This album is included in the following sets:
This set contains the following albums:
- Producer's Note
- Full Track Listing
- Cover Art
- Historic Review
Kulenkampff's 1936 Beethoven Violin Concerto set the standard for years
Coupled with his late recording of the Brahms Double with Mainardi & Schuricht in wonderful new transfers
As the Gramophone reviewer noted (see Additional Notes), the 1936 Telefunken Beethoven recording played considerably sharp - at 78rpm the average pitch of the recording was A=456.57Hz. Here it is offered at concert pitch, A=440Hz. Some of those Telefunken sides were exceptionally long, resulting in considerable treble loss at the end of some sides. As my aim here has been to preserve as much top end as possible, this will be apparent in one or two places. Likewise the listener will hear a slightly raised level of hiss, left in order to preserve as much as possible of Kulenkampff's superb upper tone.
If it seems unfair to put a mid-30s German recording up against Decca's superb 1947 ffrr recording of the Brahms, well the Telefunken certain stands up well, even without the extended frequency range of the later recording. The Decca recording was Kulenkampff's penultimate session for the company, and may well have been his final orchestral studio recording - he was to go on to record three sonatas with Solti at the piano the following summer, just weeks before his untimely death.
The Beethoven recording was naturally very reverberant, and I have not added to this. By contrast, the Brahms seemed excessively dry, and a small amount of convolution reverberation has been added to compensate for this - in the absence of a suitably Swiss acoustic space I've used the fine sound of Birmingham Symphony Hall, England, albeit very sparingly.
Andrew Rose
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt conductor
Recorded 25 June 1936, Berlin
Transfers from Telefunken E2016-21
Matrix Nos 021284-93, 021295
All first takes except sides 4, 9, take 2
Enrico Mainardi cello
L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
Carl Schuricht conductor
Recorded 8 July 1947, Radio Studio, Geneva
Producer Victor Olof
Engineer Kenneth Wilkinson
Transfers from London 78rpm box LA-147
Matrix Nos SAR 274-291
All first takes except side 7, take 2
Georg Kulenkampff violin
XR remastering by Andrew Rose at Pristine Audio, February 2012
Cover artwork based on a photograph of Georg Kulenkampff
Total duration: 79:39
