Capitol, mono, stereo & The Hollywood String Quartet

Hi,

First of all, apologies for the mouthful of a title.
There have been many posts on Capitol, Sinatra, Nat King Cole and the transition from mono to stereo recordings.
Now, one of my favourites is the 3CD reissue on Testament of Beethoven's Late Quartets by the wonderful Hollywood String Quartet. It's a great full-blooded mono recording made at various times during 1957.
However, I've often wondered why it wasn't recorded in stereo -- or if there was a stereo recording made in tandem with the mono. I ask because (I think I'm right on this) Sinatra's Where Are You was recorded in stereo in April-May 1957.
Can anyone help?

 

misch, I would bet that a stereo safety, or safetys, was made along with the mono, that is how they did it then. But did those tapes survive or were they wiped later.

I think I read somewhere that there was a Capitol Vault 'Clean Up" around '59, where a bunch of stuff was tossed.

 

Hello and welcome to the forums (in the event no one has yet done so).

Would you know perchance where the recordings were made and were they made firstly for EMI or Capitol? I do seem to recall a Mozart work of theirs being recorded in 1957 at Royal Festival Hall, London and yet another set at an Edinburgh festival. These were almost certainly mono but here and there surprises exist. The situation at the Capitol Tower wouldn't be relevant in such cases.

 

Hi

thank you!
They were recorded at Studio "A" Capitol Tower, Hollywood/Radio Recorders and Studio B Hollywood.
The producers were Richard C. Jones and Robert E. Myers and the engineers Hugh B. Davies and Sherwood Hall.
The notes quote Eleanor Aller as saying her husband Felix Slatkin knew all about recording, liked to use one mic and basically the engineers merely started and stopped the tape!

 

Many thanks for all your help. That's one idle daydream I can put an end to!

 

Also, these recordings were originally done by Capitol in the USA. Mostly mono. I wish I could find some clean originals since I love their work. Not many copies around where I live.

 

Even then, it began sometime during the year. On Sinatra, there's the March session from that year that is mono only - probably (I'd guess) because the songs being recorded were not for an album.

 

Perhaps of general interest, one of the early recordings I have of the Hollywood String Quartet was recorded by John Palladino.

It is the Schubert String Quintet in C with Kurt Reher. Recorded in 1950 I believe.

 

I'm not an expert, but does that mean Capitol were way behind competitors like Decca and RCA who'd started recording classical music as far back as 1954? And if so, why were they so slow off the mark?
By the way, many thanks for all your contributions -- it's much appreciated!

 

I see! As you say the labels were choosy and I thought maybe classical was regarded as prestigious and therefore artists like the Hollywood String Quartet would get one of the first bites of the cherry. But from what you've said before, the HSQ was just mono only. And that memo explains why there does exist a couple of HSQ performances from 1958 in stereo.
Many thanks for your patience and help - I'm very grateful.
(Now if only you could get your hands on some late mono/early stereo chamber music ... but that's another thread and another day.)

 

This is a surprise. I don't have the CD and, as apileocole mentioned, I remembered this set to be recorded at an Edinburgh festival. And I thought that was the partial reason that it was recorded only in monaural.
BTW I knew only one stereo recording of the quartet released in their time - Villa Lobos and Kodaly, which was issued in 1959 and presumably their last recording. The original vinyl is not a great stereo record anyway.

And Columbia was behind too. IIRC it's in 1957.

 

This may be what I/we was/were remembering: Beethoven, "As played at the Edinburgh International Festival - 1957"



Nat King Cole nut, er enthusiast as I am, I was delighted to find Felix Slatkin played in the orchestra for many Nat King Cole sessions. Well, I knew he did much session work to pay the bills so to speak, but it was a fun factoid to me none the less.

I'd have to say that late 1956 was not behind times at all. Bear in mind that a) there was no stereo commercial release format until 1958 excepting open-reels which were extremely expensive, a micro-niche market and b) the RCA, Mercury, Decca efforts were pioneering the work starting in '53. To have the stereo tape rolling 2 or 3 years after experiments started elsewhere and without a viable media to sell it on may be a riskier investment than how hindsight might have us inclined to see it. Plenty of other entities in the business wouldn't tackle stereo for some time yet.

 

That's it. I have the box set and it is the best performances of the great works to me.