Classical Corner Classical Music Corner (thread #42)

CRAP I never really noticed!
That is kinda odd....well that German Beer........

 

It should probably mean that the original audio files could be 32-bit but later they were down-converted to 16 bits to accommodate the red-book standard. Love all those miss-spelled optimistic blurbs!

BTW, it's a nice recording/performance. Have it on a hybrid SACD.



EDIT: BTW-2, I recently started "zipping" my music collection and got rid of one of my four Fantastiques (a "supermarket edition" on ZYX label, the oldest one in my collection). Now I have the Mackerras, the Inbal (both have that weird repeat in the 4th movement that is considered standard these days) as well as the old-school Bernstein. I think I'm done with this particular piece.

 

Dragging in late in the day, as usual, but for what it's worth my favorite performance of the Symphonie Fantastique is by Oskar Fried with the USSR State S.O. Particularly in the later mvts. I've yet to hear another to touch it; Fried takes everything over the top. As to sound quality it's everything you'd expect from a 1937 Soviet radio broadcast recording.

Among the interesting touches, it's one of the rare performances that double the orchestral chimes with piano in the witches' sabbath mvt. An endearing oddity is that you can hear someone (presumably Fried) shouting at the orchestra a bit later in that same segment.

It was first released on an LP, but I've never seen that issue. I have it in a CD reissue, LYS 280. There's another edition that crops up from time to time on Berkshire; haven't heard that one, so I suppose it could be a better transfer. I don't imagine it could be much worse.

 

I'm sure everyone will be surprised

Thanks to some years of assiduous hunting back in the '80s and '90s, I have the complete cycle on 78s (Disks, Analogue, Non-Compact, Mk. 1 Mod. 0), and you have me curious. If I can get a chance, I'll check out my copies and report back. Incidentally, the originals were so-called "society" issues, made available at first only to subscribers who underwrote the costs of the recordings. In 78 RPM form, two volumes were never released otherwise; the others eventually were released to the general public in England, but Victor chose to release only the Hammerklavier in the United States. Not long after the introduction of the LP, however, Victor released the entire set in a deluxe edition packaged in a large, leather-bound-book-look box (I wonder if it resembles your Angel package) that included the Schnabel editions of the printed scores. That box is a problem, by the by: it is too big to fit on any standard-sized record shelf.

 

Difficult listening hour

It's bigger, that's for sure. Dimmer sounding too, but not at all bad. I remember flipping through the scores while listening to the set. The Fresno State College Music Library had it in 1970, along with that Angel box. They didn't circulate the Angel box, save for faculty. I asked for volume 4 of the Seraphim reissue of the 'Beethoven Society" recordings, so I could hear Schnabel's [wonderful] rendition of the Diabelli Variations [a favorite work.] One day I showed up at the library. The clerk behind the counter said "I hope you're happy!", all 4 boxes of the Seraphim edition in his hands.

Charles Amirkhanian [composer and, at the time, music director of KPFA, Berkeley] told me that he would request new, usually avant-garde, LPs at the College library and that the staff there would be more than happy to oblige. In any case, at age 15 I became some kind of maven as regards Artur Schnabel. He really captured my imagination. As many have said before, he gives the impression, with his grabby sforzandos and general air of impatience, of channeling Beethoven, both at his sublime best and his irritable worst moods.

Later, as a Classical DJ at KPFA, I played some of Schnabel's compositions, totally and genuinely atonal, not in any way systematic. Very difficult music to 'track', completely independent of what Schoenberg and his followers were up to. Can't honestly say I was gripped or even entertained by the pianist's music. But hearing it gave me a deeper understanding of Schnabel's independence of spirit.

Here's an article concerning Schnabel's musical compositions:

http://www.lafolia.com/archive/covell/covell200806schnabel.html

 

Interesting, I'm not generally a big fan of atonal/serial music (apart from Berg and the early atonal compositions of the 2nd Viennese school) but the descriptions of those works make me quite intrigued to hear them (except the symphonies, which despite Roger Sessions' advocacy, seem largely ones to avoid) or at least some of Paul Zukofsky's work with other composers as a player and conductor.

 

Well, I pulled out my copy of the Schnabel op. 2/1 recording, and I can see why there are distortion issues: the 4th mvt. record looks nice until the end, where there's distinct greying on the peaks. Evidently it was cut "hot" enough that it outstripped the compliance of the rather rigid cartridges of its day. Sure enough, there's distortion in that area, but given the state of the groove how much was in the original recording remains unclear; I'm guessing most is a result of record wear. For comparison with your various commercial transfers, I did a couple of rough and quick copies of the last 1:30 or so; results are here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?yp0i0ru2drcjd

I got what seemed to be best results with a 2.8 mil truncated elliptical stylus, the smallest such in my arsenal of "78" styli. Belying the conventional wisdom that a spherical can be better than an elliptical for worn records, the stock Shure spherical gave terrible results. The "500" files have bass turnover at 500 Hz; the "250" files at 250 Hz (brighter sound, and hence emphasized treble). In every case, I set the 10 kHz rolloff at 5 dB. "Click repair 8-8" versions have an application of Click Repair software with declick and decrackle both set to 8.

 

Schnabel also composed his own cadenzas for some of the Mozart cti. that he recorded. The results are, shall we say, not of a stylistic piece with their surroundings....

 

As I have mentioned before, I have Schnabel playing the Beethoven Sonatas on various RCA Victor LPs from the mid 50s.
The catalogue numbers of these are:
LCT 1109/10; LCT 1154/5 and then LM 2151 to 2158.

There is some background noise, as is to be expected from these old records but no actual distortion in the music itself as far as I can remember.
They actually sound wonderful and you would have never guessed that these were actually recorded in the early 30s.
I might be totally wrong but my guess is that the distortion comes from either record wear or inefficiency of the playback system.

 

Ah, is that the same recording? I have a few of this series of RPO SACDs (Carmina Burana, Pictures At An Exhibition, Mendelssohn Violin Concerto/Midsummer Night's Dream), they used to be pretty cheap for a while.

 

It's treble filtering and the condition of the work parts. The RCAs have more filtering on top than the Angel issues, but less filtering than the EMI CD box. The surface noise and blowouts in the treble are due to the nature of the gear originally used and Schnabel's dynamic extremes. The HMV set is the best of the "Warts and All" versions with more useful trebel energy and less distortion than any other transfer from the 78s. I have heard that the original 78s are notably vivid when played back on the right gear. I'm sure DRH could give us more technical info.

 

Interesting. Your results seem more like Pearl's. The EQ decisions of Mark-Obert-Thorn include a steeper treble roll-off, which strikes me as tonally more similar to a piano, at least in terms of the octave-by-octave strengths and weakness. There's no point in trying to elicit too much treble from a 1934 recording. You're bound to be disappointed. In any case, your 78's sound like they have been played a bit, probably more than Mark-Obert-Thorn's. I'll bet he worked from multiple copies, splicing the best parts together.

 

Bronislav Gimpel- J.S. Bach - Partitas for Unaccompanied Violin



I just finished listening to this and I though that I should probably write a few words because I am not sure how many are actually familiar with this great violinist.

Bronislav Gimpel was born in the city of Lvov (then part of Polish Galicia, now part of Ukraine) in 1911. He died in the US in 1979.
Gimpel started playing the violin at a very young age and studied fist in Vienna and then in Berlin under the great Carl Flesch before he immigrated to the States in the 30s. In the 60s he became a professor at the University of Connecticut where he is still remembered very fondly.

His recording of the Bach Partitas was released on Dover back in the early 60s. Allegedly they were recorded in Ruggerio Ricci's home studio when Gimpel was housesitting for him. So the sound is just average with a lot of ambiance.

But, man, what a performance! Fantastic technique and amazing musicality, that's all I am going to say. Very romantic and old fashioned approach of course but at the same time very deep and emotional.

So there you have it folks. Another great musician who is unjustly forgotten by most today.

 

Now enjoying this new (to me) CD.

 

Kill Da Wabbit!

I've got the SACD version:



My favorite Wagner recording of Orchestral highlights from the operas:

 

I'll keep an eye out for the Stokowski!

This music is wonderful!

 

Great info, thanks! I would imagine that these would probably sound nice in the original 78s.

 

I heard Maazel conducting the NY Phil in an "Orchestral Ring" several years ago. Fortunately it was at Carnegie, not Avery Fisher, and the sound was glorious.

 

Kinda like Dylan's recent singing

From an official 'History of Sheffield Labs', the audiophile boutique label that put the high-end direct to disc LP on the map:

http://www.sheffieldlab.com/historyofsheffield.html

Listening to the Seraphim transfer of the Diabelli Variations. After seven loud clicks, it's smooth sailing. Less treble content than the Naxos transfer, more lower mid-range. There was a burble or two that indicated a click removed by careful splicing. The surface noise of the sources used is considerably lower than on the Naxos transfers, closer to hiss than the forty miles of dirt road found elsewhere. Fantastic performance, bet George would love it.

 

Yep, I know about these disputes on the sound quality of 78s vs. 33 1/3 or, in even earlier times, the dispute on acoustic vs electrical recordings. Actually these sound quality controversies from bygone eras always come to mind when I see people arguing about digital vs. analogue. Funny how history repeats itself in a way and people always seek out the best sound that the technological media of their time can offer.
And of course, Hesiod's ideal golden age is an archetype that one cannot easily escape from, If you get my meaning.

Truth be told is that I 've heard a 78 playing on a gramophone only once in my life, but it sounded nice. It was a very powerful "alive" sound. A sound that I could live happily with.
It also bothers me sometimes that I can not play 78s in my system as I continuously find great stuff in the thrift stores that I dig for records. Like a couple of days ago I saw some Koussevitzky that I had not seen before, I would like to be able to play that.

 

Feel the noise

Hey, I still celebrate Saturnalia.

As it turns out, those funky BSR turntables you'd find on all in one stereos from J.C. Penny's or K-Mart, the ones with ceramic cartridges, are really good 78 reproducers. They hit the sweet spot between high tracking force and low mass, so they're pretty gentle on the 78s. The output from the ceramic cartridge is hot enough that you can record direct from the output of the cartridge, meaning no phono preamp. You can make a needledrop this way, then eq and click repair to taste. But playing 78s back without recording or de-clicking, even with wonky eq has tremendous impact. the dynamics of 78s feel bigger than that of LPs.

 

Just listened to this:



Wonderful!

 

LOL

Yeah, I was thinking about these, not a bad idea at all.

 

Yep, the same Mackerras/RPO recording from (IIRC) the early 90's, reissued several times since then. I also have Carmina Burana (terrific! IMO, can hardly be bettered), Shosty's Fifth (fine) and Mahler's First (my go-to version) from this SACD series. All bought for $7-13, IIRC.

 

With Elliott Carter's passing on earlier today, rather like with Hans Werner Henze (shame that similarly it's taken his death to rekindle my interest, but it's amazing that he's kept going for so long anyway) this would be as good a time as any to try and seriously explore his music. I've never seriously got into him up until now, finding his mature work too dense, convoluted and dissonant. I guess the better approach would be to work my way through his earlier if less characteristic pieces to gain a better understanding of his style and where he came from.

Are there any Carter fans who can advise me where to begin in this regard? If so, thanks in advance!