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It's been a couple of months since I last posted about a group of Mercury CD's I transferred to iTunes (in the process of moving all my CD's to iTunes), and I've transferred a couple hundred more CD's (on other labels) in the meantime. Since I'm still following my rule to listen to at least one track of every CD I transfer, things are still going very slowly, but because it's been so many years since I've listened to some of these discs, I've been pleasantly surprised by certain titles, and I thought I'd share my current impressions of another few. (BTW, just to dispel confusion, my last post about the Mercury Living Presence CD's didn't deal with my absolute favorite Mercuries - just the most recent 10 I'd transferred.) So here are another few I've transferred (in no particular order):
Svetlanov had a HUGE discography and he recorded many works (not just the Russian repertoire) multiple times. He was also a conductor who slowed down in many works as he aged. These two performances of the Borodin First Symphony - a great work BTW! - illustrate these interesting differences. The recording with the USSR SO has an energy that completely wins me over: in the Schumann-inspired last movement, the vitality is simply infectiuous. (In this respect, it's similar to the better known Melodiya-EMI recording by Rozhdestvensky, and Rozhdestvensky also slowed way down when he re-recorded the work many years later.) The USSR SO recording also features that wide vibrato brass playing that seemed to be typical in the Soviet era. The later RCA recording (shown on the right above) features superior engineering and tonal characteristics from the orchestra which are much more in line with Western preferences, even if some of the energy has been lost. For their individual qualities, I like both of these recordings.
Although the image above shows the complete symphonies, I have only the 3rd, 5th and 7th from de Waart's set, which, AFAICT did not stay in print for very long. I think very highly of these well-recorded performances, and I feel they ought to be better known (3, 5 and 7, at least!).
What can I say? Anna Moffo just had it all: looks, voice, personality! I think I was still in love with her when this recording came out! Sure, her insane work schedule (which included a regular series on Italian television, "The Anna Moffo Show", which she did in addition to her operatic work) no doubt hastened her rapid vocal decline, but she was so great at her best - I love that individual, clear, dark timbre that she had, and she was a great actress (for an opera singer) too - as attested in her videos of Lucia and Traviata (despite their old, mediocre video quality). I dare you to resist the famous "Chi'l bel sogno" aria on this recording!
I believe this Mahler Ninth was Vaclav Neumann's last recording - he died when the sessions which would have resulted in his third go at the Mahler Seventh were still incomplete. (Neumann had not re-recorded the Eighth for Canyon either.) Canyon was a Japanese label that did a fair amount of recording in Europe - however US distribution of the Canyon catalog was spotty at best. This label did a particularly good job in Prague (IMHO) capturing the full, beautiful tone quality of the CzPO and its surrounding acoustic in a way that Supraphon (and even Denon, which was working with Supraphon in the early digital era) largely failed to do. Neumann's series of Mahler symphonies on the Canyon label (which came out during that late 80's and early 90's) was magnificent, and corrected some odd mistakes (a slight missed brass attack at the end of the Resurrection and a whopper mistake with the one of trumpet parts in the wrong key near the end of the first movement of the Third) which somehow disfigured his earlier Supraphon Mahler series. For me, Neumann's incomplete Mahler series on Canyon (some performances of which were reissued in various hi-rez formats on the Japanese Exton label - the successor to the Canyon label) is one of the most satisfying I know of. (And it was good to hear Riccardo Chailly on one of his recent blu-rays finally acknowledge Neumann's contribution to the Mahler traditions of the great Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in the early 60's.) I was fortunately able to pick up a lot of CzPO recordings on the Canyon label, both with Neumann and with the conductors who succeeded him after his death. (Gerd Albrecht in particular had a nice series of Bruckner symphonies going with the CzPO on this label before he relinquished his directorship under what I understand were some odd and strained circumstances partly having to do with national pride, politics, and other non-musical factors.)
Despite his difficulties as director of the CzPO, Albrecht evidently had a genuine interest in and affection for many of Dvorak's more obscure works. I wouldn't necessarily expect Dvorak's oratorio, "Saint Ludmila", to travel well outside the Czech Republic (although the work did have a success in England when it was originally written), but Albrecht believed in it and recorded it with the WDR Orchestra in Cologne. I had the Smetacek recording of this work (which, stylistically, is prime Dvorak, its opus number following directly after the Seventh Symphony) on LP, but this Orfeo recording is better engineered and has soloists who, overall, are a bit easier on the ear than the ones on that earlier Supraphon recording.
This was a surprise: I'd remembered this recording as a pretty good central European set (moderate tempos, etc.) and I also remembered some oddities about it, such as a couple of muffled coughs which made it through to the master, even though these are studio recordings, not in-concert recordings. In any case, I was amazed at how good the recording quality seemed on my most recent re-listening - it really allows Kubelik's undemonstrative (but warm and loving) renditions to be heard at their best. I think he did a mono Brahms First for Mercury while he was in Chicago in the early 50's, as well as a whole set with the VPO for Decca/London. However, I think this Orfeo set may capture Kubelik's Brahms Symphony performances at their best.
There are so many aspects of the recordings I've recently transferred that I could write about. I've spent so much time re-listening to these older recordings that I've really fallen way behind in keeping up with the new recordings issued this year. I'll try to post about some of the newer 2014 recordings that I've heard in a couple of weeks. I don't think it will be nearly as long a list as in years past. (Hint: it hasn't been a good year for babe musician recordings IMHO!)
Follow Ups:
I strongly -and I mean strongly- recommend the Mahler 7 he did with the Leipzig Gewandhaus orch in the late 1960s, rereleased on Berlin Classics. It should be available pretty cheaply on Amazon. This may be my favorite Mahler recording. Exciting, with palpable commitment from the orchestra.
I don't agree with you about the Borodin 1st - to me it's a dull formative work - but I'm happy you enjoy it.
. . . about that Neumann/LGO Mahler 7 (really, all the Neumann/LGO Mahler) - I've had the Seventh ever since it came out on CD. I'd known about its existence (on the Eterna label, I believe) even during LP days, but had never been able to obtain a copy. Another thing I love about all those Neumann/LGO Mahler recordings is how honestly they seem to have been recorded - get those multi-microphones outa here! In a few places of the Seventh, there are some notes which I don't recall hearing in other recordings (even on Neumann's Mahler 7 remake with the CzPO on Supraphon) - I don't know if those were just some minor misreadings which were allowed to pass, or if they were using some alternate edition of the work. In any case, this recording has long been a big favorite of mine. Glad you like it too - it received some cheap criticism from idiot reviewers when it first came out (again, on CD). One dismissed the recording because he didn't like the sound of the cymbals - what a dipstick!
So you're even immune from the Schumannesque rhythmic and textural enticements of the last movement of Borodin's First? Gosh, I love those unexpected syncopations in the main theme (pure Schumann!), but then there's that little chromatic theme which follows and which no one else but Borodin could have written. ;-)
Hi-
Great report, thanks.
There is a musicological urban legend that Dvorak wanted to set John Henry (later, Cardinal) Newman's mystical poem "The Dream of Gerontius," and his publisher (supposedly) sharply rebuked him: "Too Catholic!"
I have long wondered whether perhaps lukewarm marketplace reception of Dvorak's religious works in a Protestant country not yet fully having abandoned legal disabilities for Catholics (e.g., it would have been illegal for Oxford or Cambridge to register the young Edward Elgar as a student) had anything to do with that.
Elgar's own "Gerontius" had a mixed reception (at first) in England, but, it caused Strauss literally to toast Elgar as "England's first musical Progressive," and it was Kreisler's admiration of Gerontius that set in motion Elgar's Violin Concerto, which I, perhaps a majority of one, consider the greatest of all violin concerti.
Anna Moffo: Hot stuff. Back in the day. Are those nude pictures on the 'net genuine???
JM
We've yet to catch a peek of Anna Moffo.For that, you'd need to see her sans heavy mascara.
Women don't see themselves as "naked" until the eye makeup comes off.
Edits: 12/14/14
I had no idea she'd had such a TV and film career in Italy.
JM
If only men could compete with a pillow.
Interesting about the "Gerontius by Dvorak" urban legend - I had not heard that before! BTW, my understanding is the Elgar got an "imprimatur" by one (or was it several?) Protestant bishops before the premiere of the work?
Regarding the Anna Moffo nudies, I think most of them are probably real - TV nudity standards in many countries in Europe were much more relaxed at that time than they were here in the US. In fact, I remember at a certain point in our German language studies, our teacher recommended that we try to read some German magazines auf deutsch. Next time the class met, after many of us had picked up "Stern" and other mainstream German magazines, we started the class by asking our teacher, "Hey - What's with all the topless photos in these German magazines?". Same answer: more relaxed standards - Europeans were just not as freaked out about it as 'murcans were. ;-)
Gee, congrats, Red-Letter Day, you came up with some Gerontius trivia that my Jewish ancestors who were alive at the time were unaware of, and so was I!
First, one has to remember that the premiere was actually in a civil building--Birmingham Town Hall. And it does appear that Elgar allowed Bowdlerized performances, so until 1910 performances in Anglican venues were allowed to soft-pedal Purgatory, etc. Dunno how many did. "Anglo-Catholic" Anglican churches would have been OK with that.
Two sound bites: I tell people that Gerontius is Dante in 90 minutes.
And LKJ Setright allowed that Gerontius could turn anyone into a Catholic, as long as it was playing... . And LKJ was Orthodox Jewish.
I must confess that my efforts to get Ken Kessler to sit down and listen to it in one go, have been unavailing.
ATB,
John
Sadly not on either QOBUZ or TIDAL at 16/44.1 but is on Spotify which is about 90% the quality of sound when streaming from my laptop to headphones through a cheap USB DAC.
Sounds GREAT on Spotify, I'd check it out if I were you.
Available for cheap at Amazon Sellers, link below:
Melodiya has had so many co-productions with western companies over the past decades, it's interesting that they're now reissuing many of these same recordings under their own (non-hyphenated!) label. Haven't tried too many of the new reissues myself, and in fact I was disappointed by their recent reissue of the Glazunov Symphonies with Rozh (with some of the tapes having momentary wow in places). However, I'll check this new remastered Borodin set (presumably deriving from the same masters as on the first disc I pictured - the Melodiya/BMG incarnation) on Spotify - thanks for the update!
Likely due to one or two bad pressings. Now it's an automatic buy if I'm in a used record store that sells good quality vinyl at decent prices. OK, only Randy's Records in Salt Lake City passes that test. ;-)
More than half the time I am more than pleased with my purchase and only a few are really not keepers.
Thanks, Chris, that was an enjoyable read. I'm a Svetlanov fan too. A while back I mentioned the distinctive sound of Svetlanov's USSR SO, which you mention here, as an example of regional differences that are no longer so apparent. Things like that make your commentary especially interesting, I'll watch for more.
I'm in the process of transferring many of my CDs to iTunes also. It won't be all of them, though, that's too much trouble for me. ;)
Thanks! for sharing.
Love your assessments.
Don't feel rushed, you're just enjoying the music.
"If people don't want to come, nothing will stop them" - Sol Hurok
Is iTunes still basically MP3 quality?
nt
AFAIK.
FWIW & YMMV.
john
If you connect via the audio/headphone port, the limit is indeed 24/96. If you connect via USB (as you say) or HDMI (as I do) then the current limit is 24/192 (up to 8 channels at that bit depth and sampling frequency). Of course, iTunes itself does not support multi-channel music playback at this time - hence the need for outboard players/software, such as jriver, audirvana or VLC if you're a multi-channel guy.
I'm surprised that there's still a lot of confusion these days about iTunes capabilities - although as I mentioned in my last post about this, I'm using Audirvana for actual playback. At this point (for me), iTunes is acting just as the database. The music files (stored on an external RAID drive) are independent of both iTunes and Audirvana in any case - I could also download jriver and use that for playback if I wanted to, and I wouldn't have to change my existing music files (mostly uncompressed AIFF's) at all.
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