Historical Recordings

[Mandryka]

What's your opinion about this recording?

Thanks

Orpheus

Erb is a rather unique and characterful autodidactic tenor -- you will either love his voice or loathe it. I myself am less than enthusiastic.

The song fans around here may well know his Lieder album -- valuable I think for the Wolf orchestral songs with Bruno Seidler-Winkler.

[George]

Marston Records has a bunch of new releases in the works. More info here.

I am told that the 4 CD Chopin set will be out first, in the next 6 weeks or so:


A Century of Romantic Chopin

54001-2 (4 CDs for the price of 3)

A Century of Romantic Chopin is a four CD-compilation commemorating the Chopin bicentennial year. The set will include some 65 pianists, going back to Francis Planté and Vladimir de Pachmann who were born when Chopin was still alive. Other pianists in the set include Josef Hofmann, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ferruccio Busoni, Moritz Rosenthal, Ignace Jan Paderewski, Ignaz Friedman, Alfred Cortot, Jan Smeterlin, Rosita Renard, Claudio Arrau, Guiomar Novaes, Benno Moiseiwitsch, Solomon, Arthur Rubinstein, Emil Gilels, Earl Wild, Jorge Bolet, and others. All of Chopin's etudes will be represented, as well as a selection of preludes, mazurkas, waltzes, nocturnes, ballades, and scherzi, each performance conveying a personal approach to the music. Some of the recordings will already be familiar to pianophiles because of their legendary status, while many others will be delightful surprises, as they are taken from concert performances and out-of-print recordings.

[Bogey]

Marston Records has a bunch of new releases in the works. More info here.

I am told that the 4 CD Chopin set will be out first, in the next 6 weeks or so:


A Century of Romantic Chopin

54001-2 (4 CDs for the price of 3)

A Century of Romantic Chopin is a four CD-compilation commemorating the Chopin bicentennial year. The set will include some 65 pianists, going back to Francis Planté and Vladimir de Pachmann who were born when Chopin was still alive. Other pianists in the set include Josef Hofmann, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ferruccio Busoni, Moritz Rosenthal, Ignace Jan Paderewski, Ignaz Friedman, Alfred Cortot, Jan Smeterlin, Rosita Renard, Claudio Arrau, Guiomar Novaes, Benno Moiseiwitsch, Solomon, Arthur Rubinstein, Emil Gilels, Earl Wild, Jorge Bolet, and others. All of Chopin's etudes will be represented, as well as a selection of preludes, mazurkas, waltzes, nocturnes, ballades, and scherzi, each performance conveying a personal approach to the music. Some of the recordings will already be familiar to pianophiles because of their legendary status, while many others will be delightful surprises, as they are taken from concert performances and out-of-print recordings.

Almost made it out for his 200th.  Thanks, George!

[George]

Almost made it out for his 200th.  Thanks, George!

Your welcome! I posted it in the Chopin thread, but then I recalled your request for updates in this thread.

[Coopmv]

Are these recordings





the same performance?

Is the naxos a better transfer?

What's your opinion about this recording?

Thanks

Orpheus

I have the Naxos Historical recording.  Philips generally had excellent remastering engineers but this Naxos Historical was reconstructed/remastered by none other than MOT ...

[George]

Just came across this interesting website that does 78 transfers:

http://www.78experience.com/welcome.php?mod=accueil

The 78 rpm experience

The real sound of the 78 rpm ...

No filtering, exact speed, appropriate needle, re-centering for absolute stability. When all the frequencies are preserved, the results bring out incredible musicality and presence, a true feeling of live performance. The instrumental and interpretative genius of the greatest musicians of the past is finally revealed.
_______________

Looks interesting...

[Que]

Just came across this interesting website that does 78 transfers:

http://www.78experience.com/welcome.php?mod=accueil

The 78 rpm experience

The real sound of the 78 rpm ...

No filtering, exact speed, appropriate needle, re-centering for absolute stability. When all the frequencies are preserved, the results bring out incredible musicality and presence, a true feeling of live performance. The instrumental and interpretative genius of the greatest musicians of the past is finally revealed.
_______________

Looks interesting...

Very nice.

Pity I couldn't find any samples - the taste of the pudding is after all in the eating!

Q

[George]

Very nice.

Pity I couldn't find any samples - the taste of the pudding is after all in the eating!

Q

I agree. I sent the owner an email and he felt that MP3 samples wouldn't do the work justice. I suggested WAV, but haven't heard back yet.

[Bogey]

Small Testament sale at Arkiv Music:

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/listPage.jsp?list_id=1812&page_size=100

[George]

This arrived today! (Marston subscribers (like myself) get new releases before they are available for sale. You can subscribe for only all piano or all vocal releases or both.) I plan to listen to listen to this and post impressions soon.

Liszt Illuminated
Claudio Arrau, Jorge Bolet, and Gunnar Johansen
American Liszt Society Laureates
52065-2 (2 CDs)

It is with great pride and pleasure that the American Liszt Society sponsors the release of this 2 CD set on the occasion of the bicentennial of the birth of Franz Liszt. This compilation preserves contributions of three pianists (all American Liszt Society medal winners) to the performance legacy of the compositions and transcriptions of Liszt. Claudio Arrau, Jorge Bolet, and Gunnar Johansen each provide a unique perspective on Liszt's genius. Insightful notes are provided by Frank Cooper, Research Professor of Musicology at the University of Miami. In addition, personal recollections of their respective teachers are provided by Ira Levin, Gordon Rumson, and Garrick Ohlsson. Fully sponsored by the American Liszt Society.

[early grey]

Three new "Historical Recordings" have been added to my website
                                     www.cliveheathmusic.co.uk
                                                      which already has 17 other interesting classical historical works. The latest additions are Dvorak's 8th symphony from the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vaclav Talich, Eileen Joyce playing Mozart Sonatas and other pieces together with Albert Schweitzer's recordings of Bach Organ pieces.   
                       

[George]

Found a cheap used copy of this tonight:



Review by Uncle Dave Lewis , Rovi:

Bartók Recordings from Private Collections is a companion to Hungaraton's extensive Bartók at the Piano set, issued earlier -- both CD sets evolved from LP sets compiled and issued in the 1980s by pianist Zoltán Kocsis and musicologist Laszlo Somfai. Bartók at the Piano gathered all of the commercial recordings made by Bartók for various companies between 1926 and 1944, and thus contains the six or so hours of Bartók's playing preserved in the best sound quality. However, Bartók was a sound recording hobbyist who was utilizing cylinder recording in his ethnological fieldwork from 1905, and in Budapest in the 1930s Bartók had a fan, poetess Sophie Török, who was as enthusiastic about recording his radio broadcasts as Bartók himself was about recording the peasants of Hungary and Romania in folk songs. Bartók Recordings from Private Collections manages to pull together an additional four hours of material from non-commercial Bartók recordings made between 1910 and 1944. The only major composer born in the 1880s to outdo Bartók in terms of sheer quantity of recordings is Stravinsky, and while the sound quality of this set is extremely variable, it shows the full range of his activities as a composer, concert artist musicologist, and interpreter.

The worst sound on the set is reserved for cylinders of Bartók's piano made between 1912 and 1915; these fragile wax cylinders only barely manage to yield their secrets. Yet careful ears will be rewarded with the opportunity to hear Bartók play his Bear Dance only a couple years after he wrote it, and fragments of the famous Rumanian Folk Dances, Sz. 56, recorded AS they were written. Apart from a scattering of radio material culled from the radio archives of continental Europe and a single English-language interview from New York in 1944, the balance of the collection is devoted to the 80 discs in the so-called "Babits/Makai" Collection, one of the most unusual and mind-bending gatherings of historical recordings ever recovered from the past. From 1936 to 1939, Sophie Török was such a hardcore Bartók fancier that she goaded her husband Mihály Babits to pay pioneer Hungarian sound recording engineer István Makai to record Bartók every time he appeared on Radio Budapest. As the political situation in Europe worsened, Makai was unable to obtain the lacquers and wax deceliths needed for instantaneous recording; he resorted to dumpster diving in hospitals for the foil pans used in X-rays, as these would take the cut. That way Makai was able to keep his promise to Mrs. Babits. In the process, Makai recorded fragments of the world premiere of Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 2, Bartók and Ernst von Dohnányi playing Liszt's Concerto Pathétique for piano, four hands, and other timeless, priceless treasures.

As these analogue transfers were made to tape in the 1980s, one wonders what the results would be like in revisiting the X-ray foils that contain, for example, the Second Piano Concerto -- the technology for recovering such early recordings has improved by a quantum leap since these transfers were done. However, one does not listen to such recordings for good sound -- one listens in awe that anything like this could exist at all. It is time travel of a most exquisite kind, where listeners can close their eyes and imagine sitting in the audience in Budapest in the 1930s, hearing Bartók play part of a Bach partita. Such experiences are really beyond criticism, but it is helpful to point out that advance foreknowledge of the pieces Bartók is playing here really helps when it comes to filling in the blanks due to the inevitable lapses in these recordings. Noisy and forbidding as it is, the recording of the Second Concerto is mostly complete, though no amount of improvement in technology is going to bring us more than the 16:21 we have here. One cannot help but be amazed, especially given the hostile and unstable nature of Hungary between the wars, that so much of Bartók's efforts as a pianist are still available to posterity as the wealth found on Hungaraton's Bartók Recordings from Private Collections.

[Roberto]

I have the Naxos Historical recording.  Philips generally had excellent remastering engineers but this Naxos Historical was reconstructed/remastered by none other than MOT ...

It is not a fresh post but the transfers of Hubert Wendel (http://willem-mengelberg.com/) is always preferable for me for Mengelberg's recordings. But I don't have the St Matthew Passion.

[Mandryka]

It is not a fresh post but the transfers of Hubert Wendel (http://willem-mengelberg.com/) is always preferable for me for Mengelberg's recordings. But I don't have the St Matthew Passion.

I once asked Hubert Wendel whether he thought I should get his transfer of the Passion, given that I have the transfer on Naxos. He didn't reply.

I recommend very strongly his transfer of the Bach cantatas and the Brahms Violin concerto and the Bach and Vivaldi suites. And I'm very curious to hear his Mozart PC 19 with Willem Andriessen, and the German Requiem. Have you tried the?

[Roberto]

I once asked Hubert Wendel whether he thought I should get his transfer of the Passion, given that I have the transfer on Naxos. He didn't reply.

I recommend very strongly his transfer of the Bach cantatas and the Brahms Violin concerto and the Bach and Vivaldi suites. And I'm very curious to hear his Mozart PC 19 with Willem Andriessen, and the German Requiem. Have you tried the?

I've ordered many CDs from Mr. Wendel including German Requiem. But this work is not my favorite so I haven't listened yet.  I'm curious to hear the Mozart PC 19 also but I have the Q Disc Mengelberg album too and it contains the Beethoven "Emperor" which is on the Wendel issue also so I can't decide. (I mainly prefer Mozart in period performances but I think I could enjoy that performance also because his Mozart flute concerto with Barwahser is quite good.) I have the Vivaldi on an Opus Kura release and the Bach on the Q Disc but the Wendel release even better than these IMHO.

[bigshot]

I added an interesting novelty to my site today. Here is my transfer and restoration of one of the earliest full frequency range recordings. This is hifi, but it was released on 78rpm shellac a few years before the introduction of the LP. It shows you just how good 78s can sound...

Vincent D'Indy: Overture to "Fervaal"
Charles Munch / L'Orchestre de la Societe du Conservatoire de Paris (Recorded 1947)
http://www.vintageip.com/xfers/dindyfervaal1947.mp3

Felix Mendelssohn: Symphony No 5 in D Minor "Reformation"
Charles Munch / L'Orchestre de la Societe du Conservatoire de Paris (Recorded 1948)
http://www.vintageip.com/xfers/mendelssohnreformation1948.mp3

Enjoy!

[Discobole]

It must certainly sound great but with such a compression (128kbps) not much music survives... Could you maybe offer a flac version ? I'm VERY interested by these recordings...

[bigshot]

It's 128 mono, which is identical in sound quality to 256 stereo. There isn't any artifacting in the file. I could do a 160 (same as 320) but checked these and they sound exactly like the AIFF version. I can't do FLAC, but I can do Apple Lossless, but I really don't think it would make any difference at all.

In case you missed my previous postings, here's some more of my restoration work...

Mahler Symphony No 9: Bruno Walter/VPO 1938
http://www.vintageip.com/xfers/mahler9walter1938.mp3

Beethoven Diabelli Variations Artur Schnabel 1937
http://www.vintageip.com/xfers/schnabeldiabellis.mp3

Wagner Die Walkure Act 1: Bruno Walter/VPO, Lehmann, Melchior, List 1935
http://www.vintageip.com/xfers/walkureact1walter1935.mp3

Enjoy!

[bigshot]

For those who like historical recordings and non-HIP Baroque, here is one of the rarest sets in my 78 collection. Here is some background on it...

Today, Adolph Busch is remembered almost exclusively for his recordings of Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms; but he was equally adept at the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Handel. Through a quirk of fate, this particular recording of Handel's Concerti Grossi, Op. 6 has never received the exposure it deserves with the listening public. It was recorded in 1946 with a revised lineup of the Busch Chamber Players. Adolph Busch was joined by Ernest Drucker on violin, his brother Herman Busch played cello and on harpsicord was the great Bach intepreter, Mieczyslaw Horszowski. The wartime shortages and subsequent recording hiatus were over, and the Busch Chamber Players were invited to record Handel's complete cycle of 12 concerti. These works had not been recorded since Boyd Neel's pioneering records nearly a decade earlier.

Because of the time limitations of 78rpm records, the nearly three hours of music ended up spanning fifty sides, with the impressive stack of 25 records bound into three weighty volumes. Record stores were forbidden to sell the volumes individually, and since the market for record sets this large was limited, very few copies sold. When the long playing record era dawned, Columbia reissued the complete set on LPs, but the transfer was very poor with brittle, scratchy sound that didn't do well to put the performance across. Today, except with very experienced record collectors, this recording is all but forgotten.

Busch's recording of Handel's Concerti Grossi, Op. 6 has had only had one limited release on CD, but the record label had great difficulty locating a complete set of records in good condition to transfer from. Inevitably, in large record sets, the disks on the outside of the volume become cracked, making the first and last records in the set very difficult to find in private collections. The record label searched high and low, and eventually, they were able to locate a single slightly worn copy of the original 78s in the possession of Adolph Busch's widow in Germany. An engineer was dispatched promptly to her home to make the transfer. The liner notes apologized for the muffled sound quality, noting that considering the fragility of shellac 78rpm records and the rarity of this particular set, the records they used for their transfer may be not only the best sounding, but the only intact set in existence.

That was true... until now! On one of my regular rounds of the thrift stores, I discovered the records used for my transfer in the back of a St. Vincent DePaul shop hidden behind a pile of books. All three volumes were complete and in excellent shape. I brought them right home and began working on my transfer. Even though the shellac used by Columbia in the immediate post-war period wasn't the best, the records responded well to my digital sound restoration. I paid particular attention to maintaining the naturalness of the string tone and clarity of the harpsicord continuo, which usually gets buried by ham handed digital filtration. I'm proud to finally present this recording with the sound quality it deserves.

Handel: Concerti Grossi Op 6 (complete)
Adolph Busch / Busch Chamber Players Recorded 1947

Disk 1

http://vintageip.com/xfers/1-01handel_concertogrosso01.mp3
http://vintageip.com/xfers/1-02handel_concertogrosso02.mp3
http://vintageip.com/xfers/1-03handel_concertogrosso03.mp3
http://vintageip.com/xfers/1-04handel_concertogrosso04.mp3
http://vintageip.com/xfers/1-05germinianisiciliana.mp3

I'll post the next batch next week. There will be three batches altogether.

[bigshot]

Disk 2

http://vintageip.com/xfers/2-01handel_concertogrosso05.mp3
http://vintageip.com/xfers/2-02handel_concertogrosso06.mp3
http://vintageip.com/xfers/2-03handel_concertogrosso07.mp3
http://vintageip.com/xfers/2-04handel_concertogrosso08.mp3

I'm not sure if anyone here is interested in this old stuff. Let me know if you'd like me to post more.