Crystal clear old recordings?

[Que]

By all means, slam the rhetoric, but their results are worth defending, and I just want to make sure we're separating the two.

We do.

Q

[Josquin des Prez]

[KevinP]

This, in some form, should be your signature Kevin. 

Yeah, I'l have to tweak it so it's not so context-dependent.  :-)

[George]

By all means, slam the rhetoric, but their results are worth defending, and I just want to make sure we're separating the two.

I should post an example of different transfers of Fischer's WTC so we can compare.

[RebLem]

EmpNap,

Your standards for what is historical and what is not strike me, as an older collector (I'll be 65 on Oct 25, 2007) as bizarre, encompassing even records made in the early 1960's.  To me, its a bit hazy, but everything before the invention of the LP in the late 40's is historical, and everything in true stereo is modern.  The period 1947-1958 is the transition period--depends on the company and what kind of technology they were using.  To me, the Furtwangler EMI References set of the Beethoven Symphonies, for example, are not historical recordings, except for the 2 and 8, both of which are from 1948 and in inferior sound.  The others, all from the 1950's, are fine by me. 

We collect old performances because many of them are great interpretations, or have something to teach us.  Strauss's recording of the last two Mozart symphonies from the late 1920's, for example, sound, to my ears at least, remarkably like what the the latest scholarship tells us they are supposed to sound like.  And then there are the Fritz Busch records from the mid-30's at Glyndebourne, the 1938 Bruno Walter Mahler 9th with the Vienna Philharmonic, the March 22, 1942 Furtwangler Beethoven 9th, a Toscanini Brahms 1 from 1941, the 1953 Rostropovich/Talich performance of the Dvorak Cello Concerto (Rostropovich's first, and, IMO, best recording of the work) with the Czech Phil., and many others.  I am not as enamoured as many of Artur Schnabel's Beethoven, but many would consider his work to be primo performances as well.

But if you want something from the 1950's that sounds as if it were recorded in the 21st century, try Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe with the inimitable Beverly "Bubbles" Sills, conducted by Emerson Buckley.  The 1959 sound will blow you away.   

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=5275

[EmpNapoleon]

Thanks a lot Reb for the recommendations.

It has to be difficult for you too to block out that distortion, static, or whatever, though.  But maybe your ears are used to it, since you grew up with that sound. 

[KevinP]

It's really not a matter of being used to it, or putting up with it, but one of actually prefering it. New digital recordings, and nowadays even new masters of old recordings, can sound much too harsh and bright, and I really miss the warmth of older recordings.

This is less of an issue in classical music though.

[Daverz]

For good sounding Furtwangler, I suggest the Schubert 9th or Schumann 4th, both on DG, and the EMI Beethoven 5th.  All mono, of course.

[George]

I think that it should be said that there is a difference between merely reducing noise (EMI is notorious for this, as is companies like Melodiya who employ the "NoNoise" reduction) and those who seek to preserve the original sound of the performance, even if that means retaining some of the noise. Companies like Pearl, Opus Kura and Naxos all have released many performances that had previously had not been done justice. The Schnabel Beethoven sonatas and the Casals Bach Suites are two examples of this.

One could say that even in the cases where the harshest amount of noise reduction is used for old recordings, the result is anything but clear. Sure it may be virtually free of noise, but the resultant sound resembles a speaker submerged in water.   

[KevinP]

Sure it may be virtually free of noise, but the resultant sound resembles a speaker submerged in water.   

Bingo. Sound is all around us, even when we're as silent as can be, even in a recording booth. It's part of life. Get rid of it, and you remove life from the recording.

[RJR]

All recordings are artificial. It's a human attempt to transform sound waves onto a mechanical medium.