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In Reply to: RE: Recommendation needed for Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances posted by tonyptony on March 22, 2015 at 14:52:16
A classic. I own it on LP, CD, SACD, and open reel tape....I never tire of it.
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I have long enjoyed these. I have it on a Mercury Golden LP, Mercury SRI 75009, which sounds very good.I got it on CD on Mercury 416 496-2. The sound is disappointing with the tone controls flat, although it sounds quite good if I turn the Tilt control on my Quad preamp down two or three notches. With conventional tone controls, I suspect a bass boost of about 3 dB or so with a treble cut of about 3 dB would improve the sound considerably. The CD does not indicate that the CD issue was produced by Wilma Cozart Fine so I presume she was not involved in the remastering.
I hope the SACD is good.
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"A fool and his money are soon parted." --- Thomas Tusser
Edits: 03/23/15
Wilma was involved in all remasterings including the SACD versions I have the original cd's and remastered cd's and the SACD and they all sound very good
Alan
Well, Mercury 416 496-2 doesn't sound as good as the LP, nor as good as several others I have, unless I turn town the Quad Tilt Control on my preamp down 2 or 3 notches (there are only 3 up and three down) it sounds harsh and tizzy. So whoever transferred the recording to CD didn't do a very good job, IMHO.
The CD and booklet do not mention anything about the recording save that it was done in 4/1958, nothing about who recorded it or who transferred it to CD or when that was done. The booklet also says it was printed and made in West Germany.
I don't have very many Mercury CD reissues. One outstanding one is Mercury Living Presence 434 309-2, Overtures by Suppe and Auber. The booklet here says clearly it was produced by Wilma Cozart Fine.
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"A fool and his money are soon parted." --- Thomas Tusser
Bob Fine was the engineer and Wilma Cozart Fine did the transfers
Alan
One Wilma and one pre-Wilma. On checking Amazon, I notice a CD reissue which does not have the original cover. I think the ones Wilma was involved with reproduced the original LP covers. Here's the non-Wilma one I'm talking about:
Notice this one doesn't have the "Mercury Living Presence" logo across the top. This one may have been derived from some other source than the original masters. I don't know where this cover would have come from, but it's not a reproduction of the "Mercury Golden Imports" cover either. Here's the one that Wilma would have done:
I also notice that these performances have been reissued yet again - this time on the Newton Classics label - with yet a different cover.
Edits: 03/24/15
The only Mercury CD/SACD reissues she was not involved with (other than to give advice - at least this is my understanding) were the SACD's derived from 35mm magnetic film masters. She had been in control of the CD's derived from these 35mm sources however, and in fact the CD layers of the SACD's are always her work. In the case of the 35mm masters however, the 24/192 PCM transfers (the only instances in the SACD series where the digital masters were not DSD) were checked against reference tapes from Robert Eberenz. Of course, since the Dorati Ancient Airs and Dances SACD did not derive from a 35mm master, my comment is, in a sense, irrelevant (although I hope not uninteresting!).
I have one of those, with the Dvorak Cello Concerto, Bruch's Kol Nidrei, and Tchaikovsky's Variations, with Janos Starker and the LSO under Dorati. Mercury 432 001-2. The Dvorak and Bruch were recorded on "3 track 35 mm magnetic film and half inch tape," which is a little confusing as it stands. The Tchaikovsky was recorded on "3 track half-inch tape." The booklet says "Produced for Compact Disc by Wilma Cozart Fine." It's all a little confusing to me!
The Dvorak always seemed a little bright to me, but a notch cut on my Quad Tilt Control and it's quite good. If the balance is easily corrected, I can't complain too much. The Tchaikovsky sounds fine with the tone controls on flat.
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"A fool and his money are soon parted." --- Thomas Tusser
It's all the more confusing because some of the original 35mm magnetic film masters are now missing! (Or at least they were missing when the CD's and SACD's were produced.) So for instance, on the Byron Janis / Kyril Kondrashin / Moscow PO album of the Prokofiev Third and Rachmaninoff First Concertos, the original recordings were made on 35mm magnetic film - but these masters were missing at the time of the transfer to CD and SACD (truly unbelievable!), so they had to use the backup three-track tape for these works. I haven't heard that the 35mm masters for this recording have been found, so maybe they're lost for good. As I say, it's truly inconceivable that something like this could happen!
In general, I've always felt that Mercury's 35mm magnetic film recordings represented the zenith of that company's recording achievements, giving a more liquid sound compared to what they accomplished with regular magnetic tape, and even sweetening the high frequencies compared to tape. Of course, one's mileage may vary in different rooms, using different systems, etc.
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