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This week we're marking five years online with our
free prize draw to win a 1000GB Pristine Audio Digital Music Collection
or one of 50 free downloads. It's been a long journey from those early
days at the end of January 2005, when I was putting the finishing
touches to the website of what we then called Pristine Audio Direct,
wondering if there would be any demand for it whatsoever when it went
live on February 1st.
But for me, personally, today is perhaps a more important anniversary,
for it's exactly six years to the day - the last Friday of January 2004
- that I set out across a snowy south-east England to pass through the
Channel Tunnel, pass out into an equally white landscape in northern
France, and start heading south - the first small step to a new life
and existence in a new country.
A week earlier I'd bid a rather embarrassingly tearful goodbye to my
BBC colleagues, my 'home' since 1990, having come off air after my
final broadcast that Sunday evening with no idea what was ahead.
Pristine Audio had been functioning for about three years as a
sideline, carrying out a diverse and sometimes bizarre variety of
transfer jobs for a huge range of clients, largely in the UK - among
them a certain Mr. Keith Bennett who regularly sent me old tapes of an
Italian conductor called Cantelli, to whom I would return some time
later, though I didn't know it then...
I'd invested £500 in a substantial collection of near-mint 78s in late
2003, and had it in the back of my mind that these could be one
possible route in a multi-stranded approach to making a living in our
new home. With real work thin on the ground through much of 2004, and
as a respite from endless renovation, decorating and IKEA flat-pack
furniture assembly, I regularly stole off to my new studio with the aim
of figuring out the best way to transform the 65 sides of Edwin
Fischer's Well Tempered Clavier into something I might be able
to sell to a record company.
After many hours of toil I finally reached something that sounded
promising, and got in touch with the head of a UK record company who
I'd met some five years previously. He was interested and impressed
with what he heard - though I suspect my various incarnations and
updates which went his way throughout that summer might not all have
had his full attention! Anyway, it seemed we could come to some kind of
arrangement - a couple of CDs a month for a reasonable rate was most
definitely on the cards.
And then, in September, came the first bombshell. The company in
question was in trouble - big financial trouble. Rather than taking on
new projects the following months would involve a major shrinking and
relocation to cut costs and try to keep afloat. There would be no
historic releases from them.
So on to plan B (though I had a plan C in the back of my mind, it
didn't seem technically feasible at that time). I assembled a portfolio
of recordings and started contacting the specialist companies already
working in the historic recordings sector. In almost every case the
answer was the same - even if they liked what they'd heard, there was
no money to invest. Things were too tight. Companies were not
prospering. Rather, they were struggling to survive, waiting months or
years for meagre payments from distributors who themselves were often
in difficulty. (There had to be a better way, thought I...)
Eventually I was passed on to Stephen Sutton at Divine Art. He'd been
running his record company as a sideline to his regular legal work for
some years, but was now attempting to go it alone, and armed with his
trusty credit card, could see us working together on perhaps two or
three releases every six months or so, at the same rate I'd been
offered earlier that summer.
It was the boost I needed - but it was immediately apparent that this
would not be enough. Clearly I needed a further outlet for my work if
this was ever going to come to anything, and life wasn't to be and
endless tale of transferring old tapes of baby gurgles and the like.
A little earlier that year, sitting in the garden in beautiful
late-summer sunshine, sipping a cool glass of local wine, I'd chatted
to fellow audio restorer Peter Harrison about my latest dream:
"Wouldn't it be marvellous," I suggested, "if I could set up some way
of selling downloads. I could gradually build up a large catalogue of
recordings, the 'shop' would be open all day and all night long, and I
could be sitting down here with you sipping this lovely wine whilst
making money at the same time?" How we laughed at the unlikely
concept!..
But Pristine Classical didn't really start like that. At the time of
that conversation I couldn't find any reliable means of delivering the
'product'. MP3s had a very bad name for themselves - synonymous with
'piracy' even more so than today - and most online service providers
wouldn't touch them. And would classical music buffs want to know? On
my 64kbps ISDN link there wouldn't be any other option, at least to
begin with. And then in December 2004 I found a company online which
would take my MP3s, which could fit quite easily into our established
PayPal payment systems, and which didn't require a team of IT experts
to set up a payment and download system.
My idea started to grow: an online store could also be a shop-window
for my talents. Maybe some rich record executive would listen to the
music, like what he heard and call me up? And if we actually sold any
downloads, well that would be the icing on the cake. In the meantime it
would give me plenty of excuses for spending my time working on the
restoration of the music I loved - seeing it as an investment in the
future rather than a waste of time. Certainly the shop-window idea
seemed the stronger of the two at the time; I had no idea whether
anyone would want to pay for historic classical downloads,
just as nobody really knew back then if anyone would ever really pay
for any classical downloads at all.
As January progressed I went back to that sampler CD I'd sent out the
previous autumn and started reworking it. At the very last minute I
decided we'd probably need another orchestral work for our launch and
added the Heifetz Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto to our starting
line-up. Little did I know that six months later I'd be reading about
it in Gramophone - and those few seeds I was about to sow would
start to germinate quite so quickly and flower quite so successfully.
I still await the time when I can spend sunny weekday afternoons
sipping chilled wine by the pool. But I suspect that, even if I could,
in the intervening five years I've become so addicted to the process
and pleasure of renewing and remastering old recordings, and the thrill
of hearing their 'refreshed' sound for the first time, that my wine
would soon go warm and attract insects while I was still up here in the
studio, watching the progress bar growing slowly on a computer monitor
screen, bringing me ever closer to one more listen...
Featuring
Hans Hotter as Wotan
Full list of soloists below
Bayreuth Festival Orchestra & Chorus
conducted by Clemens Krauss Live
concert recording from 1953
XR
remastering by Andrew Rose at Pristine Audio, January 2010
Cover artwork detail from painting of Rheinmaidens at the Rainbow
Bridge by Arthur Rackham
Wotan-
Hans Hotter Donner-
Hermann Uhde Froh-
Gerhard Stolze Loge-
Erich Witte Alberich-
Gustav Neidlinger Mime-
Paul Kuen Fasolt-
Ludwig Weber Fafner-
Josef Greindl Fricka-
Ira Malaniuk Freia-
Bruni Falcon Erda-
Maria von Ilosvay Woglinde-
Erika Zimmermann Wellgunde-
Hetty Plümacher Flosshilde-
Gisela Litz Choir
and Orchestra of the Bayreuth Festival
conductor Clemens Krauss
Live
concert recording, Bayreuth Festival, 8th August 1953
"This is the best Ring everand it will never be
displaced in the future because these very evenings of summer 1953
Clemens Krauss and his dreamcast were in a state of Grace, the kind of
thing that happens once in a lifetime; every listening of these
incredible recordings leaves me breathless; I own Keilberth 55, Kna 56,
Bohm 67, Boulez 76 and Barenboim 91; I love them all for many reasons
but Krauss 53 is definitely my first choice."
Thus wrote an Amazon reviewer - and who are we to argue?.
However, this Ring cycle has never been heard in anything like optimal
sound quality before now. The sound has been boxy, muffled, bass-light
and prone to various technical problems.
Pristine's XR-remastered release ofDas
Rheingoldis the first
step to remedying all these shortcomings for the entire Krauss Ring
cycle - a sonic transformation almost as astonishing as the
performances!
This
recording is part of what has long been regarded as one of the key Ring
cycles, certainly of the mono era, but also more generally. A review by
Steve Taylor at the Wagner Discography website states:
...it
is certainly one of the great Rings. What makes it great? Firstly it
has to be the cast of singers. I doubt that there has been a greater
cast at Bayreuth in all the years since World War II. Astrid Varnay is
nothing less than outstanding as Brünnhilde. She clearly has an
intimate understanding of the role is an absolute pleasure to listen to.
Wolfgang
Windgassen sings Siegfried. It is his first appearance in the role and
he is heard to better advantage in other recordings. The thing that
makes him special in this recording is his youthfulness. He is at his
best in the first two acts of Siegfried but is also able to portray
well the more mature character in Götterdämmerung. This is the
performance of a major star in the making.
Towering
over them both vocally as well as physically is the Wotan of Hans
Hotter. He is at his prime here and it is worth buying the set for him
alone. His singing in this set often astounds me. To my mind the best
Wotan recorded. By the time he recorded with Solti he was past his
peak. Listen to this and you will know exactly what I mean! All the
other singers are equally fine. Josef Greindl (Hagen), Paul Kuen (Mime)
Gustav Neidlinger (Alberich) deserve special mention. Only the
Sieglinde of Regina Resnik fails to impress but this is a minor problem.
The
conducting throughout is solid and Krauss gives the work the full
structure which is needed. If there are any weaknesses in his reading
they show up in Götterdämmerung. This was the first and only Ring which
Kraus conducted at Bayreuth and he was clearly out to impress. His
Parsifal of the same year was a record breaker. It was 23 minutes
quicker than the previous record holder, his friend, Richard Strauss.
No such haste with his reading of the Ring! It is a tragedy that he was
to die the following year and we do not have any more Ring recordings
by him.
However,
he does go on to comment on the sound, labelling it as merely
"acceptable". Meanwhile a correspondent and friend of this site wrote
directly to me a short time ago:
"The
Krauss 1953 Ring needs you. I think that Krauss' stock is rising, and
you have already done him noble service. Now is the time for the killer
edition of his Ring. Who better than you?"
I
decided to investigate the possibility and started out with a few test
settings for XR remastering. Quickly realising that these recordings
most certainly could benefit enormously from this type of remastering I
decided to bite the bullet and begin work on what we expect to become
Pristine's first full Ring cycle.
The
results are often astonishing - like the lifting of multiple layers of
grime from an old painting to see bright colours resplendent beneath.
Gone is the boxiness of previous issues, and in its place is a full and
deep bass alongside a greatly extended treble, with huge impact on
clarity of both voices and instruments, coupled with great dramatic
impact.
Thanks
to our download system we're also able to present the opera in a
completely uninterrupted format both for FLAC and MP3 purchasers. The
CDs are faded in such a way as to slightly overlap at the end of Scene
Two and start of Scene Three, but nothing is lost here either.
This
opera is of course already available - in its full cycle - on
budget-priced CDs. I think when you hear the advances I've managed to
make for this release you'll consider it an investment of time and
effort worthy of your consideration.
Andrew
Rose
Available
as 320kbps MP3, 16-bit mono or Ambient Stereo FLAC, 24-bit FLAC, CD
or
listen on demand with
Pristine
Audio Direct
Access
(PADA)
On
1st February 2005a
very small blip occurred on the fringes of the Internet when Pristine
Audio became the first classical record label to sell downloads
directly online, an event duly ignored by all the news media we
contacted at the time...
Five years later things are looking considerably
brighter, and many of our friends at other record companies have taken
the same route.
This week we celebrate our first five years online. Our
first download sale might have taken five weeks to arrive, but since
then we've seen dramatic changes in the way music lovers find and
acquire the music they want to listen to - we've taken a look back at
the state of things in early 2005 and it's a real surprise!
We'd like to share a little of this nostalgia with you,
and invite you to enter our free prize draw - you could win a 1TB
Digital Music Collection, worth €1200, or one of 50 free downloads of
your choice....
Pristine Classical, 2005-2010:
A
quick look back...
"The
results engineer Andrew Rose has achieved in remastering said material
are little short of remarkable... This CD is urgently recommended." -
Review in Fanfare, March/April 2010, on Stokowski'sTchaikovsky 5th etc.
It's hard to comprehend just how much has changed in the
world of online music since the beginning of 2005, and yet five years
later we still read "this CD is urgently recommended" rather than "this
download is urgently recommended". We may have some way to go before
that happens, but in the meantime, let me take you back half a decade
to a very different online world...
Back then, buying classical music downloads online was
almost impossible. There were no classical music companies offering
downloads, and even major services likeeMusicwere yet to launch here in
Europe. A couple of weeks after our launch an unknown start-up company
in California bought the domain name "www.youtube.com",
which you may
since have heard of. Seven months before we opened for business, Apple
opened itsiTunesstores for web customers in the
UK, France and Germany, its first foray outside of the US. Rather
fittingly, our own first customer was based in Norway - he bought our
first download (Holsts'
Planets Suite) more than two months before iTunes opened for
business in his own country, and is still a regular here at Pristine
Classical -thank you Tore!
In many ways we were lucky to be in there at the
beginning of what is still very much an ongoing move online. When James
Jolly, the then editor ofGramophonemagazine, started a downloads
column in their June 2005 issue, there really wasn't a great deal to
write about for UK music lovers.Chandoshad just launched their
downloads site, a few weeks after us, and there was of courseiTunes.
Our tiny website got not just equal but top billing in that first
column:
"I
sampled the company's wares in a free download (from
pristineaudiodirect.com) of the third movement (Allegro vivacissimo) of
the 1937 HMV recording of theTchaikovsky Violin Concertowith Jascha Heifetz and the LPO
under John Barbirolli. The playing has tremendous energy and the sound
quite wonderful immediacy (with very little hiss); I soon forgot that
was a 68-year-old performance...." -
"Downloading Music from the Ether",
Gramophone, June 2005
Alas we're still not in the same league as iTunes, who
sold their billionth song download in 2006, and achievement I doubt
we'll ever see. Then again, we're in the business of selling albums,
not songs, and passed the 10,000 downloads mark some time over the last
12 months, we think - which must at least equate to 100,000 or so of
Apple's songs. Not bad in a tiny niche market such as ours.
Along the way we've removed a lot of clicks and crackles
and made a lot of friends. Special mention should go to Peter Harrison,
Dr. John Duffy and Mark Obert-Thorn, all of whom have contributed many
hours of music to our catalogue, as well as the many people around the
world who've sent recordings for consideration, books for information,
and of course e-mails for encouragement (well, most of them, anyway!),
not to mention the dedicated music reviewers who occasionally find the
real gems amongst our output:
"The
feast courtesy of excellent restoration, this disc moves early into the
Best of the Year recommendations.... The Flonzaley Quartet (1902-1929)
stands out as a true inspiration" -
Audiophile Audition on Mark Obert-Thorn's recentFlonzaley
Quartet issuefor
Pristine
As I write this we're about to launch another new
double-CD length release (left),
the 39th in ourVocalcategory. OurOrchestralsection passed the 210 mark last
week, theChamber
Musicsection is
heading inexorably towards 70, and theKeyboardsection (which excludes
Concertos, listed under Orchestral Music) now sits in the mid-30s.
We've embracedJazzandBlues- our issue of Miles Davis'Kind
of Bluewill certainly
be one of the best-sellers of 2010, and our 2007 release of the blues
recordings of Robert Johnson likewise is one of our all-time best
sellers. Meanwhile we've delved into the earliest days of scratchy
blues recordings and gained something of a reputation in the Blues
community for working magic on some of the most difficult and precious
recordings this genre has to offer.
From an admittedly shaky start Pristine Classical has
always stood on its own two feet - there was no start-up investment
fund, no business loan and no credit card. We're still here - and
flourishing - because we've managed to produce something people want,
and have reinvested our profits in the business. We're still a small
company, with three staff and a couple of freelance contributors, but
we hope we can continue to grow as we have over the past five years and
enjoy more success - and discover more great music of course - in the
months and years to come.
Thank you for your interest and support! -Andrew
Rose, Pristine Classical
New
MP3 transfers at PADA Exclusives
by Dr. John Duffy
in Ambient Stereo
Frederick
Stock
conducts Schumann
Frederick
Stock
Schumann
Symphony No. 1, "Spring"
Chicago Symphony Orch
cond. Frederick Stock Rec. 1929
Frederick
Stock (Friedrich August Stock) (November 11, 1872 – October 20, 1942)
was a German conductor and composer, who helped turn the fledgling
Chicago Symphony into one of the world's greatest orchestras.
Stock
was born in Jülich, Germany and given his early musical education by
his army bandmaster father. At the age of fourteen, Frederick Stock was
admitted into the Cologne Conservatory as a student of violin and
composition, where he counted Engelbert Humperdinck as one of his
teachers, and Willem Mengelberg among his classmates. After graduating
from the conservatory in 1890, Stock was accepted to the Municipal
Orchestra of Cologne as a violinist.
In
1895, Stock met with Theodore Thomas, director of the then fledgling
Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the man who was to have a decisive
impact on Stock's future. Thomas, who was then visiting Germany in
search of recruits for his Chicago Symphony, auditioned Stock and gave
him a position as violist in the orchestra. Thomas soon realized,
however, that his new violist was also a very talented conductor and in
1899, Stock was promoted to assistant conductor.
After
the sudden death of Theodore Thomas in 1905, Frederick Stock took over
the post of music director of the Chicago Symphony. That year, he wrote
a symphonic poem Life, "in memory of Theodore Thomas". At first filling
in the position only on a temporary basis, Frederick Stock finally
assumed the role of permanent music director in 1911 only after the
Chicago Symphony's board of directors failed to persuade Gustav Mahler,
Hans Richter, Felix Weingartner, Karl Muck, and Felix Mottl, among
others, to take over the position.
Under
Stock's direction, the Chicago Symphony became one of America's top
orchestras, developing a distinctive brass sound that can already be
heard in the orchestra's first recordings.
An
enthusiast of modern music, Stock championed the works of many then
modern composers including Mahler; Richard Strauss; Stravinsky, whose
Symphony in C was commissioned for the orchestra's 50th anniversary;
Sergei Prokofiev, who was soloist in the world premiere of his Third
Piano Concerto in Chicago; Gustav Holst; Zoltán Kodály, whose Concerto
for Orchestra was commissioned by Stock; Nikolai Myaskovsky; Josef Suk;
William Walton; Arthur Benjamin; George Enescu; and many others.
Frederick
Stock's thirty-seven year tenure as head of the Chicago Symphony was
surpassed in America only by Eugene Ormandy's lengthy directorship of
the Philadelphia Orchestra. Soon after Stock's death in Chicago on 20
October 1942, Désiré Defauw was chosen as his successor.
In
1916 the Chicago Symphony, under Stock's baton, made its first set of
recordings for the Columbia label. In fact, these recordings were the
first ever made by an American orchestra under its music director. The
orchestra would later record for RCA Victor, then go back to Columbia,
only to finally go back to RCA Victor in 1941-1942 for its final series
of recordings under Stock.
The
orchestra's first electrical recordings were made in 1925, including a
performance of Karl Goldmark's In Springtime overture; these early
recordings were made in Victor's Chicago studios and within a couple of
years the orchestra was recorded in Orchestra Hall. Stock's last studio
recording, Ernest Chausson's Symphony in B minor, was released
posthumously in 1943.
This
transfer is presented with Ambient Stereo remastering by Dr. John Duffy.
Over
400 PADA Exclusives recordings are available for high-quality streamed
listening and free 224kbps MP3 download to all subscribers.
Remastered
by
Dr John Duffy In Ambient Stereo
Download
or stream this recording and many others from only One Euro a
week!
Hundreds
of historic recordings are available for listening and free
MP3
download
to subscribers to PADA
Exclusives, our €1/week streamed audio service.
Other subscription offers give you full access
to our entire online catalogue
Latest
Reviews, e-mails & comments
"I
know I've only been lurking here in cyberspace for a long time, but
your topic regarding "historical performance" raises issues about which
I'm still debating MYSELF, let alone others. The whole question gets
muddled further by the need to produce a *commercially viable* product.
Once we focus upon those two words and absorb their meaning, I think
the answers become almost clear.
To be commercially viable, a recording needs to attempt to emulate a
modern, well-edited recording to the extent that current-day technology
and editing skill can accomplish. That means removal of all hum
elements, all extraneous traffic and hall noises (HVAC, people walking
obtrusively, music stands being kicked, etc), and all anomalies of the
transmission path. I find intrusive coughing and other
"audience-participation" noises worthy of being removed whenever
possible (quiet rustling of program notes and similar noises do not
disturb me, and, just like the occasional cough you leave in, I find it
reassuring to sense the presence of an unobtrusive audience...
In an ideal world, I would release a restoration on one CD and
accompany it with an "historically accurate" version with all anomalies
on another CD. Obviously, this would be a commercially UN-viable
approach. Hence, a restored CD with restoration documentation is the
only solution to this problem.
Regarding Toscanini's humming: that definitely should stay. It's such a
pleasure to hear it in the 1939 Beethoven/NBC series!
Similarly, I leave in most or the grunts and foot-stampings that Bruno
Walter makes in his live performances. The sheer intensity of his
involvement with the music is absolutely electrifying!
I would never consider removing "Deutschland über alles, Herr
Schuricht!" from Das Lied, and I certainly wouldn't remove the bombs
from Gieseking's Emperor Concerto. These intrusions are much too
important historically to be deleted -- although I would like to have a
copy available without the intrusions just in case I *might* wish to
concentrate on the interpretation without interruption.
There's obviously no simple answer to this perplexing issue. I've been
berated for fixing some notes in Andreae's 1953 Buckner series, despite
the fact that it was already clumsily edited using a splicing block,
presumable to remove less-than-accurate playing. To be an historical
restoration, should I have identified all the splice and inserted
silent pauses before each one to indicate that the music had not been
played continuously?..."
- Aaron Z. Snyder, following up last week's newsletter
- - 00 - -
"The
feast courtesy of excellent restoration, this disc moves early into the
Best of the Year recommendations...the Flonzaley Quartet (1902-1929)
stands out as a true inspiration"
- Gary Lemco, Audiophile Audition
- - 00 - -
""The
results engineer Andrew Rose has achieved in remastering said material
are little short of remarkable. I have several RCA Stokowski LPs from
the early 1950s in my collection, but they sound nothing like this CD.
Surface noise has been eliminated ... The detail and balance in the
Symphony surpass that in the later stereo recording by Stokowski for
London Phase-4. This CD is further proof that, given the current state
of remastering technology, a talented engineer can achieve better
results from vinyl sources than a less talented one can from the master
tapes ... Tchaikovsky’s Fifth was a Stokowski warhorse... As exciting
as the stereo account with the New Philharmonia is, that orchestra
cannot match the beauty of tone mustered by the select group of New
York players Stokowski led in 1953... This CD is urgently recommended."
- Dave Saemann, Fanfare March/April 2010
- - 00 - -
"Dear
Mr Rose,
Thank you very much for your latest newsletter (and all previous ones).
The mid 19th-century recording on track 8 of the Ormandy must be a real
find! (Sorry!)"
- C.S.
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