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Pristine Classical e-Newsletter - Click here to subscribe |
Pristine
News: Friday 5th March, 2010
Samuel Barber
(1910 - 1981)
In this week's newsletter:
-
New this week - Koussevitzky
conducts Barber - premières abound: Second Symphony (original) &
Violin Concerto (revised)
- Looking
back - Toscanini's world premières of the Adagio for
Strings and Essay for Orchestra No. 1
-
PADA Exclusives - Coppola
conducts Chausson's Symphony - a première recording?
- Competition - Announcing the winner of our 5th anniversary
competition
Editorial - A timely e-mail arrived on
Wednesday evening...
In order to keep things moving here at Pristine I have
to stick to a fairly precise and tight schedule. Mondays to Wednesdays
are dedicated to the work of transferring, restoring and remastering.
Thursdays are taken up by research, cover designs, download-file
preparation and uploading to our servers. Friday mornings I try to get
all of the website updates written and online, whilst the afternoons
are spent finishing catalogue updates and preparing this e-mail. The
boundaries are somewhat loose some weeks, but in general they work well.
This week was slightly unusual. I had spent a long weekend in Paris
with my family - museums and galleries on Saturday and Monday (finally
getting to see the Mona Lisa), and Disneyland on Sunday, which
was much more fun than I'd imagined, especially with a 9-year-old
birthday boy to show me what to do.
All of this meant that my three days of restoration had shrunk to two,
but as things were already well advanced for this week I wasn't too
concerned, and by Wednesday afternoon I had both Mark Obert-Thorn's Koussevitzky
conducts Barber complete and an as-then still untitled double-CD
collection of various works conducted by Felix Slatkin all dutifully
titled-up and saved to our master disc drives.
Then on Thursday I awoke to find an e-mail from the New York Times in
my in-box, asking whether they might use our recording of Barber's Adagio
for Strings to accompany an article in the paper on Sunday. This
rang a small alarm bell, and I remembered why Mark had been so keen to
slip in an extra release this week - the centenary of Samuel Barber!!!
I had been so bound up in trips to Paris, a bad head cold, and making
sure the Slatkin was ready to go that this small but important fact had
completely slipped my mind.
I had planned to contact Leonard Slatkin, Felix's son and a
world-renowned conductor himself (of course!) to enquire about
photographs for cover artwork, but in the end it was the ever-helpful
Edward Johnson who made contact while I was still making master files -
however, Leonard's reply came to us from a German airport where he was
awaiting a connection, wishing us all the best but clearly not in a
position to help.
He did give us his brother's e-mail address, and Frederick Zlotkin (he
prefers to use the original spelling of the family name) exchanged a
number of e-mails with us yesterday and sent a wealth of photos as well
- all of which would have arrived too late had I not realised whilst
taking a shower yesterday morning that we really ought to be making a
little more of the Barber centenary than we were planning to.
But that's not all. At the same time as all of this was happening I got
my hands on yet another new bit of software to help with my
restorations, and as I had the Slatkin recordings open and ready to go
I decided to experiment on them first. The difference was subtle - and
the nature of it will remain in my little box of hidden treasures to be
used occasionally during XR remastering - but it was a real improvement
all the same, and suddenly I felt I could not release the Slatkin
without starting all over again and adding this new dimension to my
repertoire.
So there's no Felix Slatkin double-CD this week - that comes next week
and it's already sounding spectacularly good (most of it's in stereo,
too), which means that our third instalment of Krauss's hugely popular
Wagner Ring Cycle will be held back a further week to the
19th.
It's one of the great advantages of a small operation like ours - the
combination of a timely e-mail and a little piece of computer software
acquired on a Wednesday evening can completely change everything! We've
unfurled the Stars and Stripes on our welcome page, I've updated the
covers for the Toscanini Barber recording and created a new sample
recording for it, and I almost can't wait to share with you the new,
improved Felix Slatkin!
Felix Slatkin conducting the Concert Arts Orchestra, mid-1950s - photo
courtesy of Frederick Zlotkin
Andrew Rose, St. Méard de Gurçon, France
New
release
today:
Koussevitzky
conducts Barber
Pristine
Audio PASC 217
 Ruth
Posselt, violin
Boston Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Serge Koussevitzky
Recorded
in 1944 and 1949
Producer
and Audio Restoration Engineer: Mark Obert-Thorn
Recordings from the collection of Langdon F. Lombard
Cover artwork based on a photograph of Samuel Barber & Serge
Koussevitzky
Total
duration: 56:32
©2010 Pristine Audio
For
more download and CD options, see our website
| The
FLAC downloads: |
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The complete Barber as conducted by Koussevitzky
Marking
Barber's centenary with previously-unissued world première recordings
-
BARBER Concerto for Violin and
Orchestra, Op. 14 (1939-40;
revised 1948)
Ruth
Posselt, violin
Recorded
at the concert of 7th January, 1949 in Symphony Hall, Boston (world
première of revised version)
-
BARBER Commando March (1943)
(3:48)
From
the broadcast of 12th February, 1944 at Hunter College, New York
-
BARBER Symphony No. 2, Op. 19 (original
version, 1943-44)
(“Dedicated
to the Army Air Forces”)
From
the broadcast of 4th March, 1944 in Symphony Hall, Boston (world
première)
Serge
Koussevitzky · Boston Symphony Orchestra
Tuesday 9th March marks the 100th anniversary of
the birth of one of America's great composers, Samuel Barber.
We mark this date with a fabulous collection of
previously unissued recordings, transferred by Mark Obert-Thorn for
Pristine, and featuring both the world première performance of his
Second Symphony, and the first performance of the revised version of
his Violin Concerto.
In addition there's a 1944 radio broadcast performance of
Barber's Commando March - bringing together in one release all of the
recorded repertoire of Barber as conducted by Serge Koussevitzky.
This series of recordings is presented in remarkably good
sound quality - despite in the case of the Violin Concerto the use of a
microphone concealed in a Symphony Hall air vent to make surreptitious
recordings of the orchestra during the 1948/9 season!
Download
listening sample:
(Violin Concerto,
1st movement)
Technical
notes:
These
three works comprise the complete recorded repertoire of Samuel Barber
as conducted by Serge Koussevitzky. (There was also an earlier
broadcast performance of the Commando
March, but no commercial recordings of any of the works.)
Koussevitzky was famous for championing contemporary American composers
during his tenure in Boston, and he brought his customary passion and
commitment to the scores we hear on this program.
The Violin
Concerto is heard in
the first performance of the revised version Barber prepared in
November, 1948. The soloist, American violinist Ruth Posselt, was
married to the BSO’s concertmaster and assistant conductor, Richard
Burgin, and holds the record for most appearances by a soloist with the
orchestra. The concert from which this recording emanates was not
broadcast, but rather was surreptitiously recorded using a microphone
concealed in a ventilation grate above the stage, as were several other
concerts during the 1948-49 season. The sound, relayed by telephone
line and taken down on acetate discs at a local Boston recording
studio, is nonetheless surprisingly well-balanced and immediate. (A
couple bars in the finale that were missing on the original recording
due to a skipped groove have been patched in from another performance.)
The Commando
March and Second
Symphony date from
Barber’s service in the U. S. Army Air Force during the Second World
War. The broadcast of the symphony’s world première features the
original version of the work, which Barber revised in 1947 in part to
jettison programmatic elements. One of the casualties of this was the
removal of the electronic tone generator used in the second movement
(starting at 5:34 in Track 7) to suggest the radio beam used for
guiding flyers. Although Barber made a recording of the revised version
in 1950, he withdrew the work from performance in 1964 and soon after
destroyed all known copies of the score, keeping only the revised
second movement which he renamed
Night Flight. A copy of the orchestral parts of the complete
symphony turned up in England after Barber’s death and has been used as
the basis for further performances.
Mark
Obert-Thorn
Looking
back:
The
Barber Première Concert
Pristine
Audio PASC 080
 NBC
Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Arturo Toscanini
Broadcast live on 5th November, 1938, NBC Studio 8H, New York
Disc One taken from aircheck discs
Disc Two taken from NBC master lacquer discs
Pristine Audio XR remastering by Andrew Rose, June 2007
(Duration
49'42", 38'43")
For
more download and CD options, see our website
"...a
"Barber Premiere Concert" which includes amazingly accomplished world
première performances of Barber's Adagio and First Essay, as well as
Graener's Die Note von
Sanssouci, Debussy's Iberia and Dvorák's New World, the only
Toscanini performance that I know of that includes the first-movement
exposition repeat..."
- Rob Cowan, Gramophone, December 2007
The 1938 Barber Première Concert
CD1: Part One (upper links above)
- Graener: Die
Flöte von Sanssouci -
- Barber: Adagio
for Strings -
- Barber: Essay
for Orchestra No. 1, Op. 12 -
- Debussy: Ibéria
CD2: Part Two (lower links above)
- Dvorák: Symphony
No. 9, "From the New World" in E minor, Op. 95
Samuel Barber's Adagio
for Strings is
without doubt his most well-known - and well-loved - works. It began
life as a movement of his mid-30s String Quartet before being scored
for string orchestra and presented to Toscanini.
Following a misunderstanding between composer and conductor, Barber
mistakenly believed he had been snubbed by Toscanini when the score to
the Adagio was returned to him without
comment. In fact, the maestro had memorised the whole thing and felt
Barber might well need it back!
This release features the world premières of both the Adagio and the first Essay
for Orchestra. Copies of this Pristine release now reside at the
US Library of Congress, following a request earlier this year from the
library, and the recording is also to be featured alongside an article
in this Sunday's New
York Times on Barber
and his Adagio.
Download
listening sample:
(Adagio for Strings
(excerpt),
Ambient Stereo)
Notes
on the recordings:
We
used two different source recordings in order to put together for the
first time a complete record of this historic concert. Part One was
recorded from an off-air test disc, Part Two from a re-broadcast of
NBC's master lacquers. As such there is a slight discrepancy in sound
quality, with marginally higher hiss levels on the first disc. Copies
of the first half of this concert have circulated amongst collectors
for some time, and the Graener has been issued on CD. I also believe
the Debussy and Dvorak recordings surfaced on LPs some years ago, but
never onto CD.
This new restoration tackles some of the inherent problems of the
aircheck disc for the first time, using audio technology not previously
available to restoration engineers to remove or dramatically reduce
radio interference and also tackle various hum frequencies and assorted
radio whistles present throughout the original master. It has also been
possible to fix a number of drop-outs in the recordings we were
presented with, which had been dubbed onto open-reel tape some years
ago. The original recordings were of course mono, but the tape hiss
from later transfers was wide and stereo. I have narrowed the stereo
field of this hiss, though some very mild stereo spread may still be
evident in upper frequencies.
Andrew
Rose, 2007
New
MP3 transfers at PADA Exclusives
by Dr. John Duffy
in Ambient Stereo
|
Coppola
conducts Chausson
Piero
Coppola
Chausson
Symphony in B flat, Op. 20
Orchestre de la Société
des Concerts du Conservatoire Paris
cond. Coppola
Rec. 1934
Possibly
the world première recording of Chausson's Symphony.
Further
notes
Piero
Coppola (October 11, 1888 in Milan – March 17, 1971 in Lausanne,
Switzerland) was an Italian conductor, pianist and composer.
Coppola's
parents were both singers. He studied at the Milan Conservatory,
graduating in piano and composition in 1910. By 1911 he was already
conducting opera at La Scala opera house in Milan.
That
year he heard Debussy conduct his own compositions Ibéria and Prélude à
l'après-midi d'un faune in Turin, an experience that "had a decisive
influence on his career".
He
then worked in Brussels, Belgium before spending the duration of World
War I in Scandinavia. In 1921 Coppola resided in London and he later
later moved to France.
Between
1923 and 1934 he was the artistic director of La Voix de son Maître,
the French branch of The Gramophone Company. In 1924 he was asked by
Sylvia Beach to make a recording of James Joyce reading from Ulysses:
Coppola replied that the recording would have to be made at Beach's
expense, would not have the HMV label on it and would not be listed in
the catalog.
In
the late 1920s and 1930s Coppola conducted recordings of many works of
Debussy and Ravel, including the first recordings of Debussy's La mer
and Ravel's Boléro.
Coppola's
conducting enjoyed the admiration of Debussy, although the composer
never actually heard Coppola perform any of his works.
His
work in French repertoire has been widely praised. His recordings of
Debussy have been described as "without rival for the period", with his
1938 recording of Nocturnes eulogized as a "masterpiece" and among the
early recordings "closest to Debussy's thought".
His
recording of Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin won the Grand Prix du
Disque in 1932. Coppola also conducted the first recording of
Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto, with Prokofiev himself as soloist, in
June 1932.
From
1939 onwards Coppola worked in Lausanne, Switzerland.
.
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
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Fifth
Birthday Competition
Many thanks to all
who entered our competition a few weeks ago. We've now put all the
names into a virtual hat - yes, there really is a piece of software
called "The Hat" for doing precisely this kind of thing! - and the
winners have been selected at random.
Our first prize, of a Pristine
Audio Digital Music Collection hard drive, goes to Mr. Anders Riber
of Denmark, who I will be contacting directly. Mr. Riber has been a
regular here at Pristine for a number of years now, and we wonder how
we'll cope without his often weekly CD orders! I'm pleased to see this
drive going to a true enthusiast - about a year ago he wrote to me
thus: "...first I would like to say, that getting acquainted with your
labors has enriched the autumn of my life to a very high degree. Many
of your items I thought I already had in fairly good incarnations but
you have proved me wrong! Even in mp3 quality they are better...". Mr.
Riber was formerly the cathedral organist at Aarhus, where our music
collection drive will shortly be heading.
Our fifty runners up have also been drawn - an e-mail will be
sent early next week to each of the winners to nominate a download of
their choice. Thank you to all those who sent post cards from around
the world! The last one arrived just over a week ago from Philadelphia,
PA.
Pristine Classical - DRM-free historic FLAC and MP3 downloads since 2005
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