Editorial - This week and next week's news
1. Ward Marston's Coates series; more on wow & flutter
About five years ago I travelled to the UK for a couple of days in order to meet up with the then editor of Gramophone (and now editor-in-chief), James Jolly. The main subjects of discussion were proposals for the Gramophone website and the possibility of a tie-in with the National Gramophonic Society recordings, a good number of which Gramophone had in storage with EMI.
At the end of our long lunch, with various ideas talked through, our discussion started to range a little wider, and James touched on a name he was really keen to hear more of: Albert Coates. I must admit that at the time I had very little awareness of Coates, but some research revealed him to be one of the greatest and most forward-looking British conductors of his day, a leading Wagnerian, and perhaps as a result of being Russian-born (to an English father), someone with a strong affinity to Russian music.
In 1919 he was appointed chief conductor to the London Symphony Orchestra, and began to make recordings with them for the Columbia Record Company in London. However, a decision by Coates to switch allegiances to HMV a couple of years later led to a number of recordings coming out during the 1920s listing him as conductor of an anonymous orchestra - which was almost certainly comprised largely of "moonlighting" members of the LSO.
Thus his electrical recording of Beethoven's 9th, one of, if not the first microphone recording of the symphony, appeared in 1926 without proper credit, and is still excluded from the main body of the LSO's official discography - and we thus cannot be 100% sure of the precise make-up of the orchestra that does play, though it is listed in an appendix as being the LSO. By 1927 HMV had bagged the LSO and normal service was resumed for a while, though his contract with the orchestra had expired in 1922 and from then on he had no permanent conducting post. He relocated to the US during World War II and thereafter to South Africa, where he died in 1953.
Although Coates continued to record on and off until 1945, it might be well-argued that his major contributions to the recorded canon took place during the 1920s, and it is this period which we're concentrating on in a major series put together by Ward Marston, versions of some of which may have been circulating amongst collectors, but which is seeing its first formal, commercial issue here on Pristine.
The series will bring together both electrical and acoustic recordings and is initially running to 6 volumes, with a possible further three later this year or in 2012. The first CD is released this week and full details are found below in this newsletter. Here's a taster (in no particular order) of the other five discs, direct from Ward:
Tchaikovsky / Glinka program.1-4. Tchaikovsky: Symphony no. 6. Recorded 1926.
5. Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet. Recorded 1928
6. Tchaikovsky: Marche Slave. Recorded 14 October 1930
7. Glinka: Overture to Ruslan and Ludmilla. Recorded 1928
The Pathetique symphony is transferred from quiet Italian pressings, the only set of quiet pressings I have ever seen. The Romeo and Juliette, with the Glinca filler, was only issued on Czech HMV. I have only seen 3 sets in 30 years and my set is the only one of the three that has no blasting on the loud passages. The March Slav is also very scarce.
Acoustic recordings of Mozart symphony 41 and Beethoven symphony no. 7.1-4. Mozart: Symphony 41. Recorded 27 August and 16 October 1923.
5. Mozart: Der Schauspieldirektor Overture. Recorded 1924.
6--11. Beethoven symphony no. 7.
The Beethoven 7th was recorded in 1921 on 6 sides only, with the 3rd and 4th movements highly abridged. This was issued only on Victor.
In 1922, Coates re-recorded the 3rd and 4th movements complete, 2 sides for each. The entire symphony combining the first 2 movements from 1921 and the last 2 from 1923 were issued in France only and are almost unheard of. The Coates discography does not even list this French issue.
Acoustic HMV Russian recordings1-4. Tchaikovsky: symphony no. 5. Recorded 25 October 1922, 3 November 1922, 17 November 1922, 22 December 1922.
5. Tchaikovsky: Francesca da rimini. Recorded 22 and 24 October 1924.
6. Borodin: Prince Igor -Ballet. Recorded 18 October 1923.
Acoustic recordings of Russian and French works.1. Glinka: Ruslan and Ludmilla - Overture. Recorded 5 May 1922.
2. Rimsky-Korsakov: Coq d'Or - suite. Recorded 10 May and 14 July 1922.
3. Rimsky-Korsakov: Snegorouchka - Dance of the Tumblers. Recorded 14 July 1922.
4-7. Stravinsky: Firebird excerpts. Recorded 24 and 29 October 1924.
8. TBA
9. Ravel: Ma Mère l'Oye - Suite. Recorded 25 November 1921, and 25 April 1922.
10. Debussy: Children's Corner Suite - Golliwog's Cakewalk. Recorded 25 April 1922.
All Russian Program (electric recordings.)1. Rimsky-Korsakov: Czar Sultan - Suite. Recorded 16 February 1928.
2. Rimsky-Korsakov: May Night - Overture. Recorded 8 October and 5 November 1929.
3. Mussorgsky: Khovantchina: Persian Dances. Recorded 7 May 1930.
4. Borodin: Prince Igor - Overture. Recorded 26 October 1926. Issued on
5. Borodin: Prince Igor - Ballet Music. Recorded 24 October 1927.
6-10. Stravinsky: Petroushka Ballet. Recorded 19 and 24 1927; 5 January and 15 February 1928.
2. More on wow and flutter: tackling Pelléas et Mélisande
There was huge interest last week in the Schnabel Beethoven issue which had been 'solidified' by the use of new Capstan software from Celemony. I had a number of people contact me with suggestions of other recordings which might benefit from it, and have received samples to try working from in one particularly difficult but important case.
Right now I'm treading gently. As I said last week, it's a powerful tool, and I suspect one which will become more so in future updates and upgrades. Until a wide base of experience in what it can and cannot do has been established it's hard to say for sure whether a specific instance of wow or flutter can be successfully dealt with.
It became clear early on that whilst piano music is pretty straightforward - mainly because there should never be any vibrato - anything operatic or voice-led was likely to prove more tricky. And yet, it would seem, opera is not impossible.
I began work earlier this week on the legendary 1941 Roger Desomiere recording of Debussy's
Pelléas et Mélisande, working from a lovely set of French EMI LP transfers. I quickly discovered that I couldn't approach this as I have the Schnabel - any dominant or solo voice singing with vibrato starts to sound like one of those "Autotuned" robotic-like voices which infest too much popular music these days. This suggests that removing flutter from opera might be virtually impossible right now.
But other more broad patterns emerged, of wow, as one might expect, but also of a tendency for pitch to wander around more generally over the course of a handful of the 22 sides, where a gradual 'droop' of perhaps a quarter of a semitone might be observed over the span of a 78rpm disc, only to be recovered as the next side picks up.
Being able to delve into this aspect of a recording has been almost impossible before now - changes of key and other harmonic modulations have made it impossible to follow many clear patterns in recording spectrographs in any detail.
I hope to have the results of this work available in the next week or two - my aim is for next week's release, with another short break in the Schnabel schedule. In the meantime, here's a sample of work in progress from the first act of the Debussy - the final version may or may not change slightly from this, but overall should be very similar:
PACO 063: Debussy - Pélleas et Mélisande (rec. 1941) MP3 sampleJoachim, Jansen, Désormière (HMV France)
How to "upgrade" Schnabel Volumes 1 & 2
Our issues of Artur Schnabel's Beethoven Sonatas (Volumes 1 & 2) have been replaced by newly Capstan pitch-corrected versions, which has also resulted in some very minor alterations to the durations indicated in the original artwork.
If you'd like to replace an existing download of either of these albums, simply follow the link in your original download e-mail confirmation to your download page. If the download link itself is still live then clicking on it will allow you to download the new version. If not, simply click to request a new download - I'll authorise these requests (manually) and you'll receive a new download e-mail in due course.
If you've lost your original download e-mail, contact us at
downloadsupport@pristineclassical.com with the e-mail address used to purchase the Schnabel, and transaction ID(s) if you have them. It may take a little longer as we'll need to check these manually, but as long as we can verify the transaction we'll send out replacement links to you by e-mail.
If you'd like to replace an existing CD of either of these albums, please send an e-mail to
cdsupport@pristineclassical.com when you next place an order with us for CDs, stating the volume(s) you'd like replaced and indicating where possible the date and/or transaction ID of your previous purchase. Assuming these can be verified in our records we'll include a replacement disc in a paper slip case of each volume you'd like replaced with your new order.
Note that this offer applies only to PAKM037 and PAKM038, Artur Schnabel plays Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Volume 1 and Volume 2. This offer will expire at the end of July, 2011. We will not be refunding any previous purchases and there is no cash alternative. Free CD replacements will not incur any additional postage costs but must be added to a new order of at least one CD.
Andrew Rose, July 1, 2011
