In this week's newsletter:

• Toscanini - the live Missa Solemnis broadcast from March 1953
  
• Boult - a superb collection of English music, recorded with the London Philharmonic
  
• PADA Exclusives - Arthur Honegger's Cello Concerto, under the composer's direction
  
• Gramophone Reviews:  Rob Cowan on four of Pristine's summer Toscanini releases
  

Editorial - The further mysteries of XR remastering

One of the sometimes marvellous, sometimes frustrating aspects of the re-equalisation at the heart of XR remastering is that you're never quite sure how it's going to come out until you're some way into the restoration process. You might, for example, take an LP, clean it, transfer it, declick and decrackle it, check the tuning and repitch as necessary, then seek out a suitable reference (or multiple references) of the same recording, repitch them as well (it's amazing how few recordings are genuinely 'in tune' to A440, though most do come somewhere between A438 and A442), and still after all this work have little clue as to what to expect from XR

The next stage is where it gets interesting. The recording and its reference are loaded into the EQ software and analysed to determine the average levels of all the notes and harmonics throughout each recording. It's a kind of acoustic fingerprint, and it's remarkably consistent when applied to the same set of acoustic instruments (orchestra, quartet, piano) all playing the same piece. The notes themselves - their frequency in the score, their volume, and the instruments assigned to them - are far more influential when analysed this way than the ensemble, conductor or venue, and this is the principle which lies at the heart of XR and results in such remarkable remasterings.

With a click of the mouse, the software sets about calculating how to 'match up' those averaged frequency levels by re-equalising the source recording to an incredibly fine degree - imagine a graphic equaliser with literally thousands of faders - until finally I can click 'play' and hear for the first time whether or not the recording is going to be viable. It's astonishing how many recordings suddenly spring into life and focus at this point - though the majority do then benefit from further 'manual' intervention, be it fine-tuning of the overall EQ to deal with hiss, or further noise reduction and manual declicking - but sometimes a recording which had sounded promising simply and clearly fails at this stage, and you know it'll never be rescued into something anyone's likely to want to hear.

So XR can hold many surprises. But raises questions too. For example, why would two recordings of the same ensemble, playing the same piece in the same hall two days apart not sound pretty well identical when subjected to this kind of treatment? This is today's mystery: our issue this week of Toscanini's live broadcast recording of the Beethoven Missa Solemnis from 28th March, 1953 sounds very different indeed to the RCA LP recording made just a couple of days later.

Naturally there are differences in the performance - though both fourth movements are identical in duration to the nearest second, which isn't bad going for sixteen and a half minutes of music! But RCA's LP has a certain 'sheen' to it, whereas the NBC broadcast was far more direct and forceful. It helps the NBC recording that the soloists aren't as buried in the background as they were in the LP issue, but there's a lot more to it than that when you compare the two.

What is revealing, and gratifying, is that although both recordings have been subjected to re-equalisation to the same references, and both has been audibly improved in doing so (if by which we mean it sounds more credibly like an orchestra, choir and soloists), and yet each has had its own distinct sound and character preserved. For me this suggests that XR is doing all the right things, whilst not getting involved in what I would consider the 'wrong' things. If two NBC Symphony Orchestra recordings from two days apart can sound so different both before and after XR remastering, there's little chance that this kind of process is going to make the NBC SO sound like the Boston, London or San Francisco Symphony Orchestras, let alone the Vienna, Berlin or New York Philharmonics.

Rather, the ever-growing evidence of recordings processed in this way suggests that, at best, it makes the orchestras sound more like themselves - and for me that can only be a very good thing indeed.

Andrew Rose, Pristine Audio

Also of interest today:

• Archive Classics - excellent weekly online radio programme dedicated to historic recordings:
  
  Archive Classics tx 09/10/2009

  This week our focus on Schubert’s chamber music continues with the Fantasie in C, D934 for violin and piano. Stephen Johnson has chosen a 1931 recording by the German violinist Adolf Busch (1891 – 1952), who settled in Basle in 1927, later leaving for the USA. The pianist is Rudolf Serkin (1903 -1991), who also settled in Switzerland in the 1920s before emigrating to the USA on the outbreak of World War II.  Busch and Serkin formed a much-admired duo partnership, and in 1935 their relationship was further cemented when Serkin married Busch’s daughter.  Their rendering of this Fantasie is exquisite. Only a short extract is available on the free podcast: subscribers can access the complete work.
  
  And Adolf Busch plays Beethoven’s much-loved Romance No.2 in F, Op.50, with the WOR Radio Orchestra under Alfred Wallenstein, in a recording made in New York in 1942.
  
  Hungarian-born pianist Lili Kraus (1905 -  1986) was a fine Mozart interpreter, giving complete cycles of the concertos and sonatas during her distinguished postwar career. She too settled in the USA in the 1960s. In this weeks podcast Kraus plays the Sonata in E flat, K282, in a recording which dates from 1954.
  
  And there’s a Hungarian flavour to Stephen’s next choice. The Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra under Willem Mengelberg plays three well-known excerpts from Berlioz’s `Damnation of Faust’ – two dances and the Hungarian March, in a recording from 1942.
  
  
  Bonus Track for subscribers only:

  • Sibelius’s Symphony No.6 in D minor, played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Thomas Beecham, recorded in 1954.

Lois Marshall, soprano 
Nan Merriman, mezzo-soprano
Eugene Conley, tenor 
Jerome Hines, bass
NBC Symphony Orchestra
Robert Shaw Chorale
conducted by Arturo Toscanini

Source recording from the private collection of Christophe Pizzutti
Radio announcements and audience applause have been edited in order to fit CD duration limit
NB. An organ malfunction during the Kyrie rendered it inoperable for the rest of the performance
XR remastering by Andrew Rose at Pristine Audio, October 2009
Cover artwork based on a photograph of Arturo Toscanini

Total duration: 79:27

For more download and CD options, see our website

The FLAC downloads:

Toscanini's superb live 1953 radio broadcast Missa Solemnis

A completely different sound balance and performance to the RCA LP recordings

Felix Slatkin was a remarkable all-round musician, both as conductor and performer. As a violinist he was founder of the highly-acclaimed and Grammy Award winning Hollywood Bowl String Quartet, as well as being concertmaster for 20th Century Fox, providing numerous violin solos on film soundtracks.

This collection, however, concentrates on his role as a conductor. Together with the orchestra he founded, the Concert Arts Orchestra, Slatkin made a number of recordings in the 1950s - when he was also Frank Sinatra's concertmaster and conductor of choice, and regularly conducted the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra.

The Delius here was taken from the first non-British album of music by this composer, and comes nicely coupled with the two French works. And if that surname sounds familiar? - Felix Slatkin was the father of the world-renowned conductor Leonard Slatkin.

Download listening sample: (Kyrie, 224kbps ambient stereo)

Notes on the recording:

This recording provides us with a truly fascinating opportunity to compare Toscanini in the studio and Toscanini in the concert hall. Two days after this concert was given on a specially-extended NBC radio broadcast. live from Carnegie Hall, the same forces reassembled there with RCA's engineers for the first of three days of recording sessions in order to produce an LP recording of the same work - this can be heard in excellent XR-remastered sound here as Pristine PACO026 ("simply overwhelming" - Fanfare)

I noted in my comments on that release that "in many places the soloists are simply too far back in the mix. Their sound is distant, quiet and at times thin". This is not something which is a problem in this radio concert performance - indeed the whole sound is quite disctinctly different, and an excellent example of just how huge a difference microphone placement can have on the overall balance of the same musical forces.

Whilst the RCA sound has a real 'sheen' to it, the NBC sound is far more direct and forceful, if a little more hissy. But more than this, the two performances themselves differ quite considerably in pacing, most especially in the Kyrie, which at 10'36" is a full minute and a half longer than Toscanini's LP rendition. Likewise he takes a minute longer in the Gloria, and it's only really in the second half of the piece that things start to even out (his Sanctus, at 16'31", is identical in duration in both recordings).

It should be noted, too, that there's another fundamental difference here - though not one of choice by the performers, conductor or broadcasters. The Carnegie Hall organ malfunctioned during the opening Kyrie and was rendered inoperable for the rest of the performance. Naturally, given the nature of the performance, the show had to go on...

 

Available as 320kbps MP3, 16-bit FLAC, 24-bit FLAC, Ambient Stereo FLAC, CD
or listen on demand with Pristine Audio Direct Access (PADA)

New release today:

Boult conducts English Music
Pristine Audio PASC 193

London Philharmonic Orchestra
conducted by Sir Adrian Boult
Recorded 1954

Transfers from the collection of Edward Johnson
XR remastering by Andrew Rose at Pristine Audio, September-October 2009
Cover artwork based on a photograph of Adrian Boult

Total duration: 79:43

©2009 Pristine Audio.

For more download and CD options, see our website

 

The FLAC downloads:

Sir Adrian Boult in his element with the London Philharmonic

Eighteen superb Decca recordings newly transferred and remastered

 

• ARNOLD Eight English Dances Op.27 & 33
  1. Andantino (2:44)
  2. Vivace (1:45)
  3. Mesto (2:17)
  4. Allegro risoluto (1:36)
  5. Allegro non troppo (2:47)
  6. Con brio (1:33)
  7. Grazioso (2:20)
  8. Giubiloso (2:20)
  Recorded Kingsway Hall, London, 1-2 November 1954
  Originally issued in March 1955 as Decca LW5166
  
  
• BAX Tintagel (13:30)
  Recorded Kingsway Hall, London, 1-2 November 1954
  Originally issued in February 1955 as Decca LXT5015
  
  
• ELGAR Three Bavarian Dances, Op. 27
  1. The Dance (3:45)
  2. Lullaby (3:16)
  3. The Marksman (4:46)
  Recorded Kingsway Hall, London, 21 October 1954
  Originally issued in January 1955 as Decca LW5157
  
  
• ELGAR Chansons de Nuit & Matin, Op. 15
  2. Chanson de matin (3:18)
  1. Chanson de nuit (4:06)
  Recorded Kingsway Hall, London, 18-19 February 1954
  Originally issued in May 1954 as Decca 78rpm X574
  
  
• HOLST The Perfect Fool, Ballet Suite Op. 39 (10:46)
  Recorded Kingsway Hall, London, 1-2 November 1954
  Originally issued in February 1955 as Decca LXT5015
  
  
• BUTTERWORTH
  A Shropshire Lad (8:41)
  The Banks of Green Willow (5:25)
  Recorded Kingsway Hall, London, 1-2 November 1954
  Originally issued in February 1955 as Decca LXT5015
  
  
• WALTON Siesta (4:48)
  
  Recorded Kingsway Hall, London, 20 October 1954
  
  Originally issued in January 1955 as Decca LXT5028
  
  
  
  

Sir Adrian Boult is a conductor whose life's work was inextricably intertwined with the musical renaissance of English music which had begun in the latter decades of the 19th century and flourished well into the 20th.

All of the composers represented here - Arnold, Bax, Butterworth, Elgar, Holst and Walton - were known personally to one degree or another by Boult, and in this collection of 1954 Decca recordings with the London Philharmonic Orchestra it can be said that he did all of them a tremendous service.

The recordings also demonstrate the wide breadth of superb musical talent which was to be found in the so-called "land without music", and were excellently recorded by Decca's legendary engineer, Kenneth Wilkinson in the Kingsway Hall in London. With new transfers and XR remastering, this is a real delight from start to finish.

Download listening sample:   (BUTTERWORTH The Banks of Green Willow, 224kbps ambient stereo)

Notes on the recording:

As is made clearer in his biography (see online - abridged on our CD cover), Sir Adrian Boult was inextricably linked with the flowering of English music in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. As a conductor he had not only promoted numerous English compositions, but was personally acquainted with all of the composers represented in this magnificant collection - even the young George Butterworth, a composer tragically lost to us in the trenches of World War One.

All of these recordings were made by Decca during 1954, and include one of the label's very late (and by then, rare) 78rpm issues - Elgar's Chansons de Nuit & Matin - which was subsequently issues as a 45rpm single before finally making it onto a long player a year after its original release, on Decca LW5174.

What struck me, when remastering these recordings, was the quite striking difference in sound quality between the sessions. Despite each sharing not only the same orchestra, conductor and venue, but also the same producer (James Walker) and engineer (Kenneth Wilkinson), the tonal balances between the sessions were often quite different. I took the decision, therefore, to utilise the XR remastering system in a slightly different manner to my usual approach.

Having established, first of all, that the tonal balance acheived in the sessions of 1-2 November 1954 coincided most closely with what one might expect from an optimal modern recording, I set about equalising the recordings gleaned from the earlier sessions to more closely match those of the final session. The aim was to produce not only a continuity of excellent sound quality throughout the collection, but also to - I believe - more accurately represent the sound of the orchestra in those earlier recordings.

Despite his extensive recording career, it's also worth pointing out that this collection includes Boult's only recordings of both the Malcolm Arnold English Dances and William Walton's Siesta.

Available as 320kbps MP3, 16-bit FLAC, 24-bit FLAC, Ambient Stereo FLAC, CD
or listen on demand with Pristine Audio Direct Access (PADA)

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