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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 A Question of Compression
Sets Save 10% - and a free FLAC album download
Appeal help flautist Carla Rees get back on her feet
PADA Krauss conducts Haydn in Vienna, 1929
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August holiday edition No. 1
Special offer for newsletter subscribers
We have no new releases this week, and some of the content in this newsletter is unchanged from the last - I'm currently on holiday, and normal service will resume with our next releases on the first Friday of September. In the meantime our website is open for business, though there will be some small additional delays in processing CD orders, coupled with limited technical support.
Now's a good time to peruse our catalogue and see what you've missed - and below you'll find a completely free download from one of our new virtual box sets - it's a complete Ambient Stereo 16-bit FLAC album, and the link will be available until the end of this month to subscribers only.
There'll be another next week - so don't miss it! If you've never dabbled in FLAC before, now's your chance to begin downloading in full CD-quality sound. There's a whole load of information, links and assistance in our online help section dedicated to getting you up and running, so please take a good look there if you have any problems playing FLACs as I won't be around to answer questions during this time.
I hope you enjoy it and look forward to bringing more new releases in a couple of weeks' time.
Andrew
Editorial - A question of compression
Is it desirable, especially for the hard of hearing? I received an e-mail last week which I thought would be worth responding to more widely than usual. This is the full text of it: Dear Andrew I bought some very early recordings from you and have just re-discovered you. Congratulations on doing so well. A question and request for help. I am going deaf, like many of your customers, and have difficulty with the volume when listening in noisy environments like the car. I am aware that it is possible to compress the dynamic range of recorded music so that the quiet passages are louder and the loud passages quieter so one is not constantly fiddling with the volume control. What I would like to be able to do is make a copy of my iTunes library and process the lot so I have a version that is compressed for transfer to iPods etc. Do you know of any software to do it? (I've been looking for ages and never found a simple solution). Would it be possible to write a program to do it? Could you offer it as a service to your ageing customers? (We send you a hard drive of our iTunes library and you convert it). Looking forward to hearing from you. You would think there's a simple answer to this, but my correspondent is correct in that there doesn't seem to be one on offer to the average netizen. And you'd think that perhaps the designers of car stereos might have considered adding some kind of compression button to their units, but they haven't. The closest I've seen to this is the system we have in my car - when you start to go over a certain speed, the car automatically nudges up the volume control for you, then gradually lowers it as you slow down. Or at least it did until I replaced the unit once it gave up reading or playing any CDs. The problem with that approach is that it can lead to the deafness which my correspondent is trying to combat. Say, for example, you're driving down a country lane towards a main highway at a gentle pace. You put on one of your favourites and crank up the volume a little - perhaps it's something you can sing along to but need a certain volume not to sound foolish to yourself. Then you hit the highway and double your speed. The volume rises, imperceptibly, and you drive for three hours to your destination with the car stereo now blasting out at a level far higher than is good for you. You arrive with your ears ringing and some minor hearing loss. No problem, your ears will recover - but if you do this every day, then you will start to suffer long term consequences. Perhaps this is when you consider suing your car manufacturer? But that's slightly off the original point - this is raising the volume, not compressing it, though the latter can appear to have the same effect. Radio stations spend a lot of money and expertise trying to optimise their signals, usually using a considerable degree of sophisticated volume compression. A typical approach involves what's called multi-band compression. The musical signal will be split into a series of frequency bands, each of which will be subject to some different kind of compression and limiting (the latter being an exceptionally severe type of compression). The problem with this is that it attempts to be a catch-all. A single setting is applied, regardless of its appropriateness. Right now I'm listening to one of Ward Marston's excellent transfers of Albert Coates' acoustic recordings. These have a very narrow frequency range and Ward has spent a lot of time and effort making the most of what little there is. When I feed this through a "one size fits all" multiband compressor - using one of a large number of presets for different styles and types of compression (I'll come back to this in a moment) - the music does get 'louder', but so too does all the rumble and hiss around it, and to a greater extent, it appears. The music starts to drown in its own hiss, and this would be a problem for a lot of historic recordings. But going back to those presets. There are dozens and dozens of them - yet they're designed to make the use of the compressor simpler, they're designed to sound good for specific types of music, and to avoid problems such as volume pumping, distortion overload and the like. There really isn't a one-button solution which is going to satisfy anyone - run your entire iTunes collection through this on the basis of sampling a handful of the recordings and nailing a setting and I can guarantee that you'll wince at a good proportion of what you come out with. The effective control of a bank of compressors (which is what this effectively is) really requires the skill and experience of a top flight mastering engineer to produce consistently worthwhile results. The degree of compression at different frequencies, the speed with which the compression is applied and released, the degree of boosting, the application or otherwise of limiting, the speed with which this kicks in and drops off, how the system deals with clipping, artefacts, gating and more, is a minefield I'm glad my work doesn't normally have to cross. OK, so now I've whetted your appetite(!), here's a tool you can play with at home. I use it not for compression but to cure the phasing problems inherent in some fake "electronic stereo" LPs of the 60s and 70s, but its main purpose in life appears to be to offer a wide range of compression and radio-style processing functions. It works as a plug-in to a wide range of audio applications, but you can also use it in conjunction with the free music player, WinAmp. It's called Stereo Tool and can be found as a free download from http://www.stereotool.com/ - the free version has some limitations but will certainly give you a taste of what's possible. Andrew Rose, August 19, 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
FREE FLAC DOWNLOAD: PASC 221 - BEETHOVEN & BRAHMS 1ST SYMPHONIES
 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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Carla Rees - News Report
from The Guardian, published 14 August 2011
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London Road, Croydon, where flautist Carla Rees's flat was burned to the ground during the riots. Photograph: David Goddard/Getty Images
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An internationally known flautist lost an irreplaceable collection of instruments when rioters burned her Croydon flat to the ground in the weekend disturbances.
Carla Rees, 34, is reeling from the loss of at least 10 flutes, including two Kingma flutes specially made for her in the Netherlands on which she has based her international contemporary music career.
She has also lost her music library, including a unique collection of 600 pieces of unpublished music written for her and her ensemble Rarescale, complete with composers' comments that she says are almost as important as the sheets of music themselves.
Her two cats died in the fire, which gutted the building on London Road where she had her second-floor flat. The whole building will be demolished. "I am lucky to be alive," said Rees, who studied at the Royal College of Music in London.
She and her boyfriend had just come back from a weekend coaching the National Youth Wind Orchestra, when they encountered gangs of youths and smashed cars in the street. Fearful of the atmosphere, they grabbed clean clothes, fed the cats and booked into a hotel. An hour later, her home was in ruins.
Carla does not know what the future holds for her. Most of her work musically has been based around the instruments destroyed in the fire. These have to be made by hand and cannot be quickly replaced. She is thankful she still has photos from the wedding she was hired to shoot last Friday, and most of her PhD work, which she was preparing for submission in January, because she happened to have a hard drive in her bag.
The music world has rallied round to help with money and offers of help. A website has been set up for people wanting to donate.
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
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 | | Clemens Krauss (c.1915) |
PADA Exclusives
Streamed MP3s you can also download
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
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.
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