NGS-SS-WW - Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115

Original surface quality: Some swish, building towards side ends, generally not bad.

Other notes: By comparison to other recordings of this era in the NGS series, this acoustic set was reasonably straightforward to restore. Some low-level swish remains at times, considerably reduced from the original discs but still audible in the background. However the worst of it, found at the ends of several sides, has been largely addressed.

The recording has a wonderful feel to it, and I've been able to dig deep into the limited bass response of the acoustic original to find some remarkably low cello tones for a recording made without microphones, at times a full octave below what we might normally expect.

At the conclusion of my restoration I decided to experiment with a new form of reverberation (convolution reverberatino, which accurately recreates the acoustic response of a real concert hall space, discussed in greater depth here). One of the at-times painful shortcomings of the acoustic recording process, beyond its very limited frequency range, is its exceptionally poor dynamic range, rendering it almost impossible to pick up and preserve any meaningful room acoustics. The resultant recordings are, therefore, exceptionally dry.

My experimental application of a very light acoustic from one of the smaller halls of the Teatro Santa Cecelia in Rome to this recording came as a revelation to me, and hugely improved the enjoyment of the recording - indeed I'd go as far as to say it transformed it from a historical curiosity to a recording I'd like to listen to over and over again for sheer enjoyment.

As a performance, this world première recording is certainly accomplished. The string players may not have the intonation and technical abilities of those who would shortly rise to fame, nor even one or two of their direct contemporaries, but as an excellent example of how the very best chamber music of its time was heard this a superb recording. It manages to transcend its technical limitations to become a beautifully musical and absorbing performance throughout, and a shining example of what the National Gramophonic Society was capable of producing.

National Gramophonic Society recordings- a technical perspective

As a collection of recordings, the National Gramophonic Society discs contain some of the toughest challenges possible for the restoration and remastering engineer. There are no master discs to work from, and those regular pressed shellac discs which do exist are extremely rare. A daunting proportion of these are very poorly pressed, and many have particularly noisy, hissy or crackly surfaces.

The vast majority of the original discs came from Gramophone magazine's own near-mint collection, carefully preserved in the EMI vaults at Hayes and largely unplayed for many decades. Where a choice of discs was present, naturally the very best sides were chosen for transfer, which took place at Pristine Audio over the spring, summer and autumn of 2006. Discs were carefully cleaned and a choice of custom-made stylii were available to achieve the optimum replay possible. Transfers were made at 24-bit resolution and then archived in 32-bit sound. Some initial restorations were carried out at the time of transfer, but all of the recordings presented here have been newly XR-remastered, starting in February 2008, directly from those high-quality transfers.

Without the benefits of modern audio restoration technologies, it is safe to say that a good number of the Society's output would be beyond the listening tolerance of all but the most devoted and dedicated music-lover. Of the 165 numbered discs it is not until we reach discs 103-4 (the Malipiero String Quartet No. 2) that something truly remarkable happens sonically, a result of switching allegiances to the Columbia Record Company for recording and pressing duties.

Prior to this the results are variable in the extreme - and the problems don't really stop after disc 104 either - we are still talking about the early days of electrical recording, and it seems clear from this history of the Society that money was tight. But for the 1920's listener, these matters would surely have been secondary to being able to hear any of these works at all, as the National Gramophonic Society's remit was to record music that had been ignored by the other record companies.

The challenge for the 21st Century therefore is to render these recordings in such a way as to be faithful to the musicians as well as sparing the listener too much pain. I've tried to strike a careful balance between noise reduction and the dangers of over-processing and deadening the sound which, in some cases, may leave some of the blemishes more obvious than you might be used to hearing - if this is the case in any particular recording, I can only respond with "well you should have heard it before I started work on it!"

There are many fine recording here, and I hope you will enjoy them as much as I have.

Andrew Rose, March 2008

The National Gramophonic Society

The National Gramophonic Society (NGS) was founded in 1923 by the novelist Compton Mackenzie to promote music which was ignored by major music companies.

The Society was established for the recording and publication by subscription of classical music, principally chamber music, which was of limited circulation. Prominent on the committee for the selection of material was Walter Willson Cobbett, who was joined by Spencer Dyke (leader of a string quartet), W. R. Anderson, Alec Robinson, Peter Latham and Compton MacKenzie.

Cobbett (b 1847), a chamber-music specialist, had founded the Cobbett Competition in 1905 for a short form of String Quartet composition or 'Phantasy', and for other short chamber works, prizes won variously by William Yeates Hurlestone (1876-1906, pianist) (1905), Frank Bridge (1908), John Ireland (1909), J. Cliffe Forrester (1916), H. Waldo Warner (viola of the London Quartet) (1916), York Bowen (1918) and Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (1919). In 1921 he was offering further awards to Royal Academy and Royal College of Music graduates, and commissioned many new chamber works from English composers.

The National Gramophonic Society was therefore an expression of this impetus to the development of the taste for modern chamber music. The records, issued on 12-inch 78rpm (or in some cases 80rpm) discs with distinctive yellow labels, included the first-ever recordings of familiar works such as the C major quintet of Schubert and Brahms's clarinet quintet, along with pieces (then relatively little known) by Henry Purcell, Vivaldi and Mozart.

The organization also helped several living composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arnold Bax, Peter Warlock (first recording of The Curlew), Eugene Goossens, Arnold Schönberg (original chamber version of Verklärte Nacht) and Sir Edward Elgar to gain greater recognition for their works. The repertoire consisted largely of chamber music, featuring the Spencer Dyke Quartet and the International String Quartet, but included some works for small orchestra and a few vocal items. Musicians who took part included John Barbirolli (as both cellist and conductor), the clarinettists Charles Draper and Frederick Thurston, the oboeist Leon Goossens, the violinist Adila Fachiri, and the pianists Donald Francis Tovey, Harold Craxton, Kathleen Long and Ethel Bartlett.

The NGS ceased operations in 1931.

Notes from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Gramophonic_Society

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