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BOULT
ENGLISH MUSIC
ARNOLD
Eight English Dances
BAX
Tintagel
ELGAR
Three Bavarian Dances
Chansons de Nuit & Matin
HOLST
The Perfect Fool
BUTTERWORTH
A Shropshire Lad
WALTON
Siesta
London Philharmonic Orchestra
conducted by
Sir Adrian Boult
Recorded in 1954
"Sir Adrian Boult (1889-1983) had a long and productive recording career which included the acoustic and digital eras and a very wide range of repertoire not restricted by any means to the music of Great Britain. However, much of reputation for his interpretations of English music is due in part to these fine Decca recordings from 1954 which have pleased so many music lovers since their first release."
Peter Joelson,
Audiophile Audition,
February 2010
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PASC 193 - Boult
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LATEST REVIEWS
| Classical CD Review
August 2011
ALBERT COATES
By R.E.B.
"Collectors will welcome this opportunity to hear early recordings by this important conductor"
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Russian-born English conductor Albert Coates (1882-1953) was music director of the London Symphony from 1919 to 1922, and famous for his work in opera, particularly Wagner. He had a particular affinity with Russian music (he briefly studied with Rimsky-Korsakov) and his recordings of Russian music are of particular interest. For some years, many recordings by Coates were available on CD but, unfortunately, many are no longer available. Among these are two major issues on Koch International: a 2-disc set featuring two works of Strauss: Don Juan, and Death and Transfiguration, Respighi's Fountains of Rome, Ravel's La valse, excerpts from Holst's The Planets and other works of Liszt, Weber, Bach, and Wagner (Koch 3-7704). The second set consists of Russian music, primarily excerpts from Rimsky-Korsakov operas as well as music of Glinka, Borodin, Liadov, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky and two excerpts from Stravinsky's Firebird (Koch 3-7700). The defunct Claremont label had a CD of shorter Russian works featuring excerpts from Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov sung in English (Claremont GSE 78-50-61). The Beulah label, unfortunately no longer around, had a superb CD ( LPD6) of the conductor's 1945 Decca recordings made in Kingsway Hall of the Pathétique and Romeo and Juliet, two of the best-sounding Coates issues. Fortunately, a Tchaikovsky disk featuring Symphony No. 3, Marche slave, Hamlet Overture, Romeo and Juliet and the Scherzo from Manfred is still available as an import on Biddulph. The best way for today's collectors to become familiar with the work of Albert Coates is EMI's 2-CD set in their Great Conductors of the 20th Century series mentioned on this site (REVIEW). All of these the recordings mentioned above are electric recordings made beginning in 1925.
Pristine Audio gives us the opportunity to hear Coates' earlier recordings, all acoustic. In these there is a constant presence of the conductor's dynamic approach to music, and his highly individual concept of music. The orchestra in all is actually the London Symphony. Ward Marston's transfers do all that can be done with these relic recordings, but in all, as must be the case in acoustic recordings, sound is thin and sometimes not ideally balanced-that's just the way it is. The performances usually are rushed and often not note perfect and haphazard in execution. This Beethoven Ninth is sung in English. And we also have the composer's Gratulations Menuet, which actually is the first of his 12 contradances. Francesca da Rimini is truncated a bit, but presented with appropriate fire. What is identified as "ballet" from Prince Igor is actually the Polovtsian Dances performed with chorus. Collectors will welcome this opportunity to hear early recordings by this important conductor, even though they do not show him at his best. For that, sample his many Wagner recordings. All of these new issues are available from PRISTINE AUDIO.
PASC 296 - Coates 1
PASC 297 - Coates 2
PASC 298 - Coates 3
PASC 301 - Coates 4
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LATEST REVIEWS
| Classical CD Review
August 2011
REINER, HORENSTEIN, HANSON
By R.E.B.
"This remastering by Andrew Rose is a revelation compared with previous releases"
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Admirers of Fritz Reiner welcomed Pristine Audio's recent issue called "Reiner Rarities," reviewed on this site this past October (REVIEW). Now we have the second disk in the welcome series offering performances long out of print on LP and never issued commercially on CD. All except the Liebermann were recorded in New York's Manhattan Center. The earliest is Alto Rhapsody, the third and last of Marian Anderson's three recordings of the work, from sessions in October 1950. The Debussy was recorded in September 1954, the Mozart in January 1952. Doubtless of greatest interest to most collectors will be Rolf Liebermann's exciting Concerto for Jazz Band and Symphony Orchestra which surprisingly never was issued on CD by RCA although it is available in Europe on a Naxos disk. Liebermann (1910-1999) had a keen interest in jazz, vividly displayed in this 17-minute work that was premiered in 1954 in Donaueschingen with Hans Rosbaud on the podium; the same year Reiner gave the American premiere and made this recording in Chicago's Orchestra Hall. I recall at the time a critic said during the concert performances "the joint was jumping" and indeed it was. This is an odd, jazzy piece scored for jazz orchestra (here the outstanding Sauter-Finegan ensemble) and orchestra. This was taken from a brilliant RCA stereo tape, and it sounds spectacular indeed. This is a prime example of the finest RCA sonic achievements during the Reiner reign. Mark Obert-Thorn's transfers, as usual, are perfection.
Jascha Horenstein (1898-1973) was unappreciated by major record companies. We are fortunate that Charles Gerhardt arranged for a number of recordings for the Reader's Digest in the '60's (in particularly the Rachmaninoff set with Earl Wild). It is sad to contemplate that Gerhardt wanted to make many other recordings with Horenstein, including all of the Mahler symphonies, but RCA wasn't interested (!). This performance of Beethoven's Symphony 9 was recorded February 6, 1956 in Vienna with distinguished soloists, and has been reissued several times by other labels that made little effort to improve the sonic problems. This remastering by Andrew Rose is a revelation compared with previous releases.
Pristine Audio now focuses on early mono recordings made for Mercury by Howard Hanson.. These recordings of American music were made pre-stereo, 1952-1954, and all have the dry sound associated with the venue, Eastman Theater. All of these recordings would have benefited from resonance, but the acoustic does provide remarkable clarity although the bright sound does not flatter strings. It is a pleasure to hear the composer conducting his own favorite symphony, subtitled "Requiem" which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1943. The Hanson Drum Taps songs appear to be unrecorded elsewhere. Randall Thompson's Testament of Freedom also is rare on recordings; Serge Koussevitzky made the first recording for RCA in Boston in 1945, briefly available on Biddulph and reviewed on this site by the late Roger Dettmer (REVIEW). Program notes and texts are available on Pristine Audio's SITE. If you wish to obtain any recordings on Pristine Audio, visit their main SITE.
PASC 294 - Reiner
PASC 293 - Horenstein
PASC 292 - Hanson
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CONTENTS
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Editorial No computer system is 100% foolproof
Sets Save 10% with our virtual box set downloads
Coates conducts French and Russian music
PADA Krauss conducts Haydn in Vienna, 1929
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Carla Rees - an appeal
From Len Mullenger, founder of MusicWeb International  | | Carla Rees |
Carla Rees is an alto and bass flautist, a reviewer for MusicWeb International and artistic director of Rarescale. She lived on London Road, Croydon, where there have been recent riots. The building in which she had a flat was gutted by fire and she has lost everything: her flutes, her music even her two cats. She has nothing left and is now having to live in a hotel. It will take about a year before the insurance company will give her any money. Her desperate situation is unimaginable. The company Just Flutes & Jonathan Myall Music have come to her aid and are lending her flutes and music so that she can continue to earn a living. They have also set up an appeal web-page for donations to help her get back on her feet. Please be as generous as you can. Click the link to the Carla Rees Collection Fund http://www.justflutes.com/fund-for-carla-rees-page66.html Thank you Len Editorial - No computer system is 100% foolproof
And a completed Schnabel album disappears forever This week's newsletter is somewhat shorter than usual, and we have but a single release to discuss here. This is not what was planned - right now I should be singing the praises of our 6th Schnabel volume of Beethoven piano sonatas (17-20), work on which was completed earlier this week. But disaster struck as I was compiling the finished product. My master file, which brought together the four sonatas, and from which all of the multitude of audio files which constitute a Pristine Classical release (one can never have too many copies) is no more, and the 12 hours or so of painstaking work which were carried out on that file, between its initial creation and final saving, are forever lost. It was one of those cruel and almost impossibly rare coincidences. I had just finished marking up the track points at the start of each movement, and for the sake of safety, had just clicked on the Save button (something which should take just a few seconds), when one of our UPS devices suddenly malfunctioned. UPS stands for Uninterruptable Power Supply. It's basically a big battery which delivers what looks to a computer like mains power should the real thing fail. This should work to stop any loss of data and keep systems safe and running - or at least allow for an orderly shut down if necessary during a prolonged power cut. In our case one of our UPS supplies decided to do its own thing - despite plentiful electricity from the mains power and French national grid. I'm still not entirely sure what happened, but the interruption in my save routine, and temporary disconnection of my working drive at this point, resulted in the complete corruption of the file which was then being saved - and the only working copy of the new release, just minutes before I would start making the multiple copies which would save me from this position. Alas all of this happened too late for me to start over - I simply cannot carve out an extra day and a half from nowhere and still meet our regular deadlines. And so I'll have to come back to the Schnabel at a later date, unless the software that's currently scanning my hard drive for lost files manages to dig up something unexpected. Ultimately it's only a minor inconvenience - a couple of days' work lost - and a good amount of work had already been carried out on the constituent files which came together to make the full release that has gone. This work has not been lost, and I'll just have to pick up the pieces and start again from the halfway mark. Of course it pays to be cautious - that's why my main audio and video replay drives keep permanent back-up copies of everything that's on them on a second drive - if one drive fails I've not lost my music collection. But occasionally things like this do go wrong, and this has always been the case. We're told that one should no more leave recordable CDs out in direct sunlight any more than one might leave a vinyl LP in that same sunlight. The vinyl will warp in the heat, whilst the sunlight tends to bleach the dyes used on recordable discs until at some point they become unreadable and useless. Some people worry a lot about this, and get upset when they buy what they take to be a regular pressed CD which turns out to be a CD-R. Regardless of the fact that it's likely to have a much lower error rate than a 'normal' CD (though both are easily handled by any CD player to produce identical musical output), there are those who are just a little paranoid about the perceived impermanence of the CD-R. We use Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs for our recordings, which are among a small handful which are "data guaranteed" by the manufacturer for 100 years. Quite how one is supposed to claim back unreadable data from them in 99 years time, should it be necessary, never quite gets explained. But they must be pretty confident in their product - which also exhibits the lowest data error rates (by a huge amount) of any discs I've ever seen. I decided to run an entirely unscientific test on one of these discs a week ago. I placed a spare Pristine CD outside on the window ledge of one of my studio's windows. This is on a south-facing wall and gets the full force of a southern French summer sun. Every day or two I've brought it in, wiped the disc surface, and placed it into a Plextor CD writer for detailed analysis. At the time of writing it exhibits no uncorrectable errors, no major but correctable errors, and an average minor but correctable average error rate of 1.37 per second. For purposes of reference, this figure needs to be under 220 to pass the basic specification for an audio CD, and the disc - after almost a week - is still excellent; the bulk of these errors can almost certainly be attributed to scratches incurred whilst outdoors. I suspect that ultimately this disc is more likely to fail as a result of being landed on by a pair of amorous pigeons, than by prolonged exposure to the sun... Of course there are CD-Rs which fail, and I've seen what direct sunlight can do to cheap, poor-quality discs in a relatively short space of time. But if treated with the same degree of care and attention one would give to any other sound-carrying medium, high quality discs such as ours appear to be just as robust as the best of them. If only I'd backed up my Schnabel onto one of them... Andrew Rose, August 12, 2011
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Five Virtual Box Sets
Save 10% with these CD-quality FLAC download sets
For further details, click on the covers below to visit the appropriate pages on our website.
 MENGELBERG
BEETHOVEN SYMPHONIES, 1940
Mengelberg's eight live Beethoven Symphonies of 1940, plus his Fidelio Overture and his studio recordings of Symphony No. 3 (Eroica), Brahms Symphony No.1 and Strauss' Don Juan
16-bit Ambient Stereo FLACs: 6-CD Virtual Set
"Andrew Rose continues to work his restorative magic on Mengelberg's wartime performances, and the results are again revelatory" - FANFARE, 2011
 FURTWANGLER
RING CYCLE, 1953
Download the complete Ring Cycle and save 10% over individual prices (4GB download, incl. scores)
16-bit Ambient Stereo FLACs: 13-CD Virtual Set
"Serious Wagner collectors will want this set - you cannot do without Pristine's transfer" - FANFARE, 2011
 KARAJAN
CONDUCTS AMERICAN ORCHESTRAS
Live performances with the New York Philharmonic and San Francisco Philharmonic, 1958 and 1959
16-bit Ambient Stereo FLACs: 4-CD Virtual Set
"To hear Karajan working with an American orchestra is a treat, and the New York Phil plays beautifully" - JAMES JOLLY,
GRAMOPHONE, 2010
 KRAUSS
RING CYCLE, 1953
Krauss' classic 1953 Bayreuth Ring cycle - among the finest ever. Order the complete Ring Cycle on CD and save 10% over individual prices
16-bit Ambient Stereo FLACs: 13-CD Virtual Set
"The late golden-age cast sings like, well, gods - vividly lifelike remastering is the first to significantly improve transparency & immediacy" - FANFARE, 2010
 FURTWANGLER
BRUCKNER SYMPHONIES
Furtwängler conducts Bruckner's Symphonies 4-9 in a single download with covers, artwork and scores
16-bit Ambient Stereo FLACs: 6-CD Virtual Set
"The performance is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. This is one of the great Bruckner recordings of all time" - FANFARE, 2011
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Albert Coates - C19 and C20
French & Russian classics
New acoustic transfers demonstrate the conductor's brilliant versatility
COATES
Russian & French Music
Recorded 1921-24 Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer: Ward Marston GLINKA Ruslan and Lyudmila Overture RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Coq d'Or - Suite RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Dance of the Tumblers STRAVINSKY Firebird Suite (1911 version) LIADOV Kikimora DEBUSSY Golliwog's Cakewalk RAVEL Ma Mère l'Oye - Suite Symphony Orchestra
Albert Coates conductor Web page: PASC 303 Short Notes This is a really special collection, brilliantly demonstrating the great ability and versatility of Albert Coates as a conductor. Each recording falls into the tail-end of the pre-microphone 'acoustic' era, but don't let that put you off - there is real magic within, and Ward Marston's new transfers for Pristine are truly superb. Coates not only tackles some older favourites, but is also bang up to date with music that was very contemporary and often controversial - the Ravel recording dates from just a decade after its composition, the Stravinsky barely longer. Both composers were very much alive and working, whilst the Debussy was set down just 2 years after his death. The readings are superb - with spirit where required, but also great tenderness too, and all of this "excellently reproduced", according to a 1925 review in The Gramophone!
Review of The Firebird I can imagine strife in many a peaceful home when Part 4 of this suite is reached.
Father: "I call that a noise."
Son or Daughter, with that desire to irritate so conspicuous in happy families : "Noise? A term used by the Elizabethans to denote a band or company of musicians."
(Confused sounds from father.)
Mother, reading newspaper, quite irrelevantly remarks "How terrible these Bolshevists are."
Son, of course, misunderstands, and replies with withering scorn "Naturally you cannot understand that the juxtaposition of tonal masses, the empirical atonalities, etc., etc." (until the entire family is flattened out!)
The Firebird music suffers more from being detached from its proper setting-the theatre-than did the later work Petrouchka. It will sound extraordinarily scrappy and disjointed to anyone who has not seen the ballet. Moreover, the titles affixed to the records do not correspond very satisfactorily with the plot given in the supplement. Further, Mr. Percy Scholes' excellent analytical notes, done for a B.B.C. concert at Covent Garden, from which I have culled some information, present the music in a different sequence to that given here. Perhaps, therefore, the following analysis, merely a personal interpretation fused with the main outlines of the story, will be helpful.
Part 1.-An enchanted garden with something sinister and evil lurking in the background. A scene bathed in half-light. After many obscure mutterings the air suddenly grows tremulous with sound, a rich glow dispels the shadows. The wonderful exotic fire bird flutters into the garden.
Part 2.-She dances round a silver tree loaded with golden fruit, seeming to the young Prince Ivan (hidden in the bushes) the loveliest thing he has ever seen. Greatly daring he captures her, but she begs to be released, offering him a gift of one of her feathers.
Part 3.-She departs. The garden is now filled with a band of maidens headed by a Princess. They too dance with charming vivacity and have a game with the golden apples. At dawn they disappear.
Part 4.-The Prince is seeking them when suddenly there appears the monstrous retinue of the evil spirit of the place, the demon king Kastchei The magic feather preserves Ivan's life, but the Firebird also comes to his rescue. She makes the bevy of wild Indians, warrior Turks, Chinamen, Clowns, Imps, Hobgoblins, Ogres, and Apes burst into a frenzied dance. While they are thus engaged she directs Ivan to smash a huge egg in a casket in which is hidden the demon's life. This done the monster dies and the loathsome creatures vanish. Ivan marries the princess.
The highly coloured orchestration rather blinds one to the lack of any real "meat" in the music. It is a positive relief on reaching Part 3 to encounter a genuine tune, one which seems better than it actually is by reason of what has gone before. Rhythmically the music is feverishly alive; melodically it has to rely on actual or spurious folk tunes for sustenance. These sound very like concessions. The final section with its blocks of harmonies pushed this way and that makes a terrific din that fits the stage picture, but is meaningless without. As a study for Petrouchka the music has a definite interest and as all of us like a bit of "twopence coloured" at times, these records will find a place in our cabinets.
Whatever criticisms one may make of this Debussy-Scriabin-Stravinsky confection, there are none to be made about the recording. Real oboe tone, that floating incisive quality, is heard at last; the string background, the occasional solo violin relief, the writhings and posturings of the wind and brass are excellently reproduced. Everyone, at least, will be able to take genuine pleasure in the Dance of the Princesses (Part 3). N.P. The Gramophone, April 1925, review of the Albert Coates recording of Stravinsky's The Firebird MP3 Sample Firebird Suite, 5th movement Listen Download purchase links: Mono MP3 Mono 16-bit FLAC CD purchase links and all other information: PASC 303 - webpage at Pristine Classical
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 | | Clemens Krauss (c.1915) |
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Haydn
Symphony No. 88 in G major
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Clemens Krauss conductor
Recorded June 13, 1929
Mittler Konzerthaussaal, Vienna
Issued as HMV 78s E539-541
This transfer is presented with Ambient Stereo remastering by Dr. John Duffy
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