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Superb new transfer finally does proper justice to marvellous recordings
Review of this release: Audiophile Audition
Notes on the recordings: One has to smile today at the final sentence in the Gramophone review reproduced above of Decca's 1950 LP issue of this recording - the 78s referred to appeared a few months after the Brahms Symphony's vinyl issue, and it's hard to believe today that many critics seriously felt that 78s had more to offer the music lover than the LP which so swiftly eradicated them after half a century of total dominance. For sure some of the early LPs could be a bit hit and miss, quality wise, and the same can be said for the recordings, as witnessed here. Analysis of the 1950 Brahms recording shows a true full frequency response heading right up to the maximum available on a modern CD, whereas the 1951 Mozart recording, made by the same company in the same hall with the same producer, orchestra and conductor (the engineer in unknown for the Brahms but the legendary Kenneth Wilkinson was chief knob-twiddler for the Mozart) peters out with an upper limit of 12kHz, something one might have expected from a wartime recording, but not in late 1951. But it seems that even today these recordings have suffered. Having first heard the quality of the LPs from which these transfers were taken, I was rather surprised to hear the hard-toned, overly-hissy and quite flat-pitched transfers they received in a Decca CD issue a very few short years ago. I had heard the Brahms first, and was delighted by both the performance and the recording, especially after initial investigations (using XR remastering for my own pleasure). When I heard how much improvement I had been able to make over Decca's own CD transfers I decided to press on, later adding the Mozart to the set for this release. The sound here is clear, clean, full and well-focussed, perhaps more so in the Brahms than the Mozart, with its aforementioned frequency deficiency. Both, however, are a clear improvement on the now apparently-deleted Decca CD box set of 2003. Andrew Rose Click here to view additional notes
Full Brahms biography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahms
Josef Krips Biographical notes from Wikipedia
Josef Alois Krips (8 April 1902 – 13 October 1974) was an Austrian conductor and violinist. Krips was born in Vienna, Austria, and went on to become a pupil of Eusebius Mandyczewski and Felix Weingartner. From 1921 to 1924, he served as Weingartner's assistant at the Vienna Volksoper and as repetiteur and chorus master. Afterwards he became conductor of several orchestras, including a period as music director of the orchestra in Karlsruhe from 1926 to 1933. In 1933 he returned to Vienna as a resident conductor of the Volksoper. He also became a professor at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in 1935. He conducted regularly at the Salzburg Festival between 1935 and 1938. In 1938, the Nazi annexation of Austria (or Anschluss) forced Krips to leave the country. (Krips was raised a Roman Catholic, but would have been excluded from musical activity because his father was born Jewish). Krips moved to Belgrade, where he worked for a year with the Belgrade Opera and Philharmonic, until Yugoslavia also became involved in World War II. For the remainder of the war he worked in a food factory. Upon his return to Austria at the end of the war in 1945 Krips was one of the few conductors who were allowed to work, since he had not worked under the Nazi regime. He was the first conductor to lead the Vienna Philharmonic and the Salzburg Festival in the post-war period. From 1950 to 1954 Krips was principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. Afterwards he led the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony (from 1963 to 1970). He made his Covent Garden debut in 1963 and his Metropolitan Opera in 1966, becoming a frequent guest conductor from then on. In 1970, he became conductor of the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. Between 1970 and 1973, he was the principal conductor of the Vienna Symphony. Krips died in Geneva, Switzerland in 1974 at seventy-two. His brother was Henry Krips, who moved to Australia and was the chief conductor of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra for a record term of 23 years (1949-1972).
Recordings In 1955, Krips made a critically acclaimed recording of Mozart's Don Giovanni with the Vienna State Opera featuring Cesare Siepi, Fernando Corena, Walter Berry, Suzanne Danco, Lisa Della Casa and Hilde Gueden. In 1957, Krips led the Symphony of the Air in stereo recordings of the five Beethoven piano concertos with Arthur Rubinstein and the Symphony of the Air for RCA Victor. In 1960, Krips recorded Beethoven's nine symphonies for Everest Records. For this set of recordings, Krips conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, and for the Beethoven Symphony No. 9, the soloists included Donald Bell, baritone, Jennifer Vyvyan, soprano, Rudolf Petrak, tenor, and Shirley Carter (later known as Shirley Verrett), mezzo soprano. The BBC Chorus, under the chorusmaster Leslie Woodgate also performed in this recording of the 9th symphony. This series of recordings was popular with music critics and the public, and the recordings have been reissued several times in authorized and in bootleg editions. During the 1970s, Krips, conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra recorded, for Philips Records, Mozart's late symphonies. These have been reissued over the years by Philips and latterly Decca. Krips did not make any commercial recordings with the San Francisco Symphony, although many of his concerts were broadcast in stereo by San Francisco station KKHI.
From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Krips
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