How much classical music can you fit on a LP?

[ShineyMcShineShine]

I grew up listening to LPs but didn't start listening to classical music until the CD era was well under way, so I've never bought classical vinyl. Since the LP format with its 20-minute sides seems particularly ill suited to classical music, I've been wondering: how did the recording industry adapt to that medium in ye olden days? Did the artists play faster or edit scores to make works fit? Did many works just never get recorded because they didn't easily fit onto a LP? If the main work was, say, 30 or 35 minutes, did they just toss in some filler to round it out to 35 or 40?

[knight66]

I had thousands of classical LPs and as I write I am trying to remember what a maximum length would have been. I think around 30 minutes per side. An example is Bruckner's 5th Symphony. A typical timing for the movements is...18 mins, 18 mins, 12 and 22 mins. that could be got onto three sides, but the version I had was on four. Puccini's Turandot on one EMI version was on three sides. That uneven number of sides and no filler was unusual, but not unique.

Gotterdammerung was on six LPs, and the Kleiber Tristan LPs when initially issued had fade outs and fade ins where the flow of music was broken in Act 2; with the relevent music repeated on the fade in. That was at Kleiber's insistance, but it was not liked by the record buyers and I can't think of another modern recording like that.

Solti's Beethoven's 9th was in a box set of two LPs. The final movement usually comes in at 25 to 27 minutes. That would have been on one side.

I can remember comments in Gramophone where an article was about recording sessions that there was occasionally some quite minor adjustments to accommodate a movement or piece to the length of the sides. Some LPs did give short timings overall. The reissue of Leyontine Price's recitals on CD but replicating the LP format contains some 35 minute discs.

I don't think there was any music that was set aside as being problematic. The LP grew out of the 78RPM market and even Wagner operas were accommodated on that format with dozens of turns. I do recall that some LP sets were arranged so that you could stack a long work with side two being on disc two etc. It saved turning the LP over, but I think that method of production died out in the sixties.

Perhaps some others here can give the longest or shortest timing they can recall. I have no idea what current vinal sets provide by way of timing. There would only be a certain amount of compression possible due to the need to have the needle travel between the grooves.

Mike

[71 dB]

I don't have classical music LPs, so I don't really know.

I believe it's possible to fit 30 minutes of music on one side of a LP when narrower grooves are used. The price is worse sound quality (weaker bass, higher distortion).

[Jo498]

I started listening to classical music when the LP was beginning to be replaced by the CD, but I had several LPs. I had Beethoven's 9th on one LP (re-issue of the 1962 Karajan). That's more than 30 min/side, so the sound quality was not optimal (probably not a big deal on my cheapish equipment). The slow movement had to be split between the sides. The funeral march from the Eroica was also usually split.

I had not Bruckner or Mahler on LP but here many works were issued on two LPs, either 4 sides or three sides and a filler. These works were recorded although probably not quite as frequently as in the last 25 years (although despite/because of the crisis of the recording industry almost everything except opera gets recorded more frequently recently).

Double bar repeats were often skipped (but this was a custom regardless of LP length, they were skipped in live concerts as well).
There were also some fairly short LPs without fillers, eg. Kleiber's Beethoven 5th with one side of ca. 17, the second with 15 or so minutes. In that case one obviously cannot split movements 3 and 4, but some other recordings might have a short ouverture after the symphony bringing the second side to 23-25 min, some cheap issues might also cram the whole piece on one 32 min side with poorer sound.

[knight66]

Thanks Joe, I was trying to remember whether LvB's 9th fitted onto one LP. I seemed to rememeber the Karajan on one in a shop, but I did not buy it until I was onto CDs only.

Pressings could be a problem. I had the Karajan Tristan on LP and went back and forth to EMI with about four pressings of the third LP. It kept clicking in the same places. EMI were getting fed-up and so was I. Especially when the lighter weight LPs were produced, they could warp and that affected the sound. It could depend on how they were stored and they were occasionally warped when new, presumably a transportation issue.

Mike

[Jo498]

I am sure that newly issued full price LvB 9th usually would have come on two LPs, either all 4 sides or 3 sides with e.g. the first or 8th symphony on the 4th side. Karajan is also comparably fleet with about 66 min. It might not have been feasible with a 72 min recording. But pieces around 1 hour were borderline cases and often only on one LP (e.g. Mahler 1, 4, some of Bruckner's). One also has to remember that (at least in Germany) this stuff was expensive.
I also remember some cheapo LPs that were so badly warped that one had to be afraid the needle would skip...

I also think that some of the improvements in pressing technology (dmm) could not only be used for better sound/pressing quality, but also to cram more music on one side.

[The new erato]

The goal when developing the CD was to be able to fit Beethovens's 9th on a single disc. 72 minutes was set as a goal IIRC. That goal governed some of the technical choices that were made for the redbook CD standard.

[Jo498]

I always wondered if this was not an urban legend. Especially because Karajan is supposed to have been involved and he never needed more than 70 min for a 9th, usually less.
And even early CDs could run to 75 min and more (e.g. Klemp's Mahler 2 and Bruckner 5 were on single 79' discs already in 1990) although there were some players who had problems with such long discs and now there are CDs with 82-83 min.

[The new erato]

AFAIK they took a survey of recordings and decided on some "sensible" value - not absolutely sure it was 72 minutes but that is stated in the standard even if most players support more. They were operating on the leading edge of technology at the time and space was at a premium on those discs!

[Turner]

Some LPs had a long duration, especially in the later digital years. A couple of examples in my collection:

Svendsen: Symphonies 1+2 / Janssons / EMI 35:08 + 32:52 = 68 mins
Delius: North Country & Florida / Handley /Chandos 37:28 + 28:42 = 66 mins
Beethoven: PC 3+4 / Perahia, Haitink / CBS-Sony 35 + 34 mins = 69 mins

There are also earlier examples of couplings of Chopin PC 1+2, Mahler 10 complete, Shosty 11, etc., on one LP

EDIT: Oh yes, and the Everest label did a good deal of that, such as Wagner operas/Furtwängler, with a very compressed sound and long duration, at least 35 mins per LP side, I think. Yet, a rather limited listening experience as regards details in the music ...

[Jo498]

Regardless of playing time, I wish they had decided on a somewhat larger format (like the 7'' vinyl "single") because covers and booklets of CDs are just too tiny.

I suspect that there were also marketing decisions involved: If a CD had run to 90 min by default, it would have replaced a double LP album and customers might have been pissed paying full price for the same unit with only 50 min of music or so. And for about a decade CD and LP existed in parallel and many had accordingly a length of 55-60 min.

[The new erato]

Yes, good points that.

[knight66]

Turner, Thanks for that.....much better than relying on my memory.

Some LP sets were so good to llok at, they got me almost drooling. The Kleiber Tristan with the shiny water cover; the CD set had comparitavely little visual impact.

Mike

[The new erato]

Some LP sets were so good to llok at, they got me almost drooling. The Kleiber Tristan with the shiny water cover;

It wasn't water, it was your drool.

[ShineyMcShineShine]

I've always heard that 45 minutes is the max that can be fit onto a LP without sacrificing sound quality, so I'm really surprised to learn that some LPs were nearly 70 minutes long! It's surprising cassettes didn't become more popular than LPs in that case.

[mc ukrneal]

I've always heard that 45 minutes is the max that can be fit onto a LP without sacrificing sound quality, so I'm really surprised to learn that some LPs were nearly 70 minutes long! It's surprising cassettes didn't become more popular than LPs in that case.

Cassettes suffered from repeated play. Quality would noticeably decline when replayed many times (and sometimes only a few times). They were a good option for portability, but they were too easily damaged.

[Pat B]

Anybody interested in the development of the CD format should read this:

http://www.turing-machines.com/pdf/beethoven.htm

Which suggests the story about Beethoven's 9th was basically a cover.

[king ubu]

quite amazed - grew up in the CD era but always had vinyl around at my parents' and started buying some as a teenager on occasion (ain't it somewhat crazy, some reissues in the 90s were OOP on CD but still around on 180g vinyl, so I grumblingly went for those, often missing a bonus track or something that I actually wanted ... some of those turned out to be maybe not bargains but very good deals and the LPs still sound gorgeous today, while the CDs mostly re-appeared again in later editions and I got them to cover the complete material or for more convenient daily listening).

Anyway, the longest LP I remember from back then was Miles Davis' "Water Babies":
http://www.discogs.com/Miles-Davis-Water-Babies/release/66846

I used to hate it when two LPs wouldn't fit onto one of those Maxell XLII-S 90 K7 

[Que]

Anybody interested in the development of the CD format should read this:

http://www.turing-machines.com/pdf/beethoven.htm

Which suggests the story about Beethoven's 9th was basically a cover.

It is always good to see people still enjoying this basically Dutch invention....

Q

[bigshot]

I remember Furtwangler's La Scala Ring was released in a box set with just 11 LPs. (It was later released on 12 CDs.) I seem to remember the LP version had sides that ran 35 minutes, and the grooves were very shallow.