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#humblebrag
My Letter to the Editor of "The Strad," the magazine of record for the string world for more than 100 years, was not only printed; it was awarded the prize for Letter of the Month.
The prize was, ouf, a set of ritzy violin strings.
What a way to make a guy feel guilty.
But at least I have done right by King David!
ATB,
JM
Follow Ups:
The speed sounds fine on this one...........
Whether it was speed corrected, I don't know.... I will say unlike some other Cleveland recordings, this one is A=440.
The speed is OK there as well.
I listened to the first and third movements of the performance on YouTube...... (I'll listen to the entire performance again this weekend.)I thought Oistrakh was phenomenal in the opening movement.... (May be my favorite from the violinist.) The final movement was a little "mechanical" for my tastes, although I think Szell was more a culprit here than Oistrakh.....
The YouTube recording seemed a little "garbled" at times, but I never sensed anything "off" speed-wise.
Edits: 07/24/15
That would be a discrepancy of close to five percent, given the listed timing of 22:35 for the 2003 CD for the first movement. So the increase in speed is much more, percentage wise, than the increase in pitch (which makes sense given their non-linear relationship).
That result alone would seem to prove your theory, so I'm not sure why there was such a debate about it here when you first mentioned it.
When I tested some of your conclusions (with very modest equipment) on the pitch of Szells's and Oistrakh's other recordings, I found that in at least some of Oistrakh's other concerto recordings, Oistrakh and the accompanying orchestra (not Szell or Cleveland) were often tuned much sharper than a=440. OTOH, some Szell/Clevland orchestral recordings from the 60s I tested did indeed start at exactly a=440, as you stated. But even there, orchestra solos were often played sharp, and the fight to stay at a=440 was not entirely a winning battle. No wonder Szell used that contraption.
But why is any of that relevant, since the timing tells all?
We start with, there cannot be much doubt about the CD layer of the SACD "Signature Edition," and that result is repeatable anywhere.
My personal LP that Michael Fremer ripped (and, if an MF rip is not the last word, a huge hole has just been rendered in the space-time continuum) is from 1978 or so, and therefore is fast-n-sharp.
The pre-1973 Brown U. LP I ripped had to be ripped on a very aged Technics turntable inside the library walls, and I have begun to suspect that it was off in some respect.
If I had to write the The Strad LTE again today, I would have said something like, "may be as much as a minute off."
All that said, one thing I have learned in all this is that we are barking up the wrong tree with LPs.
There can be no doubt that in 1969, the Cleveland Orchestra tuned to A = 440Hz, so, the real question is, what happened?
I have toyed with the idea of Kickstarting the search for the original, in-machine Cleveland Dynatrack 8-track masters, but, that's like joining a cult.
90 days of bread and water--for what?
Disappointed donors?
We could not find the tapes?
jm
"There can be no doubt that in 1969, the Cleveland Orchestra tuned to A = 440Hz, so, the real question is, what happened?"
After getting accounts of the Cleveland Orchestra tuning "noticeably flatter" than visiting orchestras by both ushers and patrons at Severance Hall (from direct conversation inside the place), and by listening to recordings released prior to the Severance Hall renovation (can be demonstrated on YouTube clips), I was under the impression that the Cleveland Orchestra tuned closer to A=436Hz..... (The recordings of the Orchestra after the Severance Hall renovation were noticeably sharper, right at A=440.)
This could mean that the Oistrakh recording may have been speeded up yet even more..... (Unless Szell actually did use 440 at the time.)
There was, I was told by Norman Pickering (one of the founder of the Audio Engineering Society AES) a button on the podium that allowed Szell to beam a remotely struck and amplified 440 tuning fork directly at the orchestra, no need for the oboe.
I analyzed CD transfers of several non-EMI-Angel same-era Cleveland recordings, and they were all very near 440; by very near I mean less than 1 Hz which means 0.00227 or so. There was one Columbia one that averaged a little over 439.
All that said, I am too busy and tired to try Kickstarting this myself.
JM
No bigger Cleve fan than me, i find that VERY unlikely.
Ushers wouldn't be my main source of Musical Insight.
Although Robert Marcellus was one of the greatest ever on the clarinet, his successor, Franklin Cohen, maybe had the hardest time with intonation of any player on the Orchestra.... (His intonation often made me cringe, only because the rest of the Orchestra was so dead-on. One such passage was in the third movement of Dvorak's "New World" Symphony.) Whether that's related to what you mentioned, hard to say.
Hi John,
I would expect them to do no less! I know Thomastik guitar strings are, as you say, quite ritzy (i.e., pricey), so nice going! I have the Angel/EMI LP (Library of Congress No. 77-751077), which I haven't heard for a while, so you've given me a great suggestion for tonight's listening.
-Bob
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