In this week's newsletter:

• Mengelberg - Astonishing collection of rare recordings - some of the earliest known electricals' first release
  
• Carmen Dragon -  Hugely enjoyable popular classics in Capitol's excellent early stereo
  
• PADA Exclusives - Leonard Shure plays Schubert and Schumann Fantasies
  
• Fanfare Magazine Review -  Mortimore H. Frank on Toscanini's Mozart
  

Editorial - The move from acoustic to electric recordings - the greatest leap forward in the history of audio recording

Every few years the music industry, driven either by the record companies or the hi-fi manufacturers, or occasionally both, attempt to wow us with the latest incarnation of what was once dubbed "perfect sound forever". Each time they'll trumpet the virtues of the new format, and how far superior it is to all that's gone before it.

Some of these claims hold more water than others, and some formats failed to live up to their initial promise, either in actual quality or in sales figures. Personally I believe we're in the dying days of the audio format 'wars', as the logical conclusion of the endless drive to digital media files appears to me to be one of entire collections stored within a single mass-storage unit, whether on a hard drive or solid-state memory in the home or on a remote server (and possibly including a collection that's "rented" rather than "owned", much as our PADA service operates).

It's notable that since the advent nearly 30 years ago of the Compact Disc ("perfect sound forever"!), no tangible format has managed to shift it from the top spot in terms of sales, or has even come close. The CD first saw off the LP and the compact cassette, and the relative few with reel to reel machines at home dwindled. Since then we've seen minor incursions from MiniDisc, Digital Compact Cassette, DVD-A and SACD, to name the four which come immediately to mind. Perhaps the nearest thing to a challenge here has come from SACD, but the market remains tiny and very specialist. The only thing likely to eclipse CD in the near future is the download - in some markets this has already happened, and for many the ideal download is one which matches CD for sound quality, such as the 16-bit FLAC downloads which constitute the vast majority of our download sales at Pristine Classical.

So why didn't SACD see off the CD? I suspect it has a lot to do with the law of diminishing returns - and for more of an insight into this we need to go back to 1925 and the commercial dawn of the electrical recording.

As our Mengelberg release this week demonstrates, the record companies were quick to turn around from over a quarter of a century of acoustic recording practise to the complete domination of electric recordings. In April 1924 Bell were experimenting with the apparatus needed to successfully capture the full range (or as much of it as was feasible) of a symphony orchestra when fed by the electrical signal from a microphone. The results were astounding, as The Gramophone Company's Fred Gaisberg confided to a friend having heard an early test disc of a vocal performance which actually included sibilance, something he'd never heard before - as beautiful as the acoustic process could be, for him there could be no going back once electrical recordings had been experienced for the first time.

No more recordings with tubas standing in for double basses, with Stroh violins and their horns to boost their volume, with the likes of Caruso singing at the very top of his voice into the horn so as to be audible. At last a good dynamic range meant that all instruments could be naturally recorded, either in the studio or, another innovation, on location. Bass extension went right the way down, and at the top end one could hear notes and harmonics that simply weren't captured acoustically at all. In short, it was the greatest 'feature update' in the history of the recording industry.

Ironically, some of the record companies weren't too keen to let you know about this. In the UK, HMV kept very secretive about the new recording system, which entirely replaced their acoustic system in June 1925, in the understandable fear that the apparent obsolescence of their entire recorded catalogue in the face of electric recordings could bring them ruin. Thus the new records were slipped out quietly alongside their existing acoustics, with no mention being made of the astounding studio innovations involved.

It's hard to imagine anything like this happening again, but in the next big revolution, the move from 78s to vinyl, HMV (now EMI) delayed the switch for two years over their nearest UK rival, Decca, allowing the latter 24 months of head-start and relentless media propaganda - again EMI didn't want their huge back catalogue to be apparently rendered redundant, and only jumped ship when the LP's place as the future of recordings seemed inevitable. (Decca themselves got into a bit of a tangle with the move shortly afterwards from mono to stereo, with a number of recordings left in the vaults to this day that were recorded only in mono just before they fully adopted stereo as the way forward.)

It seems astonishing today to discover that the best way Bell could test their new recording systems back in 1924 was to wait until a concert got underway at Carnegie Hall and then tap into the live microphone feed that was heading for nearby radio transmitters. And yet it must have been an obvious and relatively inexpensive solution for Bell at the time. Thanks to their ingenuity, and that of many others, our present day recordings are no longer reliant on horns and 78rpm discs cut on lathes driven by weights that required a three-storey drop to descend for four minutes.

And I'm also grateful that one of the concerts used for these recordings happened to constitute the only live recording known today of Mengelberg conducting the New York Philharmonic - the orchestra's records indicate 289 performances together between 1905 and 1930 (the majority of these taking place during his tenure as musical director of the orchestra between 1922 and 1928), just too early, it seems, for anything else to have both been recorded and to have survived the intervening years.

I'm sure those engineers at Bell Laboratories on 2nd April, 1924, had little idea quite how historic their four experimental sides would prove to be. And I suspect those who try to convince us of the sonic superiority of SACD (or whatever comes next) wish there was as clear a difference to be heard between the old and the new as there had been back in 1925.

Andrew Rose, Pristine Audio

Also of interest today:

• Archive Classics - excellent weekly online radio programme dedicated to historic recordings:
  
  Archive Classics tx 04/09/2009

  We continue our focus on Brahms’s concertos with a live 1948 recording of the Second Piano Concerto (first movement only on free podcast). It’s played by the great Ukrainian-born pianist Vladimir Horowitz, who settled in the USA in 1940, and became a naturalized American. He’s partnered by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Toscanini, a great fan of Horowitz’s playing.
  
  Another fine naturalized American pianist from an earlier era opens this week’s podcast. Leopold Godowsky was born in Vilnius, then part of Poland, in 1870, spent most of his time in the USA in the last decade of the 19th century and became an American citizen, but then returned to Europe until the outbreak of the First World War forced him back to the USA. Famous for his Chopin interpretations, his playing career ended when he suffered partial paralysis while recording Chopin’s Nocturnes in 1930. Stephen Johnson has chosen a 1928 recording of the Nocturne No.1 in B flat, Op.9 No.1
  
  The keyboard continues to hold centre stage with a fine 1952 recording by Flor Peeters of Sweelinck’s `Fantasie mit Echowerk’ for organ, one of a series of modal echo fantasias by the great 17th-century Dutch keyboard master, who was organist at the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam for some 40 years. And finally, clarinet virtuoso Benny Goodman tackles Mozart’s wonderful Clarinet Quintet in a 1938 recording with the Budapest String Quartet.

New York Philharmonic Orchestra
BBC Symphony Orchestra 
conducted by Willem Mengelberg
Recorded 2nd April 1924 and 18th January 1938

Transfers of live recordings from a private collection
Restoration and XR remastering by Andrew Rose, June-September 2009
Cover artwork based on a photograph of Willem Mengelberg

Total duration: 50:12 
©2009 Pristine Audio.

For more download and CD options, see our website

The FLAC downloads:

An amazing collection of rare Mengelberg recordings

Unique performances captured on the earliest electrical test recordings

• The Dawn of Electrical Recording, 1924
  The only known live recording of Mengelberg with the NY Philharmonic
  The only known Mengelberg recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto
  The only known electric recording of violinist Samuel Gardner 
  
  
  • STRAUSS: Death and Transfiguration excerpt 1 (5:37)
  • STRAUSS: Death and Transfiguration excerpt 2 (6:08)
  • WAGNER: Flying Dutchman Overture excerpt (6:40)
  • MENDELSSOHN: Violin Concerto excerpt (6:24)
    Samuel Gardner, violin
    Live electrical test recordings from Carnegie Hall, 2nd April 1924
    Made at Bell Laboratories from a cable feed intended for radio broadcast
    New York Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Willem Mengelberg 
    
    
    
• Mengelberg at the BBC, 1938
  The only known live recording of Mengelberg with the BBC Symphony Orchestra
  The only known Mengelberg recording of the Overture and Nocturne from Midsummer Night's Dream
  The only known Mengelberg recording of the Symphonie Fantastique 
  
  
  • MENDELSSOHN: A Midsummer Night's Dream:
  • Overture (10:59)
  • Nocturne (6:23)
  • Scherzo (4:36)
  • BERLIOZ: Symphonie Fantastique, 2nd mvt - Un Bal excerpt (3:25)
    Live broadcast recordings taken from acetate discs, January 18th 1938
    BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Willem Mengelberg 
    
  
  

This Mengelberg collection has been quite some time in preparation. It's taken from two exceptionally rare and valuable recordings, the first of which is among the oldest electrical recordings in existence, and the only live recording of Mengelberg with the New York Philharmonic.

Made in 1924 at Bell Laboratories, it comprises the only four surviving test sides of experimental recordings of the system which would, the following year, entirely replace the acoustic horn recording method which had been the only source of sound recordings for over 25 years.

It features the only known recording of Mengelberg conducting Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, and probably the only electric recording of the composer and violinist Samuel Gardner. Also on this disc is the only recording of Mengelberg conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra and more works which only exist in Mengelberg's interpretation on this incredibly rare recording.

Download listening sample: (Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto (excerpt), 224kbps ambient stereo)

Notes on the recording:

This collection brings together two fascinating collections of recordings from two concerts given some fourteen years apart. The first four items are taken from a unique set of recordings made by Bell Laboratories on 2nd April 1924, and comprise the only known surviving sides from this concert. Developments in recording technology were urgently needed with the advent of radio, where the use of electric microphones was able to reproduce sound of a quality and frequency range which the acoustic recording process of the day simply could not capture.

Bell were at the forefront of the development of an electrical recording system, capable of cutting disc masters using electronics for the first time in place of the entirely mechanical horn system that had provided all recordings for over a quarter of a century. Knowing that the new system would need to be able to cope with a very wide range of pitch and dynamics, the engineers at Bell realised that the best test of their system could only be a full symphony orchestra.

However, without a suitable studio and the money to experiment in this way with an orchestra, clearly an alternative means of testing their equipment needed to be devised. Fortunately the regular live radio broadcasts from Carnegie Hall could be fed not only to the transmitters, but also directly by wire into Bell's engineering facility. Despite the fragmentary nature of these recordings and their age, they provide us with unique insights not only into a nascent technology still in essence in use today, but they also constitute the only known live recordings of Mengelberg conducting the New York Philharmonic. Furthermore, this is the only known recording of Mengelberg conducting the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, and may also be the only electric recording of the soloist, the violinist and composer Samuel Gardner, who had previously cut three acoustic sides for Victor in 1915.

The BBC recordings are also very special, comprising the only known record of Mengelberg with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Once again the repertoire contains unique recordings - although other recordings exist of the Mendelssohn Scherzo, neither the Overture nor the Nocturne from A Midsummer Night's Dream exist in any other known Mengelberg recording. Finally the short surviving fragment from Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique is the only recording of Mengelberg conducting this work.

These transfers, provided by a private collector, have provided me with great technical challenges. Clearly Bell wished to test the full dynamic range of their recording system, and whilst a full-bodied sound is achieved in the louder sections, the very quietest notes often seem almost to disappear into the background noise. Meanwhile it has been suggested that the BBC acetates from which the 1938 recordings were transfered had been rescued from a waste bin - not the ideal storage medium for so delicate an historic document...

 

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:

Carmen Dragon conducts French and Italian Classics
Pristine Audio PASC 185

The Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra
The Capitol Symphony Orchestra 
arranged and conducted by Carmen Dragon
Recorded in 1956 and 1957

Transfer from Capitol SP8427 and SP8351 by Edward Johnson
Restoration and XR remastering by Andrew Rose, August-September 2009
Cover artwork based on a photograph of Carmen Dragon

Total duration: 68:50 
©2009 Pristine Audio.

N.B. This is an original stereo recording - thus there is no 'Ambient Stereo' option.
All downloads and CDs are stereo. For more download and CD options, see our website

The stereo FLACs:

Superb early Capitol stereo recordings remastered

Master-arranger Carmen Dragon with members of the LA Phil (probably...)

 

• From the LP "La Belle France" rec. 7-9 November 1957
  The Capitol Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Carmen Dragon
  
  
  • La Marseillaise - Rouget de Lisle (4:24)
  • Première Arabesque - Debussy (4:18)
  • Polonaise from Mignon - Thomas (3:52)
  • Frère Jacques - Traditional (3:26)
  • Waltz from Coppelia - Delibes (3:09)
  • Can-Can from Orpheus in the Underworld - Offenbach (2:02)
  • Alouette - Traditional (2:25)
  • Paree! - Padilla (3:43)
  • Sur le Pont d'Avignon - Traditional (1:29)
  • Faust Waltz - Gounod (4:59)
  • My Heart At Thy Sweet Voice - Saint-Saëns (4:26)
    
    
• From the LP "L'Italia" rec. 5-6 July 1956
  The Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Carmen Dragon
  
  
  • Funiculi Funicula - Denza (3:29)
  • Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana - Mascagni (3:55)
  • Moto Perpetuo - Paganini (5:05)
  • Dance of the Camorristi - Wolf-Ferrari (4:03)
  • Capriccio Italien - Tchaikovsky (5:20)
  • Tarantella - Bohn (2:29)
  • Come Back to Sorrento - De Curtis (6:16)
    

Carmen Dragon recorded a number of albums for Capitol in the mid-1950s, concentrating on popular classics. More often than not these were his own arrangements - as well as being a fine conductor he was an accomplished film composer and arranger.

The 'Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra' of the day was probably an amalgam of players from the LA Philharmonic and other film studio orchestras - the name lived on past its brief incarnation with Stokowski in the forties.

They're captured in fine form here in what constitutes some of the earliest commercial stereo recordings. Capitol made quite a name for itself in the early adoption of stereo both for classical and popular recordings, and as this often-exuberant and highly enjoyable collection demonstrates, they did it rather well.

Download listening sample:   (Denza: Funiculi Funicula, 224kbps ambient stereo))

Notes on the recording:

Capitol Records were, in the 1950s, one of the pioneers of stereo recordings, both in the popular and classical field, and for some time made entirely separate recordings of albums in both mono and stereo formats. This can be heard clearly in recordings by the likes of Frank Sinatra, where, for example a close-up multi-miking technique was employed for the mono recording of 'Come Dance With Me', resulting in both greater impact and intimace, whilst the stereo recording was made with two or three overhead microphones, capturing an entirely different perspective of the same recording.

As such, some of these early Capitol stereo recordings are considered to have worked better in their mono format, whereas others fared better in stereo. The selections here, taken from two albums recorded in 1956 and 1957 and probably destined originally for reel-to-reel tape release prior to the commercial development of the stereo LP, almost certainly fall into the latter category. The sound is big and wide - an ideal way to show off one's new-fangled stereo 'hi-fi' equipment!

Edward Johnson's excellent LP transfers have been further enhanced by the use of XR remastering - as with many orchestral releases of this era there was a tendency to a certain shrill glassiness in the upper strings and a slight hole in the lower mid-range. With these relatively minor adjustments in place, together with a taming of a degree of bottom-end boom the recordings really came to life. We suspect that in both cases the orchestral players were probably an assortment of members from the LA Philharmonic and possibly some of the film studio orchestras. The fact that they're given two different names for the purposes of these two LPs doesn't rule out the strong possibility that they were largely the same outfit.

Either way, this is an excellent 'fun' release, with Dragon's superb arrangements excellently played and recorded. If, in the words of Edward Johnson, our sample track Funiculi Funicula doesn't get you "dancing around the kitchen table" then either you have no kitchen, or your kitchen has no table...

 

Available as 320kbps MP3, 16-bit FLAC, 24-bit FLAC, Ambient Stereo FLAC, CD
or listen on demand with Pristine Audio Direct Access (PADA)

---