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Bloch
Israel Symphony
Vienna State Opera Orchestra,
cond. Litschauer
Schelomo Residency Orchestra
cond. van Otterloo
"their fire and passion... are among the peaks of twentieth-century music" Gramophone, 1952 Recorded in 1951/52 Download it now - for one week only - it's only free from our Cover Page! "UPGRADE" to full quality lossless 16-bit or 24-bit FLAC downloads with notes here: PASC 199 |
LATEST REVIEW
| Musica Magazine (Italy)
April 2012
STOKOWSKI'S TURANDOT
By Michael Aspinall
(review excerpts translated from the Italian by Victoria Dyboski for Pristine Audio)
"I don't think I have ever heard a conductor excel to the perfection of this particular interpretation" 
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This particular version of Turandot, its second performance by the Metropolitan on the fourth of May 1961, marked not only the début of Leopold Stokowski in this renowned theatre but also that of Franco Corelli. A few weeks before this date Stokowski had broken his hip during a game of football with his children when at home and the applause which is heard at the beginning of the recording is for the seventy-eight year old director who slowly makes his way on to the stage with his crutches. In spite of his relatively limited experience of opera - experience which had nonetheless begun with a concert in London with the soprano Lillian Nordica as early as 1911 - Stokowski had always been one of the most theatrical symphonic directors, his vivid personality standing out in cinema as on the radio. This was made even more intriguing by his fake Russian accent which, when amongst family and friends, mysteriously disappeared. Stokowski willingly accepted the proposal to direct Turandot with the Met, thereby substituting Mittropoulos who had unfortunately died before being able to devote himself to this revival of an opera which, for thirty-one years, had never been performed in New York. These are historic performances, not only because of their wondrous, unequalled conductor but also thanks to the Nilsson - Corelli collaboration. Nilsson is in dazzling form, even though she was to sing better in her later numerous interpretations of the impervious princess, especially when in competition with Caballé's Liů with whom she learnt to exaggerate the pianissimi 'alla Caballé' with extraordinary lustre.
Even Corelli, who, when he made his appearance at the Met, was a revelation of vocal splendour, was later to record even better versions of Calaf. However this particular performance remains extraordinary from a vocal and a dramatic point of view. His bronzy voice is aflame with vivid colours, and even if his phrasing seems sometimes a little affected and what we hear on the recording may sound a little overdone, yet when heard live in the theatre it would have been electrifying. His is not a voice which simply 'floats on air'; his is an instrument which was forged in Vulcan's furnace. His high C when he sings " Ti voglio tutta ardente d'amor", which has the power, the flourish and the beauty of Tamagno, can surely never be forgotten by any of those who saw this performance live.
Birgit Nilsson sings "In questa reggia" with uninhibited boldness and on this fourth of May 1961 she is at the height of her fame. She dominates the orchestra and the choir during the fortissimi, the piani are performed with consummate skill and when she sings "dove si spense la sua fresca voce" her voice chills one's blood. In the terrifyingly high-pitched sostenuto phrases she manages to maintain a beauty in the flourish whilst at the same time clearly articulating the words (which she nonetheless every now and then gets wrong). During their duets, Nilsson and Corelli interact with impetus and with growing passion without ever exaggerating.
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It is Stokowski's direction which makes this recording indispensable. I don't think I have ever heard a conductor excel to the perfection of this particular interpretation. It would seem that in the theatre he took care never to cover the voices (except during some of the more rowdy moments of this spectacular score) and one can feel that he loves the singing and that he knows how to accompany the voices. My reaction after having listened to this was: "I can't wait to listen to this again!". The tempo is always perfect: never too hurried, never too slow. Stokowski, like Richard Strauss, Elgar, Sir Henry Wood and other great conductors of the period, prendeva fiato1 as opera singers do between one phrase and the next. Of course it is widely known that he had a tendency to "correct" scores, sensitive as he was to the smallest musical sonority and wanting to obtain the maximum effect in every musical passage. His interventions in Turandot seem to be limited to some additions, some fortissimi and to the gong. The rare more tender moments of this score are rendered with ineffable sweetness when, at the end of the second act, the Principe Ignoto declares "Il mio nome non sai" whilst the orchestra first hints at the melody of "Nessun dorma". At the same time the more monumental strides, like the finales, gain enormously in musical and dramatic effect due to the large and magisterial creativity that Stokowski had gained from his rich past experience and his profound love for this opera and which he lavished on his orchestration.
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LATEST REVIEW
| Audiophile Audition
May 7, 2012
BEECHAM'S MOZART AND SCHUBERT
By Gary Lemco.
"Irresistible!"
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It was in 1962 or thereabouts that I purchased Columbia LP ML 5160, the Beecham Mozart Requiem (rec. 13-14 December 1954 and 29 May 1956), a choice some of my "knowledgeable" cronies found in dubious taste, given Beecham's often irreverent approach to the "sacred" classics. In this reading, for instance, Beecham adds an organ for bass and chordal support in the Rex tremendae magistratis, which engineer and producer Andrew Rose ascribes to the later session in 1956. Sonically, the clarity of the restoration strikes us immediately, the tonal layering of the opening Introit having had a veil lifted from its surface and the Latin words emergent in well articulated diction. Elsie Morison (b. 1924) shines in her soprano part throughout, and we must lament her early retirement after 1963.
The two adjacent "dark" moments, the Kyrie eleison and Dies Irae, respectively, contribute polyphonic girth and compressed dramatic terror at the Last Judgment. The Sequence No. 2, Tuba mirum, resonates with heartfelt regret as Nowakowski's deep bass plays against the low RPO strings, and Alexander Young sings of possible redemption. The ascent continues up the vocal ladder, to contralto and soprano and upper strings, then intimately embraces the vocal quartet, a decidedly operatic moment. The new spaciousness of the Rex tremendae proves admirable in its varied textures. The longest Sequence, Recordare, Jesu pie looks most forward harmonically, the use of passing dissonance and part-writing invoking the antiquated motet style of the Renaissance. The fierce agogics of the Confutatis maledictus offer a poignant moment of ensemble, both intimate and disturbing. For most us, the Lacrimosa dies illa can never go on long enough: haunted, delicately light, the Beecham rendition proves as elusive as it is lovely.
The remaining six sections of the Requiem generally fall under the aegis of Franz Suessmayr, though the plastic movement of the Offertory No. 1 conveys Mozart's original power and brilliant tenor-bass part writing. The same holds true for the Hostias, which may well be indebted to Suessmayr's innate gifts. The polyphonic Sanctus in Rose's incarnation glows with heraldry and ecstatic communion, which I cannot claim for the 1957 Columbia LP. As operatic as it lovely, the Benedictus brings us spiritual relief at every turn, the writing having the benefit of the composer's Cosi fan tutte as a model of such astonishing technique. The Agnus Dei and Communion bring us that emotional closure and consolation we seek, with Beecham's finely paced realizations delicate but mighty in their respective impact. This rendition may not be Bruno Walter's, but it conveys a distinctly dignified faith not beholden to formulaic values.
The Schubert Fifth ((18 December 1958 and 7 May 1959) repeats the EMI issue on "Great Recordings of the Century" (7243 5 66999). This charming work always held a great attraction for Beecham, whose earlier inscription with the London Philharmonic remains a classic of its kind. Genial, warm, the entire RPO performance exudes a brisk delight in Schubert's idiosyncratic melos, here without the sonority of trumpets and drums. Every detail sparkles under Beecham's canny direction; and given the marvelous level of execution from his players, the transparency and brio of the experience has only been enhanced by Rose's XR process. Irresistible!
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CONTENTS
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Editorial Squeezing a dynamic Boléro onto LP
Beethoven the late quartets - Hollywood String Quartet
Paray his first Mercury recordings in Detroit
PADA Weldon conducts music from Gounod's Faust
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Too loud to record properly?
Ravel's Boléro is only one When Maurice Ravel wrote his Boléro in the late 1920s he had no idea it would go on not only to become his most well-known work, but also one of the best-loved piece of classical music produced in the 20th century. Indeed, the composer actually predicted that most orchestras would refuse to play it! Boléro was helped greatly in its rise to fame by its US premičre and adoption thereafter by Toscanini - as well as word of a famous falling out between Toscanini and the great composer over the tempo at which it should be played, with the maestro bluntly telling the composer "When I play it at your tempo it is not effective", to which Ravel responded that he should therefore not play it at all. Regardless of this, it went on to be played many times thereafter and to become a firm concert hall favourite. I recall as a child going to the Town Hall in Birmingham to a musical workshop with the CBSO where the work was discussed and then played. It is indeed childishly simple to explain the premise, and as a result it's rather unique. See if you can spot it in this waveform representation of the complete Paul Paray album we've issued today:  | | Paul Paray album |
Not too difficult, is it! Here it is again, in close up:  | | Boléro |
Musically, the fundamental essence of Boléro is one very long crescendo. The same basic idea is repeated over and over again as the intensity builds up and the melody moves around different sections of the orchestra. There's no musical "development" in the traditional sense, and as a musical experiment it leads almost nowhere, at least in the view of its composer - though further developments later on in twentieth century music in the field of endless repetition of simple figures might have come as a surprise to Ravel had he lived to hear them. Recording a work such as this, especially in the pre-digital days of tape and disc technology, was always going to present a major problem. In fact, even with digital technology it's not necessarily straightforward. This is the direct result of the huge dynamic range of the piece. I was reminded when listening to it this week of my first visit as a young trainee BBC sound engineer to the corporation's Big Band studio at the Hippodrome in Golders Green, in north London. It was the first time I'd encountered the specially designed and built large loudspeakers that were installed in but a handful of the BBC's major recording venues back then (I've no idea if they're still in use). As far as I recall, each loudspeaker was approximately the size of a stacked pair of domestic washing machines, with four large woofers surrounding a central tweeter. The speakers were mounted into the walls with a spring system allowing the entire enclosure a degree of movement forward and backward - if you pushed at them they'd "bounce" back and forth into the wall and then back towards you for a few moments. The reason for these custom-built monsters was soon explained to me. The Big Band was individually mic'd up, the feed of these microphones going through a mammoth mixing desk with some 96 channels or so. That must have been a nightmare to get right first time! But the biggest problem they had was that of dynamic range, and above all that of the big bass drum. The drum, when whacked appropriately hard, had a dynamic range of a huge 120dB. Even the very best digital recording systems we had at the time, which were all 16-bit back then, could only cope with a theoretical maximum dynamic range of 96dB. In order to cope with this discrepancy the BBC's engineers decided that they needed to be able to hear the drum properly on their monitors, even if they couldn't actually record its full range - hence the design and building of these monster speakers. (To me that sounds like a great ruse for getting hold of a pair of the most humongous loudspeakers imaginable from the BBC's notoriously tight-fisted radio management - but it obviously worked.) Come back to Ravel's Boléro and we have perhaps a similar problem - it starts very, very quietly indeed, and finishes just about as loud as an orchestra can possibly play. Go back to 1953 and we have a much bigger problem that we did in 1990 - the dynamic range of a standard non-Dolby tape machine back then (and Dolby was a good decade and a half away from inventing his first noise reduction system - or as it was originally billed, his "signal-to-noise stretcher") was perhaps somewhere in the 45-60dB range. Likewise the LP. Back in 1930, when Ravel conducted a recording with the Lamoureux Orchestra for 78rpm discs it would have been considerably less again. So we come to a thorny compromise which was immediately audible in the original LP transfer of Paul Paray's 1953 Detroit Symphony Orchestra Boléro, known as "gain riding". Quite simply, as Paray slowly increased the volume of his orchestra, Mercury's sound engineer was slowly decreasing the volume of the microphone to try and make sure that both the quiet opening and the loud ending fitted within the range and abilities of the recording equipment and media. To the careful listener this manifests itself as a rather hissy opening to the piece. But it's a curious kind of hiss, which gradually diminishes across the course of the work, until by the end it's entirely inaudible. It's been my assumption that the hiss heard at the start of the piece comes not from the tape or disc surface but from the microphone and its amplifier. Pushed to their upper limits this is what comes out of the electronics - but start to pull the faders back a little and that hiss disappears into the background noise of any analogue recording - tape hiss being the major culprit by the early 1950s. I tried, in my remastering of Paray's Boléro, to undo this gain-riding compensation, at least to a degree. The problem is that it's very difficult to gauge how much of this actually took place. I began by measuring the background hiss at the start of the recording and comparing this to later in the piece. This at least gave me a starting point to work from. The problem with this approach is that I'm actually measuring two different things - the microphone hiss to start with and the residual tape hiss later on. And at the same time there's an orchestra playing, making it difficult to take any noise measurements at all! Anyway, I worked on this principle to begin with, and starting making my own adjustments, which first involved dropping the volume at the start by about 40% and then gradually increasing it across the entirety of the performance. But this still didn't sound convincing. A further 30% drop at the beginning, again with an increase spread across the duration of piece back up to 100% sounded better - we were getting closer. Then I spotted that the music at the end wasn't hitting the "end stops", and I was able to add a further 20% to the final climax, which goes audibly into peak-overload distortion anyway on the original, suggesting even higher original levels were played than can be heard here. The end result is something which comes, I hope, a little closer to what Paul Paray had in mind - though I retain a sneaking suspicion that there was probably an even greater contrast between the start and the finish than I've dared represent here. The effect technically is to bring that opening hiss level right back down. You'll still hear it at the beginning because we have the technology today to handle a much wider dynamic range and leaves it quietly audible when you turn the volume up on replay, but it's much quieter than it was on the LP, as is the orchestra too at this point. The effect musically is to make the entire performance even more startling and effective, the relentless drive of the orchestral crescendo in its slow build up is rendered more powerfully than a 1953 LP could ever hope to replicate. I do wish there was some I could do for the slight distortion at the end, but to a certain extent, just as it can in some rock music, this serves only to accentuate to the listener the intensity of the music's conclusion. It's an incredible piece, and Paray's is a truly magnificent performance of it. Scroll down the page and click on the Paray sample link and you can hear the entire performance in full. Andrew Rose
11 May 2012
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Legendary recordings of Beethoven's Late Quartets by the Hollywood Quartet
With major improvements in sound quality from Pristine's new XR remasters
 BEETHOVEN
The Late Quartets
Recorded 1957
Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer: Andrew Rose
BEETHOVEN String Quartets 12-16, Grosse Fuge
Hollywood String Quartet:
Felix Slatkin violin Paul Shure violin Alvin Dinkin viola Eleanor Aller cello
Web page: PACM 082 Short notes "This set became something of a legend in its day and had it not been for the fact that it was made in the last days of mono LP, it would have remained longer in circulation... admiration is unqualified and one simply relishes the splendour and purity of this quartet's playing"
- Gramophone, 1982 Beethoven's late Quartets, Nos. 12-16 and the Grosse Fuge which originally completed No. 13, are among the high peaks of human artistic endeavour and achievement. Many string quartets have risen to the musical and technical challenge, few have succeeded as well as the Hollywood Quartet did in the spring and early summer of 1957. The recordings quality was perhaps the only shortcoming of this set, something this Pristine 32-bit XR remaster aims to redress. Bringing out the full rich tone of the quartets instruments and lifting a veil from the 55 year old sound, these recordings are indeed a revelation. Notes On this recording One can only express regret at the belief of the Capitol executives in 1957 that stereo would never take off, and therefore it was not worth recording on two channels - it can only be assumed that they rarely if ever ventured into their own studios to listen to the difference. Thus this legendary set remains firmly a mono issue - though in this Pristine remastering our optional Ambient Stereo processing does as least create a sense of air and space around the players.
Of greater influence on the sound quality is the re-equalisation of XR remastering which has made huge improvements to the tone of the entire set - no longer does this need to be listened to quietly! Andrew Rose Review EMI's 1982 reissue This set became something of a legend in its day and had it not been for the fact that it was made in the last days of mono LP, it would have remained longer in circulation. Of course, many other fine Sets have since appeared, principally those by the Végh and Talich Quartets, as well as the Quartetto Italiano. The present set, like the Busch, must be regarded as a complement to them rather than a substitute. It is hardly necessary to remind readers that the Hollywood Quartet flourished briefly during the early years of the mono LP but I do so in case the reissue of the Schubert C major Quintet, the Brahms F minor Quintet along with the Dvofák Op. 96 and Smetana E minor Quartets escaped your attention. The members of the quartet all belonged to various Hollywood film studio ensembles and they possessed superb attack, generally flawless intonation and beautifully blended tone; the enormous reputation they rapidly acquired once their records began circulating beyond the West Coast of America is thoroughly vindicated by these reissues. I have found it advisable not to play these discs at too high a level: the opening of Op. 127 sounded far too 'symphonic' and almost overblown, for these recordings were not made in a large studio and though the sound is good, a slightly lower level setting removes some of the glare from Felix Slatkin's tone above the stave.
On the third disc, the first five movements of Op. 130 are accommodated on the first side and the Grosse Fuge is placed before the final Allegro, so that one can complete the quartet as one wishes. The first movement is superbly played without any attempt to overstate feeling (the exposition repeat is not given). IJ found the Cavatina "rather too quick" and I am inclined to agree with him. The Grosse Fuge is stunning, The last record gives us Op. 131 and the opening fugue could perhaps have had more Innigkeit though it has marvellous tone and feeling.. Even if there are times when one feels certain passages are overdriven or larger than life, there are so many more where admiration is unqualified and one simply relishes the splendour and purity of this quartet's playing. They are human too: there is actually some less-than-perfect inton atton after the second statement of the theme in the finale of the A minor, Op. 132. These are performances of stature and deserve a warm welcome back to the catalogue. They come with fine notes from Desmond Shawe-Taylor and the surfaces are admirably smooth. R.L., Gramophone, December 1982 Review original issue, 1958, excerpts A unique opportunity of hearing the late Beethoven string quartets is afforded by the issue of three complete recordings, by the Hungarian, the Budapest and the Hollywood string quartets. It is most interesting to hear the different points of view and to try and decide which interpretation gives the greatest satisfaction. In these works lies almost every mood that music can depict. One of the problems of recording, as of broadcasting, is how to deal justly with the rugged or even rough moments that occur in much of Beethoven's music. Players and recording engineers have to decide how much the microphone will take; it is no use playing such moods as exist in the Grosse Fuge and in the last movements of the C sharp minor and A minor in a polished manner-they are full of passion and are, in places, almost wild. A "pretty" performance of Beethoven is unthinkable; neither he nor his music was ever pretty!
Grosse Fuge. Opus 133, Hollywood String Quartet
This opens with terrific energy and finely contrasted tonal strengths and the part-playing is clear and well phrased. When the turmoil subsides the meno mosso comes as a great contrasting relief, with wonderful calm. They make much of it until the Allegro 6/8 which fins off with capital rhythmic grip. They then maintain a strong feeling of tension throughout all this turbulent section and a huge climax is achieved, not only in the music, but also by the players. The following quiet section has glow and intensity-they seize the differing moods wonderfully and altogether it is a marvellous performance.
To me it has been most interesting to hear and compare these performances of the late Beethoven string quartets-having played them, listened to them and even coached them for very nearly sixty years-with enthusiasm and gratitude keener than ever. Actually to interpret them is the problem which demands a far greater penetration and understanding than is needed to surmount the technical difficulties, great as these are. But if one makes friends with these works, they never cease to reveal fresh marvels, unsuspected humour, even " leg-pulls " (the last movement of the Opus 135 for example), the shocks and surprises of the first movement of the same work.
From the untold marvels and depth of eloquence of the variations of the C sharp minor abruptly into the simple fun of the Scherzo, with its four undeveloped themes in the Trio of that scherzo, and so on ; every work has its treasures that will last longer than any human lifetime and will continue gradually to reveal themselves. And so one could continue pointing out the many rare treasures that are enshrined in the whole series of the string quartets. Beethoven was always the master, the prophet, the seer-the bringer of visions of beauty that are at least as great as those existing in any other art, and allow us to "look beyond ". I.J., The Gramophone, May 1958, MP3 Sample Grosse Fuge 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: PACM 082 - webpage at Pristine Classical
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Paray's first Mercury recordings with the Detroit Symphony
The start of a beautiful friendship...
 PARAY
Rimsky-Korsakov & Ravel
Recorded 1953
Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer: Andrew Rose
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Russian Easter Festival Overture RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Symphony No. 2 "Antar", Op. 9
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Capriccio Espagnol RAVEL Boléro
Detroit Symphony Orchestra
Paul Paray conductor
Web page: PASC 338 Short notes "Because of Paul Paray's tremendous vitality and kinetic energy, his very presence at an ordinary social gathering seems to electrify the atmosphere. Such is the sheer personal impact of this remarkable artist who in the fall of 1952 took over the musical destinies of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra which Mercury is so proud to present on its Olympian Series recordings..."
- Mercury Sleevenotes, 1953
Paul Paray's tenure at the Detroit Symphony coincided most happily with a Mercury Records which was just about to become one of the most highly rated classical labels in the US.
This release goes back to day one and the orchestra's first recordings with its new conductor in a superb selection of music from Rimsky-Korsakov, coupled with a fabulously dynamic and thrilling Boléro! Notes on this recording Mercury was quick to sign up Paul Paray and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and the earlier of the two LPs represented here, their recordings of February 1953 of Rimsky-Korsakov's Capricicio Espagnol and Ravel's Boléro were the first recordings of a lengthy collaboration between the musicians and the record company. Despite there being only 10 months between them, these recordings do seem slightly less polished technically than the later work on this release.
Boléro was a clear case of "fader riding" - the microphone had been turned up to full gain to capture the quiet beginning and then gradually reduced in level to compensate for the huge rise in orchestral volume throughout Ravel's lengthy crescendo. I've tried to compensate for this and return some of the orchestra's full dynamic range in this restoration, as well as considerably improving the orchestral tone throughout. Andrew Rose
MP3 Sample Boléro 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 338 - webpage at Pristine Classical
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Weldon conducts ballet music from Gounod's Faust
 | | George Weldon |
PADA Exclusives
Streamed MP3s you can also download
Gounod
Faust - Ballet Music
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
George Weldon conductor
Recorded at Dudley Town Hall on March 19, 1946
Issued as Columbia DX1247
Matrix Nos. CAX 9481-4
Transfer from Columbia LP ML-4136
This transfer is remastered by Dr. John Duffy. Over 500 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.
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