In this week's newsletter:

• Toscanini - the 1937 Salzburg Festival performance of Falstaff
  
• Goerge Weldon's Elgar - unjustly neglected? We think he might be. You decide
  
• Audiophile Audition review:  Gary Lemco reviews Panizza
  

Editorial - Hammering the Klavier to the sounds of 78s

Beethoven - Hammerklavier Sonata, Louis Kentner, UK Columbia 78s, Side 1

I was sitting at my music system a couple of evenings ago, musing with some incredulity on the ability to click a mouse button a handful of times and be presented with a playlist on screen that would, it promised, play me the entire works of Mozart. These were divided into something like 2500 tracks, and would, I was informed, take a little over 177 hours to play from end to end. This same technology would, at the entering of "fischer" into the search box, pluck out all of my Edwin Fischer recordings and put them into a series of lists - by album, buy title, and so forth. Or I could simply click another button and my entire collection would be mined for what the software calls a "party mode" - random selection of tracks to entertain, delight, or quite possible, horrify me with their juxtaposition.

Still it's a....


Side 2

....great leap forward. OK, so we'll have to get a plasterer in to fix the wall behind the CD shelves when they're removed, but I won't miss them. Fancy having to get up every hour or so to change the disc! These days, if it's the complete Well Tempered Clavier I want, with no interruptions, then that's what I'll have. Or perhaps this week's Toscanini release, the 1937 Verdi Falstaff, which rather unfortunately spans two discs when you break the second Act into Parts One and Two and start the second CD with the second half of the Act. Far better to sit back at the start of the recording and listen through without any intervention, isn't it?

Of course, the CD was a great improvement on the LP in this respect. Whether or not you choose to believe the legend that the CD's length was determined by the boss of Sony's desire to listen to an uninterrupted Beethoven 9th, those who've not placed stylus to vinyl for a few years will be...


Side 3

...perhaps unpleasantly surprised at how much the constant side changing interrupts their musical pleasure, conversation or perhaps digestion.

But technology isn't necessarily all. I went to bed last night confident in the expectation that I'd wake up to find all our uploads safely stored on the Pristine servers, ready to download. This week's has been a particularly heavy load - 50% more than our usual data thanks to the release of both a double- and a single-CD's worth of material. Add this all up and multiply by the various formats on offer, and even on the fast broadband upload speed I have here (a technological miracle for a minute French village) it's a lot of hours of painstaking uploading.

Unfortunately things didn't go to plan - some kind of glitch meant that what should have been a good 10 hours of uploading ran for about 30 seconds before...


Side 4

...apparently giving up and sitting quietly all night with an error message on the screen.

This put things back, somewhat. (Between Sides 3 and 4 of this editorial I also stopped to upload the last part of the website update which puts this week's new releases online and makes them available to you.) Even now, the 24-bit version of the Toscanini (another failed upload thanks to a power cut, despite our UPS supposedly keeping everything ticking over) is not yet online, and will now appear some time tomorrow, along with the PADA mono versions of the same work. There are no PADA Exclusives updates this week, for exactly the same reason.

I'd finished writing the website material a couple of hours ago. Knowing it would be something of a drawn out day, I'd also spent this morning transferring a lovely 1958 Brahms LP from the Trio Santoliquido, of which you'll learn...


Side 5

...more soon. That still left me at a bit of a loose end for an hour, one which could either be spend watching a progress bar crawl slowly across the screen, or delving into my 78s collection in search of musical inspiration. [Edit: It might also have been valuably spent error-checking my website text!]

First up was the Busch Quartet's Schubert, which I've earmarked for transfer soon. But no - after a Piano Quartet this morning, perhaps more chamber music should not be the first choice, even if it's only on economic grounds (almost nothing sells more slowly or in lower numbers...).

I was poking around looking for some Beecham that had caught my eye a few days ago when I chanced upon an album of UK Columbia discs purporting to be Louis Kentner playing Beethoven. A quick check online suggested a recording date of some time in 1939. Like many of the thousands of 78s in my collection, this was one set I'd yet to hear. So I carried them through to the studio, from where I'm typing, took the lid off the 78rpm player...


Side 6

...and began listening to the first side. Not bad, I thought - nice recording, nice piano tone, I wonder how this might sound after cleaning up and remastering.

The next step was to start cleaning the records. This is something of a laborious process, which is done largely by hand using fluid I import from the USA (and wholeheartedly endorse: see www.discdoc.com), a large amount of purified water I get from the local pharmacy, some specially designed cleaning brushes, and finally a vacuum system to suck up all the excess liquid and the 70 years-worth of gunk that's in suspension in it. It takes about 3 minutes a side to clean them - almost as long as each side runs for in fact...



Side 7

... - factor in a few minutes for interruptions, digging out the drying rack, and so on, and that's a 45-minute process in total.

Then it was time to get the website up and online. Well, almost - I updated 90% of the site and later realised I'd not yet uploaded a couple of small sample files. And of course time to start writing this newsletter. Cleaning records can be quite therapeutic - it gives you a long, quiet time to think, something that's not available to you when your bytes don't require a well-wetted brush before they can be heard.

I got to thinking how the recording process - and history - might have affected Louis Kentner as he prepared to record the discs I was holding in my hands, by comparison to an artist today.


Side 8

Side Eight is the first part of the fourth movement. It'll probably run for another four minutes. It's the second take Kentner made. At the time of recording he was lucky - there might have been three or four, possibly more recordings already available for him to compare, learn from, pore over, as well as no doubt several concerts to have digested over the years, before he came to set down his own thoughts on the matter of one of Beethoven's great piano sonatas.

Not so lucky for Edwin Fischer - his 65 sides of the aforementioned Well Tempered Clavier marked the first recording - and for a long time the only recording - of this monumental collection. No opportunity to pick or mix ideas from previous recordings - and one has to wonder how many times he'd heard anyone ever play it through all the way. He certainly didn't - it took him nearly four years to record it all.


Side 9

Fischer would certainly never have had the opportunity to listen through to his recording uninterrupted. I suppose it's possible that by the 1950s he had a transfer of it that had edited together the split sides, but then again, maybe not. It would have remained for many of those who owned it something of a fragmentary work, one perpetually interrupted by side changes and disc changes.

Likewise this Kentner I'm transferring as I type. So far so good - the discs are in great shape, though naturally I've mentally ear-marked one or two areas which will need closer attention, for the most part it's playing through very nicely. The piano is certainly well-recorded, if perhaps right now a little thin in the lower registers - I'm looking forward to hearing what XR remastering will make of that.

But ultimately will it be a worthwhile afternoon's work, this transfer? I mean, just how good is the performance?

I can honestly say I really don't know. I can't listen like people had to, four minutes at a time, and mentally piece it together into forty minutes or...



Side 10

...more of continuous music, especially not while typing! Kentner must have known exactly where he was going and what he wanted to say, despite the breaks and the retakes - this final side was recorded in a single take, and would surely have been re-made had he not been entirely satisfied with how it concluded this great work, both in terms of his execution of the notes, and in terms of how it concluded the entire piece as if it was a continuous rather than fragmentary performance.

So, with about an inch and a half of grooves left to play, I'll sign off and get on with the rest of this newsletter. It's been a fun meander - though I think I'll stick to my continuous playback, if I may, for purposes of listening pleasure and musical enjoyment.

Andrew Rose, Pristine Audio

Also of interest today:

• Archive Classics - excellent weekly online radio programme dedicated to historic recordings:
  
  Archive Classics tx 23/10/2009

  This week we begin a mini-series focusing on Tchaikovsky’s orchestral music as our Featured Recordings. Stephen Johnson’s first choice is the ever-popular Violin Concerto, in a 1957 recording by the Austrian-born American violinist Erica Morini (1904-1995), a fabulously talented child prodigy who studied with Sevcik at the Vienna Conservatory from the age of 8, and went on to play under many of the great conductors of the age. She emigrated to the USA in the late 1930s and enjoyed an international career until the 1970s. Shortly before her death at the age of 91, her beloved `Davidoff’ Stradivarius violin was stolen from her New York apartment. The instrument has never been recovered. In this performance of Tchaikovsky’s Concerto in D major Morini is accompanied by the National Radio Orchestra under Jascha Horenstein.
  
  Only a short extract from the slow movement is available on the free podcast: subscribers can access the complete work.
  
  Tchaikovsky also opens this week’s podcast, with a 1945 recording of the famous Polonaise from Act III of `Eugene Onegin’. The London Philharmonic Orchestra is conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham.
  
  And that’s followed by Franz Liszt’s Polonaise No.1, in a 1954 recording by the British pianist Peter Katin.
  
  One of Erica Morini’s teachers was the great German violinist Adolf Busch, and finally we hear the Busch String Quartet playing Beethoven’s Quartet No.11 in F minor, Op.95. The recording dates from 1932, when the quartet  - then consisting of Adolf Busch and Gosta Andreasson (violins), Karl Doktor (viola) and Hermann Busch (cello) – was resident in Switzerland.
  
  Bonus Track for subscribers only:
  

  • Prokofiev’s exuberant `Classical’ Symphony No.1,  in a 1958 recording by the Orchestre National de France under Pierre Monteux.

Soloists - see below
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Vienna State Opera Ballet & Chorus 
conducted by Arturo Toscanini
Salzburg Festival, 9th August 1937

Recorded by Radio-Verkehrs-AG (RAVAG), Vienna
Transferred from three Penzance private pressing LPs PR 37, sides A-F
Transfers and XR remastering by Andrew Rose at Pristine Audio, October 2009
Cover artwork based on a photograph of Arturo Toscanini

Total duration: 122:25 
©2009 Pristine Audio.

For more download and CD options, see our website

The FLAC downloads:

Toscanini's superb 1937 Falstaff newly restored & remastered

One of the greatest recordings, now given the full Pristine XR treatment

• VERDI - Falstaff
  
  Falstaff - Mariano Stabile
  Ford - Pietro Biasini
  Fenton - Dino Borgioli
  Dr.Cajus - Alfredo Tedeschi
  Bardolph - Giuseppe Nessi
  Pistol - Virgilio Lazzari
  Mrs.Ford - Franca Somigli
  Nanette - Augusta Oltrabella
  Mrs.Page - Mita Vasari
  Mrs.Quickly - Angelica Cravcenco
  Scenic Designer - Guido Salvini
  Stage Director - Robert Kautsky
  Costumes - Ladislaus Czettel
  Choreography - Margarete Wallmann
  Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
  Vienna State Opera Ballet & Chorus 
  conducted by Arturo Toscanini

Toscanini's 1937 Falstaff, recorded and broadcast by RAVAG radio engineers at a fully staged operatic concert, is one of those performances which turns certain opera buffs weak at the knees.

Time after time it is lauded - "the astounding 1937 Salzburg performance" says one reviewer at Amazon - and yet always it's the sound quality which has let people down.

One of the early transfers which is still regarded as a favourite among many who've heard it was a set of 'private' LPs issued by "Penzance Records", and its from these discs that we've set about this brand new XR remastering of the recording.

The results surpassed our expectations several times over as we heard the whole soundstage open out and the opera come to life. A truly remarkable restoration.

Download listening sample: (Act 3, Part 2: Une, due, tre, quattro, 224kbps ambient stereo)

Technical notes:

This remarkable recording, made at a full, live stage performance at the Salzburg Festival in August 1937, was the second of three performances given by Toscanini during the festival, during which time he also conducted Beethoven's Fidelio, Mozart's Die Zauberflöte and Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. In deciding to remaster it from the particular source available to me - six LP sides in a "private recording" set of discs issued by "Penzance Records", I was well aware of the potential inadequacies of the source material and thus the possible limitation of results.

The main source for this recording exists as a selenophone film at the New York Public Library, and was the source for a recent CD issue (read more about the Selenophone in this 1990 NY Times article). With this unavailable to me, the decision to work from these LPs was taken after considerable investigation into their sound quality, when compared with both the newer transfers and other previous LP incarnations. It soon became clear that the Penzance transfers were actually very well made and apparently true to their source, with little or no filtering or other intervention, and thus provided an excellent source from which to work (they remain the favoured transfers of this recording for some Toscanini lovers).

Even so, it was only after a considerable amount of XR remastering work and careful comparisons with other releases that I decided to go ahead and complete what has been a lengthy and difficult restoration (and would have been so regardless of the source). This would not have been contemplated had it not been clear to me that many significant sonic improvements might be had over all the previous issues I've been able to sample, something I believe has been achieved here.

My aim was to really try and open out the sound - as with the majority of recordings of this era, regardless of recording medium, the frequency response was unbalanced and uneven. In some previous transfers this has been exacerbated by excessive filtering, particularly in the treble end, producing a distant and muffled sound.

By contrast, the XR remastering approach has served to open out the top end considerably, as well as firming up the bass and giving the whole sound a much more solid dimension - something further enhanced in the Ambient Stereo version of this release. Naturally this also revealed further flaws in the original recording which then had to be tackled - hiss levels varied throughout the recording, from barely audible to quite intrusive, and I've tried to even these out as much as possible. I was also able to tackle a pitch variation which changed as the recording progressed, dropping by almost a quarter tone by the end of the opera.

Clearly this is a live recording - footsteps are heard from the stage, soloists move around , occasionally slipping outside the direct pick-up range of the microphone (or microphones - I don't know if this was a single or multiple microphone recording) and thus heard somewhat distantly, though always audible.

It's easy to underestimate the technical difficulties posed in recording such a performance today, let alone in 1937, just two years after the first commercial recording of an opera by Mozart - the fact that this incredible performance could be so well-captured is a testament to the skills of the radio engineers of the time. I hope that this new remastering will bring the listener a few steps closer to the impression this performance must have given to those lucky enough to be present for the performance.

 

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:

George Weldon conducts Elgar
Pristine Audio PASC 196

London Symphony Orchestra
conducted by George Weldon
Recorded 1953 and 1954

Transfers from the collection of Edward Johnson
XR remastering by Andrew Rose at Pristine Audio, June 2009
Cover artwork based on a photograph of George Weldon

Total duration: 55:16 
©2009 Pristine Audio.

For more download and CD options, see our website

The FLAC downloads:

A beautiful collection of some of the finest Elgar recordings

George Weldon: an excellent, under-rated conductor well worth hearing

 

• In the South, 'Alassio', Overture, Op.50 (23:06)
  Recorded at Abbey Road Studio 1 on 19th February 1954
  First issued as UK Columbia LP 33SX1028 in July 1954
  
  
• Sea Pictures, Op. 37
  • 1. Sea Slumber-Song (R. Noel) (5:06)
  • 2. In haven (Capri) (C. A. Elgar) (1:43)
  • 3. Sabbath Morning at Sea (E. B. Browning) (6:48)
  • 4. Where Corals Lie (R. Garnett) (3:20)
  • 5. The Swimmer (A. L. Gordon) (6:04)
    
    Gladys Ripley, contralto
    
    Recorded at Abbey Road Studio 1 on 26th February 1954
    
    First issued as UK Columbia LP 33SX1028 in July 1954
    
    
    
• Chanson de Matin, Op.15, No.2 (3:33)
  
  Recorded at Abbey Road Studio 1 on 11th December 1953
  
  First issued as UK Columbia 78 DX1908 and 45 SCD2035 in April 1954
  
  
  
• Overture in D (from Chandos Anthem No. 2) (Handel, arr. Elgar) (5:36)
  
  Recorded at Abbey Road Studio 1 on 19th February 1954
  
  First issued as UK Columbia 45 SED5516 in September 1954
  
  
  
  

"Gladys Ripley made a recording of Elgar's Sea Pictures in 1946, with George Weldon conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra (H.M.V. C3498-3500) which I reviewed in the July number of THE GRAMOPHONE in that year, and I find now that I could repeat that review word for word except that there is now no astringency in the tone of the violins in the first song, or in Sabbath Morning at Sea. Miss Ripley's lovely voice is ideal for these songs and, as I said before, she sings them with complete understanding and is free from all the usual contralto vices of hooting and scooping. Elgar is not always very sensitive in his setting of the words, as such, and indeed makes nonsense of some lines of the first song (Sea Slumber Song), but his music gives distinction to some indifferent poetry, the orchestral part is full of imaginative touches, and his vocal line has a fine sweep and singable-ness that seem to have departed from most vocal writing today. George Weldon and the L.S.O. provide a sensitive accompaniment, the balance is excellent, and altogether I found these five songs as enjoyable as ever..." - Gramophone, July 1954

George Weldon may be a name forgotten by many who ever heard it, and since his somewhat early death in 1963 he has not had the kind of following that might keep alive the names of other great conductors.

Yet he was among the best of his era - versatile, capable and highly musical. Perhaps it was the lack of a long-term major conductor's post which kept him somewhat in the shadows of the likes of Boult, Barbirolli and other contemporaries.

This superb collection of Elgar recordings, made with the London Symphony Orchestra in 1953 and 1954 is certainly an excellent showcase of his talents. Very sympathetically recorded by Brian Culverhouse at EMI's Abbey Road studios and transferred here from near-mint vinyl prior to XR remastering, Weldon's talents, along with those of his orchestra and a superb contralto solo from Gladys Ripley in Sea Pictures do full justice to the music. One to (re)discover!

Download listening sample:   (In The South (lengthy excerpt), 224kbps mono)

Notes on the recordings:

These recordings, all sourced from excellent near-mint copies expertly transferred by Edward Johnson from his private collection, where a delight to restore. Very little complex restoraiton was required, and XR remastering worked a treat. These recordings have been one of those delightful collectionc which I've spent more time listening to than restoring - which is something of a rarity here at Pristine! Wholeheartedly recommended.

Andrew Rose

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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