PASC209 - Paray conducts Beethoven and Mozart Symphonies (stereo recordings)

These three recordings constitute the only stereo Mercury Living Sound recordings made by Paul Paray with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra that Mercury themselves have not reissued on CD. Their reasons for not doing so, along with other inexplicable omissions from Paray's mono recordings, remain unknown and hard to understand - although Paray is more commonly associated with French composers, yet again he is superb both with Beethoven and Mozart.

From a technical point of view the later recording was clearly superior to the earlier one. The levels of tape hiss on the 1956 Mozart required considerably more noise reduction to tame, and the top end was not as clear or bright as the two 1959 Beethoven recordings. In fact, if anything, the latter were overly bright, as is often the case with Mercury's 1950s Living Presence recordings, and taming this had the happy side-effect of reducing overall hiss levels to something far more acceptable.

In all cases disc surface noise was minimal. Both 1956 and 1959 recordings did however suffer from a degree of induced main hum, something quickly and precisely dealt with in audio restoration these days. Both also suffered from occasional tape drop-outs on one or other channel, which is also been cured. The Mozart does remain the slightly noisier of the two, but neither suffers from hiss or noise to an extent which should prove an annoyance at any reasonable listening volumes, and the Beethoven Symphonies in particular would stand comparison to almost any recordings made in the analogue era - after all, Mercury were very good indeed at what they did when making Living Presence LPs, as their long-lasting reputation for superior recordings repeatedly suggests.

Paul Paray

biographical notes from Wikipedia

Paul Paray (born Le Tréport, May 24, 1886 - died Monte Carlo, October 10, 1979) was a French conductor, organist and composer. He is best remembered in the United States for being the resident conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for more than a decade.

Biography

Paray's father, Auguste, was a sculptor and organist at St. Jacques church, and leader of an amateur musical society. He put young Paul in the society's orchestra as a drummer. Later, Paul Paray went to Rouen to study music with the abbots Bourgeois and Bourdon, and organ with Haelling. This prepared him to enter the Paris Conservatoire. In 1911, Paul Paray won the Premier Grand Prix de Rome for his cantata Yanitza.

As World War I started, Paul Paray heeded the call to arms and joined the French Army. In 1914, he was a prisoner of war at the Darmstadt camp, where he composed a string quartet.

After the war, Paray was invited to conduct the orchestra of the Casino de Cauterets, which included players from the Lamoureux Orchestra. This was a springboard for him to conduct this Orchestra in Paris. Later he was music director of the Monte Carlo Orchestra, and president of the Concerts Colonne.

In 1922, Paray composed the ballet Adonis troublé. In 1931, he wrote the Mass for the 500th Anniversary of the Death of Joan of Arc, which was premiered at the cathedral in Rouen to commemorate the quincentennary of Joan of Arc's martyr death. In 1935, he wrote his Symphony No. 1 in C major, which was premiered at the Concerts Colonne. He composed his Symphony No. 2 in A major in 1941.

Paray made his American debut with the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra in 1939. In 1952, he was appointed music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, conducting them in numerous recordings for Mercury Records' "Living Presence" series.

Paray could and did conduct the entire orchestral repertoire well, but he specialized in the French symphonic literature. One of Paray's most renowned recordings, made in October 1957, is that of the Saint-Saëns' Symphony No. 3 in C minor. The circumstances surrounding the recording were fortuitous. Paray had built the Detroit Symphony Orchestra into one of the world's most distinguished. Marcel Dupré, a friend and fellow student from childhood, was organist for the session. Dupré, as a young student, had pulled the organ stops for the composer Camille Saint-Saëns in a performance of the Symphony No. 3 in Paris, and the organ of Ford Auditorium in Detroit was well suited to the work. As well as being among the most authoritative readings of the work, the original analogue recording on the Mercury label remains an audiophile reference in vinyl, and the analogue-to-digital transfer produced by the original recording director Wilma Cozart for compact disc is also available from Mercury (recording number 432 719-2).

Biographical notes from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Paray

Detroit Symphony Orchestra

historical notes from Wikipedia

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) is a leading American orchestra based in Detroit, Michigan whose performances are heard throughout the world. The orchestra is the fourth oldest in the United States. Its main performance center is Orchestra Hall at the Max M. Fisher Music Center in Detroit's Midtown neighborhood.

The DSO is currently heard by one million listeners a week on the nationwide broadcast, the General Motors' "Mark of Excellence" radio series. Its live concert series is attended by 450,000 people a year and includes a series of free educational concerts for children begun in 1926.

History

The Detroit Symphony was founded in 1914 by ten Detroit society women who each contributed $100 to the organization and pledged to find 100 additional subscribers. They soon hired the orchestra's first music director, Weston Gales, a 27-year-old church organist from Boston. The orchestra's first performance was held on February 26, 1914 at the old Detroit Opera House.

The appointment of famed Russian pianist Ossip Gabrilowitsch as music director in 1918 brought instant status to the new orchestra. A friend of composers Gustav Mahler and Sergei Rachmaninoff, Gabrilowitsch demanded a new auditorium be built as a condition of his accepting the position. Orchestra Hall was completed for the new music director in 1919 in a remarkable four months and twenty-three days. Under Gabrilowitsch, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra quickly became one of the most prominent orchestras in the country, performing with the leading artists of the day. In 1922, the orchestra gave the world's first radio broadcast of a symphony orchestra concert with Gabrilowitsch conducting and guest artist Artur Schnabel at the piano. From 1934 to 1942, the orchestra performed for millions across the country as the official orchestra of the The Ford Sunday Evening Hour (later the Ford Symphony Hour) national radio show.

In 1939, three years after Gabrilowitsch's premature death, the orchestra moved from Orchestra Hall to the Masonic Temple Theatre due to major financial problems caused by the Great Depression. The orchestra disbanded twice in the 1940's as it moved around three different performing venues. In 1956, the orchestra moved to Ford Auditorium on the waterfront of the Detroit River, where it remained for the next 33 years. The orchestra once again enjoyed national prestige under music director Paul Paray, winning numerous awards for its 70 recordings on the Mercury label. Paray was followed by noted music directors Sixten Ehrling, Aldo Ceccato, Antal Doráti, and Günther Herbig. It should be noted that most, if not all, of the recorded string accompaniments on Motown's classic hits were performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

In 1970 the DSO instituted the Detroit Symphony Youth Orchestra as a training group, under Maestro Paul Freeman.

In 1989, following a 20-year rescue and restoration effort, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra returned with great acclaim to Orchestra Hall. Music director Neeme Järvi began his tenure in 1990, the second-longest in the orchestra's history.

In 2003, the Detroit Symphony completed further renovations to Orchestra Hall and added a $60 million addition, including a recital hall and education wing, named the Max M. Fisher Music Center. The Detroit School of Arts was added to the DSO campus in 2005.

The symphony has produced many recordings on the Victor, London, Decca, Mercury, RCA, Chandos and DSO labels. The DSO recording of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring was the first CD to win the prestigious Grand Prix du Disque of the Charles Cros Academy. A fine arts high school on part of the symphony's property opened in 2005.

The Orchestra today

After a five-year search, the DSO announced on October 7, 2007, that Leonard Slatkin, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, would become its twelfth music director, succeeding Neeme Järvi.[3] Peter Oundjian, currently Music Director of the Toronto Symphony, is the DSO's current Artistic Advisor and Principal Guest Conductor. The current Resident Conductor is Thomas Wilkins. (See below for a complete list of DSO Music Directors)

Historical notes from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Symphony_Orchestra

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