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KARAJAN
IN NEW YORK, 1958
BEETHOVEN
Symphony No. 9
Leontyne Price
Maureen Forrester
Leopold Simoneau
Norman Scott
Westminster Choir
New York Philharmonic Orchestra
conducted by
Herbert von Karajan
Recorded live in 1958, New York
"To hear Karajan working with an American orchestra is a treat (he only ever conducted four in his entire life), and the New York Phil plays beautifully - only occasionally would a phrase have been more 'rounded' in Berlin. But the performance is very similar to the '62 in conception, and the solo quartet (Leontyne Price, Maureen Forrester, Léopold Simoneau and Norman Scott) very classy; the choir is terrific (possibly better than Vienna's Singverein to whom Karajan stayed extraordinarily loyal throughout his career). There's a terrific dynamism and vitality about the interpretation too..."
James Jolly, Gramophone, May 2010
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PASC 222 - Karajan
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July 26, 2011
HANSON'S AMERICAN MUSIC - VOLUME 2
By Gary Lemco
"Music championed by Howard Hanson and the Eastman School of Music; this fine record serves as a homecoming, idiomatic and reverent at once"
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Pristine offers a second installment of neglected American scores culled from the Mercury Records archives of the Eastman-Rochester Symphony Orchestra led by composer-conductor Howard Hanson (1891-1986). The Piston Third Symphony (1947-1948) derives from a commission by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, and it won a Pulitzer Prize for Music Composition. Recorded 11 May 1953 by Howard Hanson's mix of Rochester Philharmonic and Eastman School of Music students, the elegiac Third Symphony reveals its essentially four-movement Classical roots, especially given its rhythmic likeness in 5/4 of the opening Andantino to Tchaikovsky's second movement of the Pathetique. A harp and dark strings announce the primary motive of the Andantino, which moves toward a chorale sensibility with tragic yearnings. The music achieves a temporary serenity in which the woodwinds invoke bucolic impulses. The Coda projects a decidedly martial urgency, almost a prelude to the ensuing Allegro (Scherzo).
Indeed, the skittering figures of the Scherzo alternately twitter and thunder, a series of athletic gestures we might find in Prokofiev or Alwyn. More delicately scored landscape music with harp marks the trio section. The large Adagio proceeds as a dignified, if subdued, meditation - perhaps a dirge meant to lament the global conflict of the period. The harp and dark distinctive color of the low Eastman-Rochester strings in polyphony make for a potent valediction that rises through the brass into unequivocal grief. The extended coda conveys reverential acceptance, the tenor of the viola solo a voice in the wilderness. The final Allegro re-establishes that American optimism that survives the inevitable crises that plague our spirit. A martial tune infiltrates the progression in the strings, woodwinds, brass, and tympani. Piston depends much of counterpoint, which invests an academic sensibility some might find at odds with his inherent spontaneity. Lyricism and grandeur combine smoothly to the last pages, exuberant and confident of the future.
Critic Virgil Thomson once noted that "the variety of [Cowell's] sources and composing methods is probably the broadest in our time." The 1946 Fourth Symphony's natural lyricism belies the "tone-cluster" epithet that usually dogs this composer's reputation. We do find those pentatonic or "Eastern" elements that often compelled the composer's ear in the melodic tissue of the opening Hymn: Allegro first movement, a movement sadly brief, given its musical fluency. Ballad: Andante likewise reveals a diaphanous sensitivity to color and orchestration, more Loeffler and Griffes than anything of the post-serial generation. At moments, it plays like a deft brass and woodwind serenade with violin and string obbligato--it could be mistaken for Sibelius. The Vivace recalls Cowell's deep devotion to Irish and Celtic music, here enhanced by colorful scoring in the battery. Cowell conceived something like eighteen Hymn and Fuguing Tunes, contrapuntal exercises for various instrumental combinations, and his last movement Moderato con moto offers such an invention. The bass line moves in passacaglia fashion while the upper voices convey modally chorale like riffs that might owe something to Bach's body of Lutheran chorales. Recall that in the early 1960s Cowell taught the summer session of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, so this fine recorded document serves as a homecoming of a sort, idiomatic and reverent at once.
Charles Martin Loffler (1961-1935) was a German-born violinist and composer who migrated eventually to Boston, where he appeared as co-concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1882-1903. His symphonic poems take their cue from Cesar Franck and the impressionists, of which A Pagan Poem is the most famous. La Bonne Chanson (1901; rec. 29 October 1954) pays homage to Gabriel Faure, among Loeffler's many mentors. The coloring is thick and hyper-romantic, often anticipatory of Scriabin in its lavish and audacious colors and harmonies. The sensuous melodic contour more than once hints at Chausson, again the Flemish or Belgian side of French music. Some eleven minutes into the otherwise bucolic score, the music flames up momentarily, then a low bassoon and high strings take us into shimmering regions where the harp rules in post-Wagnerian ecstasies. Much like Debussy's Engulfed Cathedral, the lofty sentiments and clarion horns subside and settle into a bubbling froth of luxuriant harmony.
PASC 295 - Hanson
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LATEST REVIEWS
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August, 2011
HARTY'S SCHUBERT
By Jonathan Woolf
"Fascinating listening"
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Hamilton Harty conducted two important Schubert recordings at the end of the 1920s. Schubert was in the air at the time, as 1928 marked the centenary of his death, an event that occasioned a flurry of recordings. In January of that year, quick off the mark, Columbia recorded him with his Hallé Orchestra in the Ninth Symphony in what detective work suggests was Fyvie Hall in London. Most of the selected takes were the third, though there are three first takes in the fourteen issued sides; no second takes at all, which is unusual.
This distinguished, personalised reading is fascinating to hear. At the time the Hallé was regularly upstaging London orchestras, even the LSO, and it was during this time that the visits of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony under Toscanini, Berlin Philharmonic under Furtwängler and the Hallé itself, spurred the formation first of the BBC Symphony and then Beecham's LPO. What one hears from the Hallé is, first, the very unusual tone and phrasing of the horn statements, and the wind voice leading. Harty encourages a rather unblended approach in contradistinction to his contemporary Beecham whose performances were notable for the metrical freedom he allowed his wind players but within a precisely calibrated blend when chording. Harty also offers much more looseness in this respect and many more portamentos in the string section. His Schubert is punchy and invigorating, Beecham's more emollient and sidling in approach. The music making is forward-moving and exciting, though I sense at one side join (imperceptible in this transfer but if you have the 78 you know where it is) Harty fractionally loses the tempo established toward the end of the previous side - it's in the opening movement; see if you agree.
Listening to this performance is fascinating on a number of levels, not least the individual timbres of each section. The winds are pretty much vibrato-free, as they illustrate in a strong, commanding slow movement, which Harty swings into with dancing Ländler panache; the cellos too don't illustrate much vibrato but do slide voraciously. Harty is quite salty in the Scherzo, and big-boned and characterful in the finale.
When a transfer is as disappointing as the Hallé's own label was in the Cassadó adaptation of the Arpeggione sonata, one worries that other companies will shy off [Hallé Tradition CD HLT8003]. The market is not so wide for such material that it can easily bear competing end-products, and that's one danger in botched transfers. Fortunately this company hasn't been put off; on the contrary it's stepped in with its own fine work, courtesy of Mark Obert-Thorn. The Cassadó arrangement (or if you prefer orchestral beefing up) of the Arpeggione Sonata is, if not rare in its original 78 guise, at least relatively uncommon. It's an ingenious piece of work and shows the soloist in a fine light; the cellist's much later version with the Bamberg orchestra under Perlea is on a good Cassadó Vox Box.
It's always good to welcome Harty material. He has cachet among collectors, so let me ask the question: when are we going to have a good transfer of his collaboration with Sammons in the Bruch concerto, and with Catterall in Mozart? .
PASC 282 - Schubert
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CONTENTS
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Editorial A question of Pitch
Hanson American Music 3: Carter, Riegger, MacDowell
Coates Tchaikovsky 6th, Romeo & Juliet etc., & Glinka
PADA Willem van Otterloo tackles Mozart - part 3
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Editorial - A question of pitch - does A ever= 440Hz?
The dilemma for the restorer of old recordings Last week's release of Koussevitzky's Beethoven 9th opened something of a can of worms with regard to pitch. I stated in my notes that it had transferred considerably 'sharp' - to be precise, the average pitch of the recording was 450.28Hz, as calculated by Celemony's Capstan - right now just about the only software I know which can produce such an 'average' pitch. (Remember it wavers up and down in any analogue recording, not only thanks to wow and flutter, but also a more general long-term pitch instability common to any analogue replay system to one degree or another.) I took the decision to repitch to A440, and apologised for this. I received a number of responses to this: "The Boston Symphony under Koussevitzky tuned to A = 444 Hz. Please see the attached, starting at the end of page 3. This has been independently verified by analyzing the hum ("Mains") frequency on a number of BSO recordings. Perhaps you might check what the pitch is on the discs when the hum is adjusted to 60 Hz. Best to do this on the non-recut sides. Adjusting to A = 440 Hz is unfortunately an automatic thing by restorers these days and causes a falsification of the tempi used in many historical recordings. Although there was a proposed standard of A = 440 Hz in the late 1930s, it was optional with user and many conductors and orchestras used variants on it. Koussevitzky was famous for tuning the BSO sharp." "The Boston Symphony traditionally played sharp. I thought they went with A=454, but I may be wrong, and 450 might have been what they tuned to. In the late 60s or early 70s they came to Cincinnati on tour and couldn't do two of the pieces they had planned to play, because the organ in Music Hall was tuned to A=440. Other pieces were substituted, and we missed out on "Also Sprach You Know Who". A friend told me that woodwind instruments had to have work done on them to be playable at the higher pitch in the BSO, but I don't know if this is true." "You are wrong. The Boston Symphony in Koussevitzky's time tuned A=445 and perhaps even higher. This has been well documented. If you have reduced the pitch of this recording to A=440, you are falsifying Serge Koussevitzky's work." It seems there are lots of opinions - all sincerely held - but nobody seems to have a precise answer to the question which tallies with anyone else's. So I decided to investigate with what little concrete evidence the recordings offer. First of all one could take into account the difference in true 78rpm speeds between US (60Hz) and European (50Hz) replay standards. American 78rpm is actually 78.26rpm, whereas European 78rpm clocks in at 77.92rpm. (This all dates back to gear ratios which could get as close as possible to a nominal 78rpm under the different electrical systems.) If one compensates for an American recording replayed on a European turntable, as is the case here, the actual pitch should be 99.57% of the replayed pitch, thus giving us a performance average of A=448.32Hz. Of course this requires me to assume that my French village electricity supply is a rock solid 50Hz (my UPS display suggests this is so - it's only the voltage which varies a little), and that my turntable is accurate in its pitch too. Next we can take the approach suggested in the first quote above - analyse the mains hum on the original recording. So I did - with six spot checks across my original transfer, each looking for 60Hz hum at a random point on a different side. The results varied, from lowest to highest, thus: 60.33, 60.41, 60.45, 60.54, 60.58, 60.73 - the spread here is almost as high as A440 to A443, but nevertheless let's continue down this road. An average of my six spot checks comes out at 60.51Hz. (To be clear - I'm rounding off to a couple of decimal places here but my calculations often run to many more, depending on the readings I'm getting.) Using this figure, the suggested pitch should be 98.59% of the original transfer pitch, which leaves us at 446.48Hz. Another figure we've not seen before. But can this be relied on in any way? I had another very interesting comment on the issue, from another highly esteemed transfer engineer close to Pristine's heart. What he wrote is particularly instructive: "The common wisdom is that the BSO did pitch higher than other orchestras; but even BSO discographer James North told me he could not pinpoint exactly when they started, or what pitch they used at which period. So, I've always pitched my BSO transfers at A440, even though some people might dispute the choice. (There's also the matter of Boston's use of direct current years after other American cities stopped using it, even into the 1940s. That did have a direct effect on the speed of Victor's cutting turntables, which one can hear when one plays back the Heifetz/Koussevitzky Prokofiev 2nd Concerto at the "standard" 78.26 rpm.)" Food for thought, then, with regard to the Boston Symphony. But as a brief epilogue to this, I decided to check through the Ashkenazy pitches for his Beethoven Sonatas, recorded by Decca mainly in the 1970s, to see where his piano falls. Looking at the most recent sonatas I've worked on, we find rock solid A=440Hz for Sonatas 18, 19 and 20, but prior to this we get 441.27Hz for Sonata No. 14, 441.02Hz for No. 15, and 442.29Hz for both Nos. 16 and 17. Consistency - who needs it? NEW Downloadable "Box Sets"Long available to buyers of our Jazz and Blues transfers, we've recently starting tentatively offering what might be loosely described as download 'box sets'. This began with the Furtwängler 1953 RAI Ring Cycle - the four operas, in their Ambient Stereo 16-bit FLAC file format (by far our most popular offering) have now been grouped into a single download, available at a 10% discount on the cumulative price of the four individual operas in the same format. The download comes as a single 4GB ZIP file. It unpacks into four folders which match the four original individual downloads, including the scores, covers and artwork. To this we've added the Krauss Bayreuth Ring Cycle, handled in the same way - though as the original files did not include the scores, these have been added into a fifth folder in the ZIP download of the entire cycle. Again you'll find a 10% discount applies for the full cycle, in 16-bit Ambient Stereo FLAC. A third set brings together the four American Orchestra recording volumes of Herbert von Karajan from 1958 - three with the New York Philharmonic, one with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. Here I was able to add in artwork inexplicably absent from the second New York volume in its original version. Once again, it's 16-bit Ambient Stereo FLACs, in four folders, with a 10% discount. I'll be looking to add further suitable collections to the site in due course, offered in a similar fashion. Andrew Rose, August 5, 2011
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More rare recordings of America's finest composers
Carter, Riegger and MacDowell in superb XR-remastered Mercury Living Presence
 HANSON
American Music 3
Recorded 1953/55
Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer: Andrew Rose
EDWARD MACDOWELL Suite No. 2, Op. 48 "Indian" (1892)
ELLIOTT CARTER The Minotaur, Ballet Suite (1947)
WALLINGFORD RIEGGER New Dance (1935)
Eastman-Rochester Orchestra
Hhoward Hanson conductor
Web page: PASC 302 Short Notes Here is a third volume of superb American music, recorded in the 1950s by Howard Hanson and his Eastman-Rochester Orchestra for Mercury Living Presence, yet never reissued digitally until now. Elliott Carter continues to compose today, three years after reaching his 100th birthday, so his 1947 ballet The Minotaur might be considered a youthful work. The suite from that work, which contains a high proportion of the original material, was first recorded by Hanson and very well reviewed in The Gramophone upon its UK release. The Riegger is a short, vivid work, whilst MacDowell's second suite, "Indian" is a marvellous late-romantic piece from 1892. All in all, another feast of excellent music to explore, in fine sound throughout. Notes on the transfers Both the Carter and the Riegger were transferred from mint 1970s reissues pressed in Holland by Philips for Mercury's "Golden Imports" imprint. I've successfully removed all trace of their ghastly electronic stereo, which not only made them almost unlistenable but also screwed badly with the phase relationship between the two channels. The MacDowell comes from a mid-sixties mono reissue in an American Mercury pressing where none of these problems was an issue. In all three cases the discs can be described as near-mint condition and offered few other difficulties in transfer. The recordings were typically well-made Mercury 'Living Presence' productions and have responded well to gentle 32-bit XR remastering. Track-splitting and naming for the Carter suite was slightly tricky as the LP was somewhat vague with respect to tracks. I deferred therefore to the complete recording of the Ballet on Nonsuch Records in this respect, which offers 17 tracks in total. The suite includes a short cut in the Entrance of the Bulls, then omits the Interlude and first three numbers of Scene Two and the later item "Ariadne unwinds her thread" but otherwise appears complete. Andrew Rose Review CARTER The Minotaur To judge from other records that have come my way, American composers are not always very impressive in the two kinds of work represented here, ballet scores and music inspired by primitive rhythms. Their ballet music, effective as it may be in the theatre, is often too eclectic to stay the course as a concert suite: and when they get interested in primitive rhythm and sit down to write a symphonic something-or-other based on it, one wonders where the mark has got to. (Let me tactfully repeat that I am thinking only of one or two recent records!) All the more pleasant, therefore, to discover that the music from Elliott Carter's ballet, The Minotaur, is most impressive in its own right. Carter was born in 1908 and includes Walter Piston, Hoist and Nadia Boulanger among his teachers, excellent influences from three different countries. Much of his music has been for various choral combinations (with our choirs, we should know more of it here) and there is a good list of orchestral and chamber music too. I have seen several scores of his and have been consistently impressed by them. The Minotaur adds to that impression. It has originality without being "difficult" its vigour is real musical energy and not just slick note-spinning : and there are movements of great beauty-the pas de deux of Ariadne and Theseus, for instance-which are the more impressive for their apparent simplicity. A rewarding side, this... I was unable to get hold of a score of either of these works, so I cannot say with certainty how exactly the performances carry out the composers' intentions: but the playing is so evidently good and the performances so convincing that I feel sure both must be excellent. And so is the recording. I hope readers will adventure on this disc, for we ought to know more of American music and here is one work that is without doubt worth knowing : and the other is at least something new to try. T.H. The Gramophone, October 1956 MP3 Sample MacDowell First Movement Listen Download purchase links: Ambient Stereo MP3 Mono 16-bit FLAC Ambient Stereo 16-bit FLAC Ambient Stereo 24-bit FLAC CD purchase links and all other information: PASC 302 - webpage at Pristine Classical
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Albert Coates - Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony and more
Rare electric recordings in excellent new transfers by Ward Marston
COATES
Tchaikovsky & Glinka
Recorded 1926-30 Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer: Ward Marston TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 6 "Pathétique" TCHAIKOVSKY March Slave TCHAIKOVSKY Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture GLINKA Ruslan and Lyudmila Overture London Symphony Orchestra
Albert Coates conductor Web page: PASC 301 Short Notes Once again, Anglo-Russian conductor Albert Coates demonstrates his expertise in Russian music with four excellent HMV recordings made in the late 1920s, all in brand new transfers from exceptionally rare discs by Ward Marston for Pristine. The major work here is the 1926 recording of Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony, the 'Pathétique', which Coates delivers with panache and aplomb. Coates was a student of the great Arthur Nikisch, who once commented: "The conducting stick seems insufficient for your feeling, Coates; you'd better take a whip". Get a sense of what he meant in these superb performances!
Producer's Notes
The Pathetique symphony is transferred from quiet Italian pressings, the only set of quiet pressings I have ever seen - late 1930s Italian VDP pressings which yield far quieter surfaces than domestic HMV pressings. This recording has wonderfully ambient sonics but very little low frequency content, The reason being that the performance was transmitted over phone line from Kingsway Hall to Small Queen's hall. I did what I could to boost the lower frequencies. One can hear that sides 2 and 5 were recorded under different conditions than the rest of the recording. One can also hear some low frequency electronic noises during the final side. The Romeo and Juliet, with the Glinka 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. VDP numbers AW46-48 are listed in Alan Kelly's compilation files, but I have not heard of a copy in circulation. The March Slav is also very scarce. Ward Marston Profile of Albert Coates (excerpt) "It seems to me to be opportune to give a few particulars of Mr. Coates' earlier career, and to put these remarks, if possible, somewhere in the body of my article. A little doubt exists in some quarters as to cxactly what is Mr. Coates' nationality rating as a musician. These are the facts. He was born in St. Petersburg (later Petrograd and now Leningrad) in 1882 of English parents, and spent his early childhood in Russia. At the age of 12 he was sent to England, receiving most of his education at the Liverpool Institute. At the age of 18 he returned to his home in Russia, where he was placed in his father's office at the Thornton Woollen Mills. Young Albert spent his time writing music, and his father wondered why the office accounts were so often unfinished and why Albert did so little work. He discovered the lad writing part of a violin sonata in the pages of a ledger, and decided to allow him a musical education. Young Albert went to Leipzig for piano, 'cello, and composition. In 1904 the famous conductor Nikisch opened a class for conducting. Young Coates soon became his favourite pupil. The young man already showed his volcanic style with the baton, for Nikisch said to him, "The conducting stick seems insufficient for your feeling, Coates; you'd better take a whip." This certainly indicates the Coates whom we see in public to-day. Nikisch engaged the young man as his junior conductor at the Leipzig opera. In 1909 the Director of the St. Petersburg Imperial Opera heard Coates conduct Die Walküre, and offered him a senior post in St. Petersburg. Coates accepted, and soon became one of the most popular conductors in Russia. In 1914 he conducted in London at Covent Garden during the Wagner season. In 1917 the Revolution broke out in Russia. The Tsar's operatic director resigned and the artistes of the Theatre formed a non-political committee and unanimously elected Coates as president. The Bolshevik party came into power and confirmed the independence of the opera. The artistic flag was kept flying, but it was beaten by a terrible enemy. One morning Coates asked the orchestra to repeat a passage, but the men answered him, "We cannot. We're too hungry!" One after another the men failed to appear at succeeding rehearsals, and Coates was told that they had died of starvation! The same tragedy was going on among the chorus. Coates was deeply attached to his forces, and their daily sufferings broke his health. Blood poisoning set in, and for two months he lay at death's door. Mrs. Coates managed to persuade the authorities that his life was in danger, and at last she was able to take him out of the country. That is the true story which I am asked to relate." From Gramophone Celebrities XX.- Albert Coates by John F. Porte
The Gramophone, December 1927 MP3 Sample Tchaikovsky Symphony 6, 1st mvt. Listen Download purchase links: Mono MP3 Mono 16-bit FLAC CD purchase links and all other information: PASC 301 - webpage at Pristine Classical
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Mozart
Symphony No. 36 in C, K.425 'Linz'
Vienna Symphony Orchestra
Willem van Otterloo conductor
Recorded April 7, 1955
Issued as Philips LP A 00307 L
This transfer is presented with Ambient Stereo remastering by Dr. John Duffy
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