LATEST REVIEWS
| Audiophile
Audition
March 2011
By Gary Lemco
"The death of Arnold Schoenberg in 1951 motivated Leopold Stokowski to record the expanded string sextet Verklaerte Nacht 3 September 1952" 
|
The death of Arnold Schoenberg in 1951 motivated Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977)--who had consistently championed the composer's orchestral works while Schoenberg had been living--to record the expanded string sextet Verklaerte Nacht 3 September 1952 in Manhattan Center. Taking as his source the RCA Victor LP LM-1739, restoration engineer Mark Obert-Thorn revives a truly incandescent sensitive reading of the score, a dramatization in richly Wagnerian terms of Richard Dehmel's poem of redemptive love. From its D Minor brooding opening, the fierce energy moves the ground-motives in a form established by Schubert and Liszt, a one-movement work that subdivides into organic versions of itself, culminating in a glowing D Major. Agonized passion and melancholy intimacy alternate as the violas and high violins compete for dominance in a fateful drama that even quotes from Massenet's Thais.
Composed in 1937 for the Swiss section of the International Society for Contemporary Music, the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion by then-expatriate Bartok explores a number of sonorities he had taken on his First Piano Concerto and found to some extent in Stravinsky's 1923 Les Noces. Bartok has the percussion section active on seven instruments, the combinations of which are "fully equal in rank to the piano parts."
Stokowski's wickedly refreshed recording from the Manhattan Center, New York City dates from 27 March and 3 April 1952 (as RCA LP LM 1727). "Explosive" serves as well as any epithet to describe the first movement, whose Allegro molto section--especially the fugato--threatens to dissolve the microphones. The flow of the various sections occurs with such ease that clear divisions of affect become hard to discern. The Lento conforms to the Bartok tradition of "night music," although that darkness undergoes eerie and harsh illuminations of thunder, lightning, and rain. The tremulous Allegro non troppo finale proceeds in rondo form, earthy and animated, beset by fughettas and counterpoints of disarming color. That the wild and invigorating display ends in C Major seems both ingenuous and ironic of Bartok, to find so "conventional" a point of rest in the midst of imaginative pandemonium.
Among Stokowski's many "World Premier Recordings" stands his 22 November 1953 inscription of Morton Gould's 1953 Dance Variations with the Whittemore & Lowe piano duo team (as RCA LP LM 1858). With his usual rhythmic elan, Stokowski invests the opening Chaconne with any number of savvy hip movements, rumbas and sambas just a few Brazilian dance steps among many. The second movement Arabesques concentrates a series of stylized dances into a small space of four-and-one-half minutes: Gavotte, Polka, Quadrille, Minuet, Waltz, and Can-Can. The facile fluency of the movement suggests that Gould could have made an excellent scorer for silent movies, given their quick changes of mood. The Waltz and Can-Can play as parodies of Ravel and Offenbach at furious tempos. The third movement Tango serves a balletic Pas de deux in diaphanous textures, Gould is sensuously meditative in the manner of Poulenc, whose Two-Piano Concerto Whittemore & Lowe had recorded with Mitropoulos for RCA.
A sprightly Tarantella concludes this brilliant work, the colors here perhaps indebted to Milhaud as much as to Gould's own penchant for Latin-American energies. The duo pianists' role sparkles while the woodwinds and virtuosic horn and battery parts keep in tandem with a moto perpetuo dynamism. Somehow, this pounding and infectious music makes me want to score it for the Robert Mitchum vehicle Bandido! with my old friend Henry Brandon.
Release reviewed:
PASC274 Stokowski
|
LATEST REVIEWS
| Audiophile Audition
March 2011
By John Sunier
"Casals is best known for this amazing recording of the suites for unaccompanied cello" 
|
This is one of the most venerated classical recordings ever made, done in the EMI Studios in London using cutting lathes powered by falling weights. When he was only 13 Casals found the second-hand sheet music for the Bach Suites in a music store in Barcelona and spent the next 13 years practicing them every day before he would perform them in public for the first time. Although Casals made many recordings during his long career - of solo, chamber and orchestral music, and as a conductor - he is best known for this amazing recording of the suites for unaccompanied cello.
Each movement has its own beauties to be heard. Mostly there is only a single melodic line with very little harmony. Some passages sound like pedagogic exercises, but suddenly there will be a glorious expressive section of great beauty. Though overall the interpretation is rather dark, Casals plays with dynamics, phrasing, rubato, and other devices to shape the melodic line - sometimes using a thin and wiry tone and other times a rich and full, almost orchestral tone. Some of the six sections of each suite seem to bring their dance form titles into terpsichory action, while others are more sedate in their variations on a theme. The Suite No. 5 seems to be the most loved of all six, but each one is a gem.
The somewhat limited range of the cello, and the fact that this is strictly a solo performance, made it ideal for the recording technology of the 1930s. Most of the LP and CD reissues of Casals' original recordings are terrible - not even close to the full-bodied sound of his cello, though there are many different versions out there. For years the sonic standard was considered to be the original 78s, which one specialist reissue dealer had in his catalog at $500 for the entire set. The EMI/Angel CD reissue was one of the worst. In 1996 a small Italian reissue label - Grammofono 2000 - brought out a reissue on CD using the Cedar noise reduction process. This remastering was a revelation - finally letting us hear the sound of the original recordings. This 2-CD set is no longer available, but another single Casals CD from the same label is listed at Amazon for $159.
I have the Grammofono release and compared it to this new restoration from Pristine Audio. I found them to be almost identical, and his is even available in an ambient stereo version (although I didn't hear much difference from the mono). Restoration engineer Andrew Rose says this was one of the most remarkable restorations it has been his pleasure to undertake. It can also be procured as a download, but the cost of the mono CD is 20 Euros.
Release reviewed:
PACM074 Casals
|
|
|
CONTENTS
| |
Editorial Remastering Katin & Mengelberg - Competition
Katin Mendelssohn Concertos 1 & 2, Grieg Concerto
Mengelberg Beethoven's 6th and 7th symphonies, May 1940
PADA Florent Schmitt plays with the Quatuor Calvet
|
Editorial - Remastering Katin & MengelbergiPads: Before I get stuck into this week's topic, just a little note on the subject of iPads, which came out of an e-mail I received earlier this week. It seems that among all the other things Apple didn't implement on the iPad is the opening of ZIP files - indeed, Safari (the web browser) in its iPad incarnation will simply refuse to download a ZIP. As our FLAC downloads arrive in this format (allowing for a single-file download which, when unzipped, includes all the individual tracks plus covers, scores and artwork) this makes it just about impossible with an iPad to purchase a FLAC from us. I've so far tried one of the apps in the App Store which purports to add this feature but failed dismally. If any iPad owners wish to experiment with this (and you'll need to purchase the FLAC Player app as well, I'm afraid) send me an e-mail and I'll set up a FLAC download for you to have a go with. Now to the main topic of the day: Both of this week's releases represent, technically at least, what you might think of as "best in class" for their era. There are certainly very few recordings contemporary to the Mengelberg 1940 live recordings which can match them for both dynamic and frequency range, whilst when you hear the stereo Katin recordings it's immediately obvious why Kenneth Wilkinson and his Decca colleagues gained such a high reputation for technical excellence. So when I come to restore and remaster these recordings, how does this differ from other lesser recordings from the same era? Taking the Katin concerto recordings first the answer is quite simple - I intervene a lot, lot less. A comparison between these recordings and modern recordings of the same works often shows such strong tonal similarities that there really isn't any need to make the kind of radical interventions which other historic recordings often require in order to compensate for poor microphones and frequency responses. Indeed, one useful side-effect of XR re-equalisation for some recordings actually becomes detrimental here: Imagine a piece where the note E flat simply doesn't appear. On a modern, digital recording with virtually no background hiss, we analyse this piece and draw a graph of its frequency response, noting a sharp spike downwards where the E flat isn't. Use this graph as the template for the re-equalisation of an old, noisy recording and not only do we straighten out the tonal balance, but we get some noise reduction "for free" if you like, as that non-existent E flat is filtered out, or rather the noise that occupies those same frequencies is neatly filtered out, in a way which is far less potentially destructive than standard digital noise reduction. (Actually it's a bit more complex than this, as your missing E flat is more than likely a whole load of harmonic frequencies superimposed, but you get the idea.) However, where you already have a nice, clean, well-balanced recording, such as in the Katin concertos, this type of re-equalisation can actually serve to deaden the sound, sucking some of the life out of a recording, if the process is applied in a rigid manner. Thus one has to regulate carefully the degree to which one allows the re-equalisation to be applied - if at all. In the case of the Katin I went for almost negligible equalisation - a very slight general lift of the top end was about it. Sonically the results, I believe, speak both for themselves and for the Decca engineers of the 1950s. Increasingly as my work moves more into the age of real high fidelity this is the kind of decision I'm taking, and it's nice to be able to take it from the very first of Katin's stereo recordings, in the two Mendelssohn concertos included here, as well as in the very last of his 1950s recordings, the Grieg. The Mengelberg, though, called for a far more "conventional" XR approach to this process of re-equalisation, and in this respect it was far more like the technique I'd use for most other recordings of its era - even though the end results are that much better, this is largely thanks to the quality of the source being so much higher. Although the recording medium - glass acetate discs - captured cleanly and well what it was being fed, I strongly suspect that the microphones used caused a less than 'linear' sound. (By linear I mean that what goes in comes out at the same relative level across the frequency range - there are no unusual peaks or troughs in the way the microphone responds at any particular frequency. It is the non-linearity above all in older recordings which give them their characteristic vintage sound - far more so in my opinion than clicks, surface noise or limited frequency range.) Even though the Mengelbergs were excellent recordings for their era, both have been transformed by the re-equalisation - rebalancing frequencies which made the original sound hard and unnatural and opening the whole recording out into something far more realistic and convincing, as well as at times filling in a little extra bass and extending the very top end. These really can stretch to what was soon to be dubbed a "full frequency range recording" response, right up towards 20kHz at times. Thus in both the Katin and Mengelberg this re-equalisation stage was of crucial importance - decisions made here can rarely be unmade later without starting all over again. Thereafter both restorations followed a similar path to just about all our releases, with close scrutiny over hours (or in some cases, though not these, days) to manually pick out individual clicks, bumps, swishes and other unwanted noises. I'm pretty certain that one of the Katin sessions was successfully also recording up the deep rumble of passing London Underground trains, for example! This is always the most time-consuming part of any remastering session, but it's the decisions made earlier on in the process which often have the greatest impact on the finished recording. I like to think that with each recording I get a little better, thanks to gaining a little more experience, at making those fine judgements which can bring such great improvements to an old recording. "Whoops - you did it again" - Download competition Much tougher last week for error spotters - as you know, spelling mistakes don't count, and I'm also not taking responsibility for any slip-ups in reviews copied and pasted from other websites! But there was a prize, and it goes this time to David Budd, who found a small but glaring howler in the Recording Notes to the Heifetz which made what I'd written make no sense whatsoever!Here's a reminder of how this works: if you spot a glaring error in one of these newsletters (spelling mistakes excluded), e-mail me and tell me about it - to the winner I'll send you a free download of your choice. Because this goes out around the world I'm now looking for the best error or, in the case of several correct entries, will pick a winner out of the digital hat.Just send an e-mail with the title " Whoops - you did it again" to me at andrew@pristineaudio.com detailing the slip up, and the winner, chosen next Friday, will receive the download of your choice. Let me know what download you want - and its format - in your e-mail and if you're lucky you'll get it in your in-box next week. (NB. The word "whoops" must be in the e-mail title and you should use the above address - and don't simply reply to this e-mail - or it won't be registered as an entry.) I should point out again that I never intend to put any errors into this or any other e-mail deliberately - but that won't mean they're not there! Good hunting - naturally again there are no mistakes this week. Ahem... Andrew Rose, March 11th, 2011
|
KATIN
plays Mendelssohn and Grieg Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer: Andrew Rose
MENDELSSOHN Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25 [notes / score]Piano Concerto No. 2 in D minor, Op. 40 [notes / score] Recording producer: James Walker; Recording engineer: James Brown Recorded 9-10 February, 1956, Kingsway Hall, London London Symphony Orchestra
conductor Anthony Collins
GRIEG
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16 [notes / score] Recording producer: Erik Smith; Recording engineers: Kenneth Wilkinson, Alan Reeve
Recorded 2nd October, 1959, Kingsway Hall, London London Philharmonic Orchestra conductor Colin Davis Peter Katin piano FLAC downloads include PDF scores each work Web page: PASC 279 Short Notes British virtuoso pianist Peter Katin came to international attention following a performance at the Proms in the early 1950s and was promptly signed up by Decca to record exclusively for them. Decca were quickly establishing a reputation for superlative sound quality, and these recordings, made in stereo in 1956 and 1959 clearly demonstrate not only Decca's prowess, but also Katin's excellence. As a Gramophone reviewer wrote in 1971: "[these are] among the very best records he has made... His refinement of tone colour excites admiration and his playing is distinguished by consistently good taste and judgement... These are in short very natural performances, well proportioned and polished. Both readings have stood the test of time well. Recommended."
Notes on the transfers: This is the third and final release in Pristine Audio's short series of stereo orchestral recordings made by the pianist Peter Katin for Decca and its subsidiaries in the mid-to-late 1950s, and features recordings from both his first and final stereo sessions at this time - there were no Decca recordings at all by Katin during the 1960s, and it was not until 1970 that he returned to the studio with Decca's engineers to make an LP of music by William Walton, with the composer conducting, for Lyrita. One other point of note - the Grieg recording is, we believe, the only time Colin Davis has conducted the work on record - something also true of Peter Katin's recording of the Rachmaninov 2nd Concerto which appears on PASC273. In both of the present recordings I have adopted a very minimal approach to the remastering - to put it plainly, these Decca recordings were so good to begin with that I felt there was little that full XR remastering could manage to in any way improve them beyond lifting a slight veil at the top end.. I also used an undetectable second or two of convolution reverb to "assist" a rather clunky edit at the very end of the Grieg. Other than this my main duties were to eliminate any clicks from two superb pressings, reduce tape hiss levels slightly, and eliminate occasional very low frequency environmental rumble quite possibly caused by distant passing Underground trains being picked up by Decca's microphones during the recording sessions. Review: "Peter Katin's accounts of the two Mendelssohn concertos have always struck me as among the very best records he has made. They have a striking freshness to command them and in the slow movement of the G minor Concerto for example, just the right amount of poetic feeling. His refinement of tone colour excites admiration and his playing is distinguished by consistently good taste and judgement. The finale has sparkle and spontaneity though Mr Katin never allows his virtuosity to overstep the bounds of the period. These are in short very natural performances, well proportioned and polished, with the LSO under Anthony Collins providing admirable support. Both readings have stood the test of time well and the recording still sounds very good indeed with firm fresh-sounding piano tone truthful throughout its range and a well-focussed orchestral tone. The balance is good and the stereo quality is successful. Recommended." The Gramophone, December 1971 MP3 Sample - Mendelssohn Concerto No. 1, 1st mvt. ListenDownload purchase links: Stereo MP3 Stereo 16-bit FLAC Stereo 24-bit FLACCD purchase links and all other information: PASC 279 - webpage at Pristine Classical
|
MENGELBERG
conducts Beethoven Symphonies 6 & 7Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer: Andrew Rose BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 "Pastoral" [notes/score]Concert of 14th May, 1940 BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92 [notes/score] Concert of 25th May, 1940 Concertgebouw Orchestra Willem Mengelberg conductor FLAC downloads include Beethoven's original manuscripts of both symphonies as scanned PDF files Web page: PASC 280 Short Notes Eight of Beethoven's nine symphonies survive in recordings made by Willem Mengelberg and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from concerts which took place in 1940. All of these recordings display remarkable sound quality as well as superb musicianship, and here we present our final volume to conclude the series in stunning XR-remastered sound quality: "Pristine's Andrew Rose continues his traversal of Mengelberg's live 1940 Beethoven cycle, with (once again) amazing results. Applying his XR remastering system, Rose's transfers far surpass the quality of any previous CD release, including Philips's own... If you don't know these performances, you're in for a uniquely exciting and rewarding Beethovenian experience. If you do, you'll hear them with new ears in these revelatory transfers." - Fanfare, March/April 2011 (PASC236)
Recording Notes
This release allows the listener to hear not only the great Heifetz at his virtuoso best, but also to compare and contrast the three complete recordings of Mendelssohn's concerto which are listed in Beecham's main discography (which predates Pristine's issue of the Cantelli recording of 1954,. PASC094). In terms of pacing there's little between the 1944 and 1959 recordings - the Toscanini is marginally faster than the Munch - but it is in the Beecham second movement, as highlighted in the Gramophone review above, where the music is given the greatest room to breathe, a ful 23s longer than the relatively swift Munch recording.
Each recording was XR remastered using the same modern reference recording, yet each retains its own distinct sound and style - and obviously sound quality improves with time, though each has shown considerable improvement over the original source recordings. The whole series, now completeA complete recording from the 1940 concerts of the 3rd Symphony is not known to exist. Thus this release completes the series. Here are links to the complete edition: Reviews for the series "Pristine's Andrew Rose continues his traversal of Mengelberg's live 1940 Beethoven cycle, with (once again) amazing results. Applying his XR remastering system to mint Philips LPs, Rose's transfers (after some poor sound at the beginning of the Fourth Symphony, owing to damage to the original acetate source) far surpass the quality of any previous CD release, including Philips's own... If you don't know these performances, you're in for a uniquely exciting and rewarding Beethovenian experience. If you do, you'll hear them with new ears in these revelatory transfers." - Fanfare, March/April 2011 "Andrew Rose continues to work his restorative magic on Mengelberg's wartime performances, and the results are again revelatory in terms of improvements in dynamic range and presence, far outclassing previous CD releases from Music & Arts and Philips. I have one small reservation: The Pristine transfers are perhaps very slightly over-filtered in the quietest passages, occasionally resulting in a "disappearing" effect at the extreme end of the dynamic range. A case in point is the diminuendo to ppp before the crashing forte C# near the beginning of the finale of No. 8-the Philips sounds a little more natural here, through its heavy acetate crackle. But in every other respect, the superiority is Pristine's all the way... Another truly exceptional disc from Pristine. Keep 'em coming!" - Fanfare, January/February 2011 MP3 Sample - 6th Symphony, 1st movement ListenDownload purchase links: Ambient Stereo MP3mono 16-bit FLACAmbient Stereo 16-bit FLACAmbient Stereo 24-bit FLACCD purchase links and all other information: PASC 280 - webpage at Pristine Classical
|
 | | Florent Schmitt |
PADA Exclusives
Streamed MP3s you can also download
FLORENT SCHMITT
QUATUOR CALVET
SCHMITT
Quintette, Op. 51
2nd mvt - Andante
Florent Schmitt piano
Quatuor Calvet:
Joseph Calvet violin
Daniel Guilevitch violin
Leon Pascal viola
Paul Mas cello
Recorded in June 1935
Transfer from Pathé LP
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 to 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.
|
|
