How much classical music can you fit on a LP?

[Turner]

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.

Yes, the LP version was by Everest or less likely Murray Hill.

[otare]

I have the Murray Hill pressing.
Anyway - I seem to remember that 35 min pr. side was an absolute maximum, but it depends on the kind of music on the CD. The grooves at the inner part of the disc is significantly shorter than the outer grooves. As a vinyl disc spins at a constant speed (CAV - Constant Angular Velocity), they had to pack much more information pr. cm as the needled comes closer to the center of the disc, so there was always problems with tracking on the inner grooves. This meant that if you had music with lots of volume you couldn't pack the grooves so tightly as the needle traversed the disc, and so the playing time suffered. With very quiet music you could probably pack 32-35 minutes on a side, but with orchestral music I doubt that you could get more than 25

[Turner]

I have the Murray Hill pressing.
Anyway - I seem to remember that 35 min pr. side was an absolute maximum, but it depends on the kind of music on the CD. The grooves at the inner part of the disc is significantly shorter than the outer grooves. As a vinyl disc spins at a constant speed (CAV - Constant Angular Velocity), they had to pack much more information pr. cm as the needled comes closer to the center of the disc, so there was always problems with tracking on the inner grooves. This meant that if you had music with lots of volume you couldn't pack the grooves so tightly as the needle traversed the disc, and so the playing time suffered. With very quiet music you could probably pack 32-35 minutes on a side, but with orchestral music I doubt that you could get more than 25

I take it that you mean that more than 25 mins would reduce sound quality - not that it wasn´t possible have a longer duration with orchestral music

[otare]

Yes. 25 minutes was quite normal at the end. You could pack the grooves more tightly, but that would reduce the quality. In some cases the needle could "jump" out of the grooves in the innermost grooves.

[Pat B]

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

Q

https://www.youtube.com/v/QJ882QYzr-M

[ZauberdrachenNr.7]

When first introduced, 12-inch LPs played for a maximum of 45 minutes over two sides.  Wiki notes the following, well worth the read : "An extremely limited number of albums would eventually exceed even the 52-minute limitation, with single albums going to as long as ninety minutes in the case of Arthur Fiedler's 1976 LP 90 Minutes with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, made by Radio Shack.[16] However, such records had to be cut with much narrower spacing between the grooves, which allowed for a much smaller amount of dynamic range on the records, and meant that playing the record with a worn needle could damage the record. It also resulted in a much quieter sound. Other notably long albums included the UK version of The Rolling Stones' Aftermath, with each side exceeding 26 minutes in length; Genesis' Duke, with each side exceeding 27 minutes; Bob Dylan's 1976 album Desire, with side two being just shy of thirty minutes; Brian Eno's 1975 album Discreet Music, whose A-side exceeded 30 minutes; Miles Davis' 1972 album Get Up with It, totalling 124:15 min over four sides; Todd Rundgren's 1975 album Initiation, totaling 67:32 min over two sides, and his 1973 album A Wizard, A True Star, whose second side reaches almost thirty minutes; La Monte Young's Dream House 78' 17", whose two sides were each just under 40 minutes (the running time of the album is indeed 78:17 min); and André Previn's Previn Plays Gershwin,, with the London Symphony Orchestra, whose sides each exceeded 30 minutes.[17] Single-LP releases of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony contained over 30 minutes on each side, with the third movement split into two parts. The Greenpeace International Record Project released in 1985 also approaches 40 minutes per side over its two sides. An extremely rare two-disc German pressing restores full sonic clarity and dynamic range lost by the compression to single-disc.

Spoken word and comedy albums, not having a wide range of musical instrumentation to reproduce, can be cut with much narrower spacing between the grooves; for example, The Comic Strip, released by Springtime Records in 1981, has a side A lasting 38:04 min and a side B lasting 31:08 min, for a total of 69:12 min.

In any case, the standard 45-minute playing time of the LP was a significant improvement over that of the previous dominant format, the 78 rpm single, which was generally limited to three to four minutes. At around 14 minutes per side for 10-inch and 23 minutes per side for 12-inch, LPs provided a measured time to enjoy a recording before having to flip discs."

[Cato]

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.

Here is the salient part:

According to the Philips' website with the 'official' history: "The playing time was determined posthumously by Beethoven". The wife of Sony's vice-president, Norio Ohga, decided that she wanted the composer's Ninth Symphony to fit on a CD. It was, Sony's website explains, Mrs. Ohga's favorite piece of music. The Philips' website proceeds:

"The performance by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, lasted for 66 minutes. Just to be quite sure, a check was made with Philips' subsidiary, Polygram, to ascertain what other recordings there were. The longest known performance lasted 74 minutes. This was a mono recording made during the Bayreuther Festspiele in 1951 and conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler. This therefore became the maximum playing time of a CD. A diameter of 120 mm was required for this playing time".

Everyday practice is less romantic than the pen of a public relations guru, as at that time, Philips' subsidiary Polygram –one of the world's largest distributors of music– had set up a CD disc plant in Hanover, Germany that could produce large quantities CDs with, of course, a diameter of 115mm. Sony did not have such a facility yet. So if Sony had agreed on the 115mm disc, Philips would have had a significant competitive edge in the music market. Ohga was aware of that, did not like it, and something had to be done. It was not about Mrs. Ohga's great passion for music, but the money and competition in the market of the two partners. The decision regarding diameter/playing time was taken outside of the group of experts responsible for the CD format. So I, a former member of that group, can only guess what happened at the upper floor. But something unforeseen happened: at the last minute we changed the code.

[Pat B]

Here is the salient part:

The part you put in red is exactly not the salient part.

The salient part is the following paragraph, which explains that Philips had already set up a factory to make 115mm discs and that Sony wanted to negate that advantage. Supporting this notion are the paragraph after that, which explains that even after the development of EFM (which could have allowed the disc to be smaller while keeping the same 74 minute capacity), they kept the 120mm diameter, and the paragraph after that, which explains that regardless of all the redbook parameters, nobody was able to actually manufacture a Furtwangler 1951 CD until years later.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Did the artists play faster or edit scores to make works fit?

I've never heard of any case of playing faster to fit on an LP, but I understand that was a factor in 78s.

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?

Quite often, yes. Although, while some posters here are pointing out the longest LP sides, I've run into some very short ones. Karajan's studio Mahler 9th had the 3rd mvt. on one side and nothing else; it ran to 12:44. The de Waart recording of Adams' Harmonium has a Side 1 which runs only 10:38 - that's probably the shortest side I've ever seen.

Also, with long Mahler movements for example, it was common to split it over sides. The 1st mvt. of the 3rd and finale of the 2nd usually got this treatment.

[Que]

https://www.youtube.com/v/QJ882QYzr-M

Oh, well....

Q

[aukhawk]

An excellent and very good-sounding LP issue from 1960 or 61 was Ormandy/Rostropovich performing Shostakovich Cello Concerto No.1 and Symphony No.1, on the CBS label.  The duration of the Cello Concerto is 27m20 and the Symphony is 30 minutes.  There are some passages in the Symphony where loud percussive effects alternate with silence, and in these some pre-echo can be heard, if you listen for it.

[ShineyMcShineShine]

What does the pre-echo mean? Or rather, what causes it? I've occasionally heard that effect on CD transfers of old material.

[jochanaan]

The longest I've seen was 40+ minutes per side, on Furtwangler's La Scala Ring cycle; but the sound quality is notoriously low for that set.  On the first Solti/Mahler set, the Sixth Symphony's finale fits on a single side at 27+ minutes with good sound quality at high volume.  Philips issued Haitink's Das Lied von der Erde (with Janet Baker, James King and the Concertgebouw) on a single LP, with Side 2, containing "The Drunkard in Spring" and "The Farewell", clocking at 35+ minutes with superb sound; but much of that music is very soft playing that takes up much less space on an LP pressing.  You can fit many more grooves per inch on an LP if the playing is soft and the cutting needle doesn't vibrate as widely.  The same is true if the sound is mostly high frequencies with no bass drum roll or organ pedals.

I always figured 30 minutes for a practical LP side length.

One difference on classical LPs is that classical music records many fewer breaks than non-classical LPs, and breaks take up quite a bit of room on a pressing.

[The new erato]

What does the pre-echo mean? Or rather, what causes it? I've occasionally heard that effect on CD transfers of old material.

Tighly compressed grooves on a LP means that the engravings in ne grrove might influence on the neigboring groove,making a faint "preecho" of what's in the next gröove.

Or wound tapes have magnetic printthrough to the next revolution of tape. That's why tapes should be rewound occasionally.