for many the finest 9th in their collections. Only now it sounds immensely finer!
MP3 Sample - 4th Movement: ListenDownload purchase links: Mono MP316-bit mono FLAC16-bit Ambient Stereo FLAC24-bit Ambient Stereo FLACCD purchase links and all other information: PASC 261 - webpage at Pristine Classical
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2010 - 15% Off Our Top Ten
In a special offer available only to readers of our weekly newsletter, we'd like to offer you a seasonal treat or ten! For one week only, using the links below, you can purchase 16-bit Ambient Stereo (or true stereo) FLAC downloads of the recordings which topped our monthly charts through the year.
NB. The links will not function after 24th December and are only applicable to the 16-bit FLAC downloads specified below.
 January:
MILES DAVIS
Kind Of Blue : XR (1959)
16-bit Stereo FLAC
€6.80 (normally €8.00)
 February:
WAGNER Die Walküre
(Krauss, 1953)
16-bit Ambient Stereo FLAC
€22.95 (normally €27.00)
 March:
WAGNER Siegfried
(Krauss, 1953)
16-bit Ambient Stereo FLAC
€30.60 (normally €36.00)
 April:
BEETHOVEN & BRAHMS 1st Symphonies
(Mengelberg, 1940)
16-bit Ambient Stereo FLAC
€7.65 (normally €9.00)
 May:
WAGNER Parsifal
(Krauss, 1953)
16-bit Ambient Stereo FLAC
€30.60 (normally €36.00)
 June:
BEETHOVEN Symphonies 2 & 8
(Mengelberg, 1940)
16-bit Ambient Stereo FLAC
€7.65 (normally €9.00)
 July & August:
VERDI Requiem
(Toscanini, 1951 stereo)
16-bit Stereo FLAC
€7.65 (normally €9.00)
 September:
BRAHMS Requiem
(Toscanini, 1943)
16-bit Ambient Stereo FLAC
€7.65 (normally €9.00)
October:
BRUCKNER Symphony No. 9
(Furtwängler, 1944)
16-bit Ambient Stereo FLAC
€7.65 (normally €9.00)
 November:
BRUCKNER Symphony No. 4
(Furtwängler, 1951)
16-bit Ambient Stereo FLAC
€7.65 (normally €9.00)
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 | | Artur & Theresa Schnabel |
PADA Exclusives
Streamed MP3s you can also download
SCHUBERT
1. Gruppe aus dem Tartarus, D583
2. Der Kreuzzug, D 932
Theresa Behr-Schnabel, alto
Artur Schnabel, piano
Recorded Nov 17, 1932
HMV DB.1835
Matrix Nos 2B.4519-1 and 2B.4520-1
This transfer is presented with Ambient Stereo remastering by Dr. John Duffy.
Over 400 PADA Exclusives recordings are available for high-quality streamed listening and free 224kbps MP3 download to all subscribers. PADA Exclusives are not available on CD and are additional our main catalogue.
 Subscriptions start from €1 per week for PADA Exclusives only listening and download access. A full subscription to PADA Premium gets you all this plus unlimited streamed listening access to all Pristine Classical recordings for just €10 per month, with a free 1 week introductory trial.
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Closing Message
I think we've managed to clear up the mess caused to our site last weekend - but if you spot anything unusual that looks like it shouldn't be there, or if you have any difficulties accessing your PADA subscription, please contact downloadsupport@pristineclassical.com with the details.
Andrew Rose
SARL Pristine Audio |
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