FREE ALBUM
| 
| |
A FREE 128k MP3
Faur�
Chamber Music
Volume1
Quartet No. 1 for Piano and Strings in C minor, Op. 15 Sonata No. 2 for Cello and Piano in G minor, Op. 117
Gaby Casadesus, piano
Members of the Guilet Quartet:
Daniel Guilet, Violin
William Schoen, Viola
David Soyer, Cello
David Soyer, Cello
Leopold Mittman, Piano
This was one of the first recordings in which Peter Harrison and I worked together to produce an XR-remastered result.
Peter transferred and cleaned up the original recordings then handed them to me for XR processing.
The album was issued in the year 2008 and was the first of four Faur� chamber music albums we worked on together in this way.
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:
PACM 059
|
LATEST REVIEW
| Gramophone
Awards Edition 2012
Paul Paray conducts French Music
by Rob Cowan
"Paray's greatest virtues were his vitality, his impeccable sense of rhythm, his ability to maximise on a composer's tone palette and his overall stylishness"
| |
Every time I think of the conductor Paul Paray I recall a tale told to me by the ex-LPO clarinettist Basil Tchaikov about the Frenchman's London visits in the 1940s, when he refused to mount the rostrum until he was paid in full...and in cash!
The LPO loved him (apparently, had Beecham not returned from America, they may well have offered him the top job) but our loss was Detroit's gain, and we're very fortunate that, thanks to Mercury's enterprise and superb engineering team, we can enjoy the fruits of Paray's considerable labours with the Detroit Symphony.
Paray was very much of the Toscanini school, though in the case of the Franck Symphony, one of their earliest recordings, the difference between the conductors is quite marked, Toscanini giving the darker, more Wagnerian performance (just compare the opening pages under both conductors).
I was interested to read Trevor Harvey's appreciative review as quoted by Pristine (from our June 1957 issue) which could just as well refer to Paray's stereo remake from November 1959, a recording that has since been reissued by Mercury itself (coupled with a fine Rachmaninov Second - nla). There's marginally more breadth in this 1953 version's outer movements and a little more pace in the Allegretto.
The rest of the programme was also remade for stereo (and has been reissued, albeit on different CDs), which especially benefited Ibert's Escales and the quieter moments of the Rapsodie espagnole, where on this recording the 'Feria' flies along at a terrific lick. Paray's greatest virtues were his vitality, his impeccable sense of rhythm, his ability to maximise on a composer's tone palette and his overall stylishness.
This isn't the first Pristine Paray reissue - there's also some superb Wagner and Russian fare - and I sincerely hope it won't be the last.
(PASC 346, 71:07)
|
LATEST REVIEW
| Audiophile Audition
27 September 2012
Leo Blech conducts Overtures and Dances
by Gary Lemco
"The Blech experience with the LSO from HMV in 1931 comes back to us in blazing, seamless sound and nothing less than brilliant execution"
| |
Conductor Leo Blech (1871-1958) has come to be almost entirely associated with the Berlin State Opera Orchestra, so these restored sessions 27-29 October 1931 with the London Symphony Orchestra via HMV bring a host of musical delights. Blech himself led a bizarre life: a Jew, he found favor with Nazi high official Hermann Goering, who had Blech spared in 1941 to find refuge in Sweden. Critic Harold C. Schonberg reports that Blech had a nasty habit of sending opera singers little notes after a performance, indicating their various musical errors. Still, musicians praise Blech's professionalism, his thorough work ethic, and the consistency of his approach in pieces he knew well, particularly operatic repertory by Wagner, Verdi, and Bizet.
We often find ourselves swept by the sheer speed of orchestral execution, as in the often breathless Oberon Overture of Weber, which rivals the deft precision that Albert Coates could elicit from this same ensemble. A touch of portamento colors on an otherwise literalist reading of the Romantic score. The Cherubini Anacreon Overture, finds a sensitive realization under Blech, a reading just as potent as the 1935 inscription by Willem Mengelberg, and perhaps even more lustrous in detail. Again, the rapid passages proceed with a manic fury that bespeak an amazing discipline in the LSO strings, winds, and brass. The melodic contour of the Mozart excerpts, the Weber, and the Cherubini proves immaculate, a model of clarity and rounded phrases, thoughtful periods, a moment of repose in the midst of sheer bravura energy. With a singular slow poise, the charming Minuet from Mozart's D Major Divertimento stands out for its clean, graceful, unhurried lines.
Mendelssohn's passionately meditative response to Goethe, his Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage Overture (1828), enjoys an expansive treatment from Blech, the D Major quite luminous in the upper and low strings, supported by fecund woodwinds. For a performance of equal sonic splendor we must wait for the Carl Schuricht version for Decca some twenty years later. Blech's inscription, made in Queen's Hall, London, basks in the grateful sails that a fair wind brings a becalmed ship. The side joins by Mark Obert-Thorn, master restoration engineer for this sterling disc, remains seamless, ensuring our musical prosperity. The music of Daniel Auber (1782-1871) has captivated many conductors, Blech included, to dedicate their energies to Auber's brilliant orchestral style. Le domino noir (1837) bubbles with fertile and intricate footwork for the strings and winds, a wonderful collage of styles, including Spanish gypsy airs. After my favorite rendition by Jean Fournet, this Blech performance astonishes, its age no barrier to the electrically charged realization of each swirling measure. No surprise, then, that Offenbach's Overture to Orpheus in the Underworld should shimmer with equally dervish acrobatics, culminating in the devilishly scintillating Can-Can.
Blech leaves the Mediterranean, Aegean, and Adriatic climes for more Northern sensibilities in Brahms and Grieg. Gruff humor pervades the Menuetto 1 & 2 from the Brahms D Major Serenade, though the melody in the strings over cantering winds remains elastic and thoroughly persuasive. Nice French horn work in the virile Scherzo: Allegro, which rather chugs along, suffering only a brief second of crackle. The stately music gains girth and volume, a combination of hunt and ceremonial pageant. The Grieg Norwegian Dances derive from a session at Kingsway Hall, London, and No. 1 literally hurls itself forward, resonant and athletically gripping. The most elegantly "ethnic" of the set, the No. 2 Allegretto tranquillo e grazioso, elicits a suave grace that bursts into a jaunty hornpipe, or more likely halling, of pure exuberance. The martial No. 3 exhibits glassy colors in controlled but vehement sensibilities. Its nostalgic middle section casts a dark intimacy through strings and winds. Allegro molto, the fourth dance under Blech, begins like a dark ballade, a promise of heraldry. Instead, a series of five jolly tunes ensues, some of which assume an oriental color. Blech keeps the panoply of colors moving, the woodwinds bright, the brass resonant. It's been an evening of real musical adventure, this disc!
(PASC 346, 77:48)
|
|
|
CONTENTS
| |
Editorial Moiseiwitsch revived; Fanfare's 2012 Want Lists
Moiseiwitsch Orchestral Rachmaninov: Concertos, Rhapsody
PADA Gorodnitzki: Music of the Great Keyboard Masters
|
Moiseiwitsch's orchestral Rachmaninov
Plus the "most wanted" lists of Fanfare critics Every two months sees a new issue of the music review magazine Fanfare, and each time there seem to be too many reviews of Pristine releases to fit into our usual slots here! So I'll pick a selection and quote excerpts from them for you next week, whilst this week we begin with our inclusions in the critics "wants lists" for 2012 - scroll down for the lists and accompanying comments. This week's new release | | Benno Moiseiwitsch |
I can think of very few examples, if any, of relationships between composers and their interpreters which match that of Sergei Rachmaninov and Benno Moiseiwitsch. Both were brilliant pianists. Both were renowned interpreters of the composer's work. Both made brilliant, authoritative recordings of piano music by Rachmaninov. How often can a critic write, as the Gramophone's W.R.A. did, of a new disc thus? "Next to Rachmaninov himself, I suppose few soloists would come before Moiseiwitsch, in the choice of most lovers of the work. He has been playing it to me since 1917- perhaps he began when it came out, in the early years of the century..."
One wonders then why Moiseiwitsch only recorded two of the Rachmaninov concertos? Was it simply that, in an era when far fewer recordings were undertaken, and far more of the repertoire was yet to be recorded at all, companies like HMV felt than a single recording of a work by a contemporary composer was (more than?) enough? Reading through the histories, one does sometimes get the impression that there were music executives terrified of re-recordings of particular works, in case they killed the sales of previous recordings of the same piece. It seems the idea of comparative interpretations of certain works on the same label being a good thing was a minority view in the boardroom at HMV and others. Anyway, what we do have are the three recordings Moiseiwitsch did make of Rachmaninov's music for piano and orchestra (he also recorded a handful of sides of shorter, solo pieces), and happily they all fit onto a single CD. All were recorded for 78rpm release and, despite the late date for the first concerto (December 1948) in the history of recording technology, it would appear that this, as with the others, was cut direct to disc rather than taped. As I've described in previous recent columns, my aim here has been to thoroughly rejuvenate these recordings using all the various technologies I have to hand. I do this with a particularly clear conscience regarding purists in these matters, safe in the knowledge that a more traditional set of transfers of the same material can be found on a Naxos CD - the duplication of which on Pristine would be a rather pointless exercise. I lay out the various steps briefly in my transfer notes. There are a number of issues present in the originals which I've tackled: pitch instability (wow and flutter), inadequate recording equipment (microphones whose frequency responses appear anything but flat), the shortcomings of the medium (clicks, crackles, swish, surface noise) and the lack of any really positive acoustic qualities of the recording venue. This final point, which I addressed a couple of weeks ago in a previous column, is one I'm increasingly convinced of in its importance. As a reader, Victor Treadwell, wrote eloquently in response to that item: "I have been moved to comment on your remarks this week regarding the importance of acoustic space in recordings of the orchestra. This element was something that I very quickly latched onto, when I became a classical fanatic at the age of 14 in 1941 and began buying records made before the war (1939-45!). My first major (78 rpm) purchases were the Toscanini Beethoven 7th and the Moiseiwitsch/Szell Beethoven PC5 - both recorded with spacious concert hall acoustics. Later acquisitions included music recorded in the old Free Trade Hall, Manchester, London's Kingsway Hall and Central Hall, Westminster, and Dudley Town Hall (where George Weldon and my home town Birmingham orchestra usually recorded with great effect). I realised that acoustic space gave these recordings a clarity and vitality that were lacking in most of the 'studio' output of Abbey Rd etc. This distinction, of course, became a major selling point of post-war Decca FFRR marketing, with the extended range of their concert hall locations. I suppose we have never looked back since."
As with many of the other technologies I'm applying in remastering, the ability to accurately replicate a real acoustic space - to have access to the "sound" of a real hall rather than to simply fake a generic "echo" sound - is a relatively recent development. And the more I hear of it, the more I feel it is the final piece (so far?) in the jigsaw puzzle of processes used when remastering recordings such as these. We don't choose to listen to music in "dead" spaces, and we don't particularly like listening to music in spaces with poor acoustics (nor do musicians like playing in them); the sound of a fine concert hall can make a huge difference to the listener's experience and enjoyment, because it plays a crucial part in actively enhancing the musical sounds reaching the ear. So, will the invocation of a great concert hall's unique "sound" come to be seen as a vital component in getting the best out of some of our "drier" historical recordings? It certainly helps a lot here. Take a listen to our lengthy sample below - the final movement of the 1948 1st Concerto and first movement of the 1937 Second Concerto. I think both sound rather wonderful, concert hall acoustic and all!
 | | Fanfare Nov/Dec 2012 |
Fanfare's Want Lists
The Critics' Pristine Choices of 2012
Richard A. Kaplan:SIBELIUS Lemmink�inen Suite. GRIEG Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 * Ormandy / Philadelphia O * PRISTINE PASC 299"On the historical front, Pristine has reissued Eugene Ormandy's first recording of Sibelius's Lemmink�inen Suite just in time for my survey, which concluded that despite the 25 versions that have followed this premiere recording, it remains unmatched for excitement and panache. The 1951 recording sounds better than ever in Mark Obert-Thorn's remastering." Robert MaxhamBEETHOVEN Violin Concerto. BRAHMS Double Concerto * Kulenkampff / Mainardi / various accompaniments * PRISTINE PASC 325 FRANCK Violin Sonata. FAUR� Violin Sonata No. 1. Berceuse. DEBUSSY Violin Sonata. Minstrels * Thibaud / Cortot * PRISTINE PACO 080 MISCHA ELMAN: STUDIO RECORDINGS 1931-1951 * Elman / various accompaniments * PRISTINE PASC 339 "While the Romantic Georg Kulenkampff broke the mold of the German violinist, Jacques Thibaud forged that of the dapper French exponent of the art. Recordings by these two early 20th-century violinists, lovingly restored by Pristine, give a picture-postcard view of another era that runs counter to a number of stereotypical interpretations of the past. Michael Rabin briefly fused Mischa Elman's opulent tone and Jascha Heifetz's riveting intensity. Those who wonder from whence he sprang-and, perhaps more puzzling, whither he might have gone-will find tentative answers in Testament's generous set, which includes a finished program with pianist Brooks Smith that EMI never released-a sumptuous feast for Rabin's admirers. Elman himself has been vilified as a mannered practitioner of a no-longer-fashionable art, but Pristine's program presents him transcending this limited (revisionist?) role." James Miller
GOUNOD Faust * Morel / Bjoerling / Sőderstrőm / Siepi / Merrill / Met Op O & Ch * PRISTINE PACO 064 (2 CDs)
[No article accompanied Mr. Miller's list] Burton RothlederBEETHOVEN Piano Concertos: No. 4; No. 5, "Emperor" * Curzon / Knappertsbusch / Vienna PO * PRISTINE PASC 319"Clifford Curzon's phrase shaping and passagework are noteworthy, and Hans Knappertsbusch's command of the orchestra enabling detail to be heard without overwhelming the piano is welcome in their recording of Beethoven's Fourth and Fifth piano concertos, remastered by Pristine Audio. This classic combination of pianist and conductor, recorded almost 60 years ago, belongs in everyone's collection. " Dave SaemannHARRIS Symphony No. 3. GRIFFES The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan. The White Peacock. Clouds. Bacchanale. BARBER Symphony No. 1 * Hanson / Eastman-Rochester O * PRISTINE PASC 315BRAHMS Symphony No. 2. Double Concerto * Furtw�ngler / Boskovsky / Brabec / Berlin PO / Vienna PO * PRISTINE PASC 341HAMILTON HARTY: * Harty / Hess / Hall� O / London PO * PRISTINE PASC 331 "Pristine Audio's Howard Hanson series reaches a pinnacle with Volume 4, beginning with an absolutely gorgeous take on Roy Harris's Third Symphony. The subsequent works by Charles Tomlinson Griffes and Samuel Barber receive intense and idiomatic renditions. Pristine's Furtw�ngler reissue of Brahms's Second Symphony presents a reading of unarguable strength and knockout playing. Willi Boskovsky and Emanuel Brabec join the maestro for a Double Concerto of warmth and passion. Finally, I could not leave out Pristine's Hamilton Harty CD, representing one of the most neglected of the 20th century's great musicians. Harty's "New World" Symphony is a classic account, while his Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody brings us in contact with a performance tradition that almost has been lost." These listings appear in Issue 36:2 (Nov/Dec 2012) of Fanfare Magazine. Andrew Rose
5 October 2012
|
Moiseiwitsch, Rachmaninov's "spiritual heir" - the orchestral recordings
Dramatic improvements in sound quality from these new 32-bit XR remasters of classic interpretations
 BENNO MOISEIWISTCH
plays Rachmaninov
Recorded 1937-48
Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer: Andrew Rose
RACHMANINOV Piano Concerto No. 1
RACHMANINOV Piano Concerto No. 2 RACHMANINOV Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
Philharmonia Orchestra * London Philharmonic
Sir Malcolm Sargent * Walter Goehr * Basil Cameron
Benno Moiseiwitsch piano
Web page: PASC 358
Short notes
"Next to Rachmaninov himself, I suppose few soloists would come before Moiseiwitsch, in the choice of most lovers of the work. He has been playing it to me since 1917- perhaps he began when it came out, in the early years of the century..."
- W.R.A. The Gramophone, 1938 (review of Concerto No. 2)
Benno Moiseiwitsch was a great friend of the composer-pianist Rachmaninov, so it's a surprise to find so little Rachmaninov in the pianist's discography - perhaps because HMV already had the composer himself on their books.
Here we present the complete piano-orchestral recordings - the first two concertos and the Paganini Rhapsody - in truly astonishing 32-bit XR remasters that bring out the full power and majesty of both the piano and orchestra throughout. With a full arsenal of the latest remastering techniques applied to these recordings, the sonic results are truly as spectacular as the playing!
Notes on this recording
These new transfers bring demonstrate brilliantly the way that the latest technologies can really bring recordings like these back to life. Pitch stabilisation software, available now for a little over a year, is key to firming up the sound of older piano recordings, reducing or eliminating the wow and flutter that characterises just about all of them.
XR remastering, with its carefully tailored re-equalisation, noise reduction and click and crackle elimination sheds years from the sound of both soloist and orchestra as the inadequacies of early recording equipment are ameliorated. Finally, the subtle use of convolution reverberation replaces the typically dead studio acoustics of the era - all of these recordings were made in Abbey Road's Studio 1 - with the genuine and musically-sympathetic acoustic of one of the world's finest concert halls, greatly enhancing the sound both of the piano and the orchestra. In each case accurate measurements of residual electrical signals present in the recordings have allowed precise pitching to match that of the original performances.
The results, I trust, speak elequently for themselves.
Andrew Rose
Review Piano Concerto No. 1
Do not let that awe-inspiring label "Op. 1" mislead you into any false ideas: for though this concerto was written in 1892, just before the student Rachmaninov left Moscow Conservatoire, he later considered it too jejune for performance, and in 1917 completely revised it -so that in its present form it dates from after the Third Concerto! It is dedicated to his cousin Siloti, as a result of whose efforts it was that he was cured of a dangerous fever which he had contracted. This First Concerto has never reached, and probably never will reach, the popularity of its successors-even in its revised form it retains its air of immaturity-but it nevertheless contains many characteristic passages which are of great interest to the student of Rachnaaninov's style.
The first movement is rhapsodic in character. After a challenging fanfare and an impetuous cadenza from the piano, it opens with a broad and elegiac string melody which, however, very shortly gives way to a scherzando section, which itself lasts next to no time before changing mood again. There is a youthful prodigality of melodic invention throughout the movement, but the general effect is of a series of loosely constructed ideas, constantly stopping and restarting. It is much to the credit of this present performance that this episodic character is, so far as possible, skilfully avoided.
The Andante, a romantic movement of "nocturne" type, is by far the most successful of the three. It opens with a modulatory sequential passage (of which throughout the concerto Rachmaninov shows himself overfond), slowly veering round to the key of D major, in which the main subject appears- the true ancestor in style of all the film rhapsodies of to-day. It is completely characteristic of the composer, and I should like to draw attention to an enchanting passage in which the piano weaves colourful chromatic decorations round the theme on the strings (the last third of side 4).
The Finale is less satisfactory: it is a brilliant, capricious movement, based on rather thin material, into which is pitchforked, without much connection, a rather sickly sentimental middle section. However, the piano writing throughout, as might be expected, is vigorous and ingenious.
No more sympathetic interpreters could have been found than Moiseiwitsch and Sargent, who give a most fluent reading of the work-actually preferable in interpretation, to my mind, to the Rachmaninov-Ormandy version of 1940, which seemed altogether too "bitty" for comfort; and this is no whit less efficient. Sargent's accompaniment in the finale is a model of its kind while an occasional faint sprinkling of wrong notes in the solo part serves as a reminder that even the best pianists are human. The piano is perhaps a shade distant-in the last movement I would have welcomed a more forward, glittering tone-but in general the recording is good, and unlike the earlier version mentioned, the fortissimos do not feel as if someone had hit one round the face with a wet sock.
L.S. The Gramophone, December 1948
MP3 Sample Concerto 1: 3rd mvt; Concerto 2: 1st mvt. Listen
Download purchase links:
Ambient Stereo MP3
Mono 16-bit FLAC
Ambient Stereo 16-bit FLACAmbient Stereo 24-bit FLAC CD purchase links and all other information: PASC 358 - webpage at Pristine Classical
|
Sascha Gorodnitzki's album "Music of the Great Keyboard Masters"
 | | Sascha Gorodnitzki |
PADA Exclusives
Streamed MP3s you can also download
La campanella - Paganini/Liszt; arr. Busoni
Consolation no. 3 - Liszt
Polonaise: Military - Chopin
La fille aux cheveux de lin; Prelude no. 12: Feux d'artifice - Debussy
Etude in G flat: Butterfly - Chopin
Alt Wien - Godowsky
The contrabandist - Schumann; arr. Tausig
Barcarolle; Prelude in E flat minor - Rachmaninoff
Gavotte; Suggestion diabolique - Prokofiev
Minuet in G minor - Paderewski
Recorded c.1956
Transfer from
Capitol P8374, issued 1957
This transfer by Dr. John Duffy
Additional pitch stabilisation and remastering by Andrew Rose
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.
|
|
