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Well-recorded and convincing delivery in Vienna
We were somewhat captivated by the discovery of Hans Kann's Beethoven sonata recordings recently (PAKM033), and were intrigued to seek out more from Kann. This recording, which we think probably dates from around 1957 holds a very good, if not totally outstanding performance, captured for release on the nascent World Record Club's 13th LP release. Given Swaroswky's close relationship with the Vienna State Opera, it's perhaps a reasonable guess that the 'Vienna Festival Orchestra' is the State Opera Orchestra in disguise, so certainly a competent delivery is not only expected but achieved. If Kann worked for me by playing the sonatas reasonably 'straight' then perhaps the same strategy is slightly less successful here, where more extravagantt fireworks might at times be welcome - you occasionally find yourself wanting Kann to drive the music (and orchestra) on just a little bit harder - but there are certainly no complaints regarding the delightful second movement, and overall the recording is a most worthwhile addition to our catalogue. The WRC did however manage to get themselves into something of a pickle over the companion piece here, Liszt's Second Rhapsody in D minor. First up, their sleevenotes wrongly described it as the orchestral transcription of the 12th Hungarian Rhapsody for piano - it's not, it's the second. The LP's label then wrongly ascribed it the key of C sharp minor - which is the key of the piano version but not that of the orchestral transcription, which was transposed into D minor. Finally, though, they managed to slow it down by a massive 13%, putting it somewhere below C minor, and giving it a duration of 10 minutes and 22 seconds. Correcting this so that the orchestra actually played in the correct key (and sounded a lot less dirge-like) took an astonishing one and a quarter minutes off the timing - and greatly improved the performance! How this came to pass on the original LP we can only speculate, but it would appear that for over 50 years nobody's noticed. Talk about breathing new life into a recording!...
The World Record Club notes from Wikipedia
The World Record Club Ltd. was the name of a company in the United Kingdom which issued long-playing records and reel to reel tapes, mainly of classical music and jazz, through a membership mail-order system during the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to titles imported from recording companies like Everest Records and Westminster Records, which it obtained on franchise, it made a series of recordings of international artists using its own engineers. These, which are often of great musical interest and are mostly of very acceptable technical quality as recordings, do not appear in shop catalogues of the time because they were not available new through record shops. In modern times, however (when most vinyl is second-hand), they are frequently found by collectors, to whom an outline of the company's history will be valuable. The label was taken over by EMI in 1965 but continued to be used as a sub-label for mail order, covering a very wide range of musical genres, and distributing in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
Early days, c. 1955-1965 World Record issues were certainly in production by mid-1956. The World Record Treasures records were promoted as a series from which 'Members' (membership was free) were required to select a given number of purchases per year. These were sold at lower prices than usual (21s 6d) and distributed in cheap wrappers (originally logo-printed Fablothene, and then card covers with stickers naming the selection). A monthly Club magazine (Record Review) was also issued starting late 1956, announcing future selections and featuring the existing artists and recordings. The company was first based at 125 Edgware Road, London, with a display centre at 49 Edgware Road. The main UK rival in similar business was the Concert Hall label. Membership was encouraged by such methods as using sleeve designs contributed by members (e.g. T23), and as these improved they obtained photographic services of Erich Auerbach. By 1958 there was a membership of at least 150,000. In the Promenade Concerts season of July to September 1958, World Records had a full-page advertisement (offering monthly releases at between 22s 6d and 24s 9d per disc, only one need be chosen per year) on the inside front cover of all the individual concert programmes, facing the actual music listing for the evening - a competitive space, placing it on equal footing with Electric Audio Reproducers, EMI Records, Decca Records, Grundig Tape Recorders, Ferguson Radiograms and Olivier Tipped Cigarettes (3s 4d for 20). (A full-priced record then cost around 40 shillings, i.e. £2 sterling, equivalent to 12 packets of cigarettes.) Key artists at the start were conductors Hans Swarowsky and Muir Mathieson, often with the Sinfonia of London, or Viennese orchestras. The pianist Joseph Cooper's account of Rachmaninoff's second concerto was an early disappointment owing to poor balance (the piano was almost inaudible) but there were also great successes. The development of new recordings was a special interest, under the celebrated recording engineer Anthony C. Griffith (1915-2005), who became recording manager for WRC in 1958. The Brahms violin concerto (Endre Wolf, violin, Sir Anthony Collins, conductor, WRC TP30) was a 1958 landmark for them, as technical details were published on the sleeve, recorded both in stereo and mono using Ampex equipment and Neumann microphones. Griffith made recordings of Colin Davis, Leon Goossens, Arthur Bliss, Reginald Jacques, Imogen Holst, the Melos Ensemble of London and Aeolian Quartet. The Mozart oboe concerto (Leon Goossens, oboe, Colin Davis, conductor, T59), issued c1961, was a big technical and artistic success, the sleeve featuring photographs of studio sessions and playbacks. Later they produced a strong hand in English music, especially in Vaughan Williams' 9th Symphony and Greensleeves and Thomas Tallis Fantasias, and in music by Elgar, conducted by Adrian Boult and George Weldon, and in works of Sir Arthur Bliss. Important solo records of Sviatoslav Richter, Jorge Bolet and Shura Cherkassky were produced, and classical singers were not neglected. By 1958 the company's business address had changed to Parkbridge House, Little Green, Richmond, Surrey, where it remained thereafter. The 'Treasures' terminology was soon dropped, so that the title 'World Record Club' became the main label feature, written on ribbons wrapped about a globe. The WRC catalogue numbers were prefixed by the letter T (and sometimes ST to denote a stereo version, using the same number, and also TP), and ran from 1 to about 50 by 1962, to 500 by 1966 (and continued) to well over T1000. These were in red or green labels, with silver overprinting, and there was a later form in which the label edge was printed with many short radial lines so that the correct speed could be obtained by stroboscopic 'standstill' effect. There was also an OH series, with purple labels, for the WRC Opera Highlights series, often taken from interesting recordings or specially-made abridgements, and again presented in a uniform sleeve. By this time, the World Record Club was also releasing pre-recorded tapes of their LPs. They were all produced in mono half-track at 3 and 3/4 ips. The quality of these tapes was very high. They were produced mainly as the LPs to make pre-recorded tapes available at a reasonable price for all the enthusiasts who had tape recorders for making their own recordings, although the quality available from radio at that time was not very high. These tapes were released with the prefix TT. They come up for sale on eBay quite often and, although they are mono, they are half-track which gives a very high signal to noise ratio and makes for extremely enjoyable listening.
Recorded Music Circle However at about the start of 1959 a series devoted mainly to chamber music was created, under a new logo with an eagle in a circle, with 'R.M.C.' above it and 'World Record Club. Recorded Music Circle' beneath. The labels were attractively printed in light blue, showing a classical scene of two musicians wearing togas beside a stone column or altar, with the text details overprinted in red. The sleevenotes of the RMC were also printed in red, and after some experiments with a more ornamental sleeve, a uniform style of red lettering on a background of simulated wood-grain became the uniform sleeve design. Once again the series mixed in-house and franchised recordings. It included 'strong' material such as Ralph Kirkpatrick playing the Mozart K570 sonata (CM30); Rudolf Schwarz conducting Mahler's 5th Symphony (LSO - CM 39-40 (Everest)); Pierre Monteux conducting Berlioz's Romeo and Juliet (CM 57-58 (Westminster)); Robert Gerle (violin) and Robert Zeller with the Delius and Samuel Barber violin concerti (CM 59 (Westminster)), Hermann Scherchen's Mahler 7th Symphony (CM 63-64, Westminster), the Bruckner 8th of Hans Knappertsbusch (CM 71-72, Westminster), and the Richard Strauss memorial album with Clemens Krauss and Kurt List (CM 73-74, Amadeo). This small but very interesting series had not reached 100 records by 1966. The pressings and presentation of this series was always good, usually with sleeve-notes by Malcolm Rayment, Stephen Dodgson or Peter Gammond (now author of numerous musical books). One very famous recording that was released on WRC before any other label was the Finzi Dies natalis with Wilfred Brown.
EMI take control, 1965 From c.1965, when World Record Club was bought by EMI, the label lost its characteristic green or red design and acquired a completely new look, minimalist, with blocks of grey. An important early enterprise under the new management was the complete cycle of Beethoven piano concerti with Emil Gilels (piano) and George Szell (conductor). During the late 1960 a number of 'WRC versions' of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas were recorded. Anthony C. Griffith remained with the company under the new ownership, and, since there were fewer new recording projects, he and Gadsby Toni began to explore and transfer to LP parts of the historical archives of EMI, producing some of the finest transfers ever achieved. In 1971 he joined the EMI International Classical Division to work on Karajan recordings, but also expanded his work on historical transfers. Retrospect Series Australian World Record Club New Zealand World Record Club
Notes from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Record_Club
The perfomers notes from Wikipedia
Hans Kann (born February 14. 1927 in Vienna; died June 24. 2005) was an Austrian pianist and composer. He taught music in his native Austria and in Japanese schools such as the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. Notes from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Kann
Hans Swarowsky (September 16, 1899 – September 10, 1975) was an Austrian conductor, Swarowsky was born in Budapest, Hungary. He studied the art of conducting under Felix Weingartner and Richard Strauss. His teachers in musical theory included Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern. Herbert von Karajan invited him to take on the permanent position as conductor of the Vienna State Opera. He became a professor of conducting at the Vienna Music Academy. His many conducting students included Claudio Abbado, Iván Fischer, Jesús López-Cobos, Zubin Mehta, Alexander Alexeev, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Gianluigi Gelmetti and Albert Rosen. Swarowsky's lectures and essays were collected into the publication Wahrung der Gestalt (Keeping Shape), which today serves as an encyclopaedia for performance and conducting. He died in Salzburg, Austria at age 74. Notes from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Swarowsky
Notes on the 24-bit download: Please see this page for test files and further information regarding this format. Although restoration work is done at a sample rate of 44.1kHz, we have upsampled the final 24-bit master to 48kHz for additional replay compatibility of our FLAC download. Our twenty-four bit FLAC downloads can be replayed in full quality using a standard DVD video player, a DVD writer and an inexpensive piece of PC software - see here for more information about replay from Video DVD discs.
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