In this week's newsletter:

• Scherchen - two superb Beethoven symphonies with the Royal Philharmonic
  
• Ernest Bloch - première recording of his rare Israel Symphony, plus a great Schelomo
  
• PADA Exclusives - Aldo Parisot plays Bach and Kodály
  
• Blech's Tchaikovsky reviewed: "it is a real eye-opener" 
• Pristine Mouse Mats - A rather unusual gift idea!
  

Editorial - On copyright and research

There's a paragraph in the Blech Tchaikovsky review I've quoted in this week's newsletter which left me scratching my head somewhat, in particular the following paragraph:

"...it is worth noting at this point that, in contrast to the remarkably “real” sound produced by the other sections of the Berlin State Opera Orchestra on this recording, its brass sounds quite “tubby”: it certainly does not gleam and, in Tchaikovsky’s biggest emotional rushes, fails to ring out over the rest of the orchestra as we expect... Is this a deliberate characteristic of Blech’s interpretation or perhaps just a deficiency in the recording process? As Private Eye magazine frequently puts it, I think we should be told. [But we are not: both the CD notes and the “full notes” promised on the Pristine Audio website ... are silent on the matter.] "

I e-mailed Mark Obert-Thorn on this question, and he's equally bemused. There are a number of possible answers here, almost all of which are well-nigh impossible to check without having either been at the recording itself or having detailed technical notes which cover the recording. Given that I'm all-too-frequently to be found scrabbling around merely to idenfity in what year a recording was made, let alone its venue or precise date, the question of whether or not the Berlin orchestra's brass section had stuffed their scarves and socks into their instruments' horns in October 1930 seems to be something rather beyond either my or Mark's powers of research!

It was particularly pertinent this week to read this particular paragraph, as my recent work on the transfer and remastering of Bloch's Israel Symphony has shown quite how backward some of the record companies still are when it comes to merely making their recordings available, let alone any detailed technical information about them.

The Symphony has been recorded some four times - our issue is the 1952(ish) première. It was recorded again in the 60s and the 90s, and most recently by the Slovak Radio Orchestra for ASV in 2003. Because my LP version has no track information or bands, and because I wanted to use a modern reference recording to check the tonal balance of the older recording as part of the XR remastering process, I set out to find one or other of the two more recent recordings.

First stop was eMusic - a Google search having suggested the ASV recording was to be found there. But when I searched eMusic I found nothing. I returned to Google and yes, there was the link, but when I clicked on it I was told that the recording was unavailable for download in my country (France). The same thing is true, it turns out, for those in the UK - and I suspect therefore for the rest of Europe. It seems Google has picked up on the US eMusic listings, where the album can be downloaded. Likewise, US downloaders can get it from Amazon as a set of MP3s, as well as from a number of other outlets, but once again these are not available in the UK or France. I've no idea about whether it's on iTunes in the USA - but there's no recording of the Israel Symphony listed there for me either.

OK, so what about getting the CD itself? In the UK this can be bought for £4.99 with the possibility of free delivery. In France it's a €11.45 CD import that's currently out of stock and will cost me several Euros to get delivered at some unknown time in the future unless I spend another €9.55 with them to qualify for free delivery, on some unspecified future date.

I had thought that the Internet and its music downloads services were designed to stop this sort of thing. ASV was originally an independent UK record company. It was bought by Sanctuary Records, another UK independent, in 1999 - ironically we were in advanced diuscussions with Sanctuary in 2006 about offering some of their recordings to download on our site. The whole Sanctuary Group was then swallowed up by Universal in 2007.

Yet a rare recording of the Bloch, released by this British company in 2003, is unobtainable in a country 22 miles away as a CD and is completely unobtainable in Europe as an MP3 download, despite there being multiple outlets for it in the US.

We read a lot about Internet piracy and illegal downloads. Sometimes I wonder whether simply not being able to obtain a legitimate source of a film or a recording leads people who would otherwise happily part with their cash into the hands of the pirates. In a discussion I had recently about the possibility of downloading English language movies here in France I did some fascinating research to try and find out what was actually being pirated. Looking at the figures at the notorious "Pirate Bay" website, it appeared that the then most popular pirated film was being disseminated by more than ten times the number of people as the most-pirated music album. Nearly 30,000 people were counted as being involved in the "sharing" of the movie - and no doubt many more were downloading it and not "sharing" it, each one of them a potential lost sale for the film company. By contrast, the top pop album of the day could barely muster 3000.

A rather obvious thought struck me at the time - that pop album could be legally obtained as a download just about anywhere on the planet. By contrast, the movie could not - as a download. The result where there's a legal option appears (from this exceptionally unreliable survey, I admit) to be a 90% reduction in piracy. Perhaps the film industry should consider this? After all, what technical reason is there for, say, 20th Century Fox not to have a global download site where, for around the price of a DVD, or perhaps a little less, anyone can go and purchase a movie as a download? It seems that until something like this happens the pirates are here to stay.

As for me? Well I didn't resort to piracy - though whether anyone's likely to be offering dodgy downloads of an obscure work by Ernest Bloch on the file-sharing networks is perhaps questionable. I bought the UK CD from Amazon, then had it shipped to my friend in the UK, who copied the required audio from my CD onto his computer and sent it to me over the Internet. In the draconian world of copyright enforcement this is almost certainly an offence; in the bonkers world of copyright restriction it was the only way I could find out where the second movement of Bloch's Israel Symphony started and finished. I probably won't listen to the ASV recording again - I much prefer our own.


P.S. Bringing these two subjects together in a different way: following the release last week of our Santoliquido Brahms recordings I was contacted with further information that I'd not been able to track down beforehand. Although both recordings were made in 1958, it appears the actual issue of at least one of the Piano Quartets was not until 1959. To ensure there's no possible copyright violation we've therefore taken the decision to remove purchase links for the recordings from our website until the beginning of next year. CD orders placed prior to this discovery had already been shipped, and our release was based on the best information we had to hand at the time.

So these lovely recordings, too, are now not available for download in EU or anywhere else in the world, and certainly not from DGG, which by sheer coincidence is a part of Universal, just like ASV. But, if you come back to Pristine Classical in 48 days, the legal purchase links will be back. Crazy, isn't it?

Andrew Rose, Pristine Audio

Also of interest today:

• Archive Classics - excellent weekly online radio programme dedicated to historic recordings. This week, they say:
  
  "Archive Classics tx 13/11/2009

  There’s an elegiac feel to this week’s edition of Archive Classics. Tchaikovsky’s last symphony, No.6 in B minor (the `Pathetique’) is Stephen Johnson’s choice of Featured Recording. Written shortly before the composer’s premature death in the autumn of 1893, its passionate but doom-laden character seems to presage tragedy, but it has become one of the world’s best-loved symphonies, full of memorable melodies. Stephen has chosen a 1948 recording with a French orchestra, the Orchestre de la Societe du Conservatoire, conducted by Charles Munch.
  
  Only a short extract is available on the free podcast: subscribers can access the complete work.
  
  We open this week with Bruch’s `adagio on Hebrew melodies’ for solo cello and orchestra, `Kol Nidrei’, Op.47. It was written in 1881, the year Bruch took over from Julius Benedict as conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society. This 1936 recording features the great Catalan cellist Pablo Casals with the London Symphony Orchestra under Landon Ronald. 
  
  And the mood of gravity continues with the French pianist Alfred Cortot playing Mendelssohn’s `Variations serieuses in D minor, Op.54 – though not all the Variations are serious in intent!
  
  Another piece of keyboard of a completely different type – Handel’s sparkling Concerto for harpsichord and orchestra in B flat, Op.4 No.6, played by the pioneering PoleWanda Landowska (1879 – 1959), whose performances and recordings did so much to re-establish the harpsichord in the modern repertoire. This recording, with an orchestra directed by Eugene Bigot, dates from 1937, while Landowska was teaching at the School of Early Music she had founded near Paris.
  
  Bonus track for subscribers only:

  • Glazunov’s Etude in C, Op.31 No.1 recorded in 1935 by the Russian-born pianist Simon Barere (1896-1951). Renowned for his coruscating virtuosity, especially in 19th-century music, Barere emigrated to the USA, where he gave annual recitals at Carnegie Hall. He died during a performance of Grieg’s Piano Concerto."

  
  

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
conducted by Hermann Scherchen
Recorded 1954

Issued as Westminster 12 LP: WL 5362
Original LP used the pseudonym "The Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of London"
The transcription from UK Pye Nixa Red Label issue WLP 5362
Transfers and XR remastering by Andrew Rose at Pristine Audio, November 2009
Cover artwork based on a photograph of Hermann Scherchen

Total duration: 52:32 
©2009 Pristine Audio

For more download and CD options, see our website

The FLAC downloads:

Scherchen's vibrant Westminster recordings remastered

"the most exciting thing I have heard on a record for a long time" - Gramophone

• Beethoven - Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36 
  
  Recorded September 1954
  
  
  
• Beethoven - Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93
  
  Recorded 20th December 1954
  

New release today:

BLOCH Israel Symphony, Schelomo
Pristine Audio PASC 199

Vienna State Opera Orchestra & soloists
conducted by Franz Litschauer
Tibor de Machula, cello
The Residency-Orchestra (The Hague)
conducted by Willem van Otterloo
Recorded 1952 & 1951

Transfers and XR remastering by Andrew Rose at Pristine Audio, November 2009
Cover artwork based on a photograph of Ernest Bloch

Total duration: 52:37 
©2009 Pristine Audio

For more download and CD options, see our website

The FLAC downloads:

The excellent première recording of Bloch's Israel Symphony

A rarely-heard work in a truly fine performance, fully remastered

 

• Bloch - Israel Symphony
  Vienna State Opera Orchestra
  conducted by Franz Litschauer
  Friedl Helsing, Helga Augsten, sopranos
  Elfriede Hofstatter, Lore Dorpinghaus, altos
  Leo Heppe, bass
  Recorded in 1952, issued in the US as as Vanguard 12" LP: VRS-423
  This transfer from UK issue, Nixa VLP.423
  
  
• Bloch - Schelomo (Rhapsodie Hébraïque)
  Tibor de Machula, cello
  The Residency-Orchestra (The Hague)
  conducted by Willem van Otterloo
  Recorded 11th October, 1951
  This transfer from Philips 10" LP: A00138R
  

"The major works of Bloch's "Jewish Cycle" are now complete on records; their fire and passion, stemming more from a deep humanity felt with a Jewish intensity than from anything specifically Hebraic, are available to all for the trouble of listening. They are among the peaks of twentieth-century music; a brief note such as the present can do no more than record that opinion together with an indication that they are worthily represented by the present recording..." 
- from review in The Gramophone, October 1952

Ernest Bloch's recordings are reasonably plentiful for a 20th century late romantic, yet somehow his 1916 Israel Symphony has slipped somewhat off the radar, with just four recordings in the 57 years since this première was made, and none of them easily available here in France.

It's unfortunate, and perhaps has more to do with the performance requirement of two sopranos, two altos and a bass for the final movement, than any particular shortcoming of the music itself.

If you don't know it, it's more than worth a listen, and if you do, then this recording may well deliver more than its most recent outing, which appears insipid by comparison.

We also have an excellent Schelomo from Hungarian cellist Tibor de Machula with Willem van Otterloo - a popular and worthy pairing.

Download listening sample:   (Israel Symphony, 1st mvt, 224kbps mono)

Notes on the recordings:

Of Bloch's major works, the Israel Symphony is one which has received perhaps the least attention. This recording, which we believe was probably made in early 1952 (the composer was presented with a disc of the recording in April of that year), was the first of four recordings of the work. Writing here in France it's been a frustrating experience trying to hear any other recordings of the work - unavailable to buy here in any download format (apparently the same is true of the UK), the only version listed on our Amazon site is an ASV import CD which is currently out of stock.

When I finally did track down a copy of the ASV disc its performance seemed to come a poor second to this original recording - notably reviews tend to trumpet the merits of the Viola Concerto it's coupled with and play down the Israel Symphony. Yet in the symphony's 1952 outing it's a different matter altogether, and most certainly a recording worth reviving. The second movement, for example, marked Allegro agitato, has an agitated passion completely lacking in the most recent recording, and overall the work is one I'll enjoy getting to know better.

The work is one of the centrepieces of Bloch's major Jewish period, between about 1912 and 1936, and the composer wrote about the Jewish influence on his music in text which appeared on the original LP sleeve:

"It is not my purpose, nor my desire, to attempt a 'reconstruction' of Jewish music, or to base my works on melodies more or less authentic. I am not an archaeologist. I hold it of first importance to write good, genuine music, my music. It is the Jewish soul that interests me, the complex glowing agitated soul that I feel vibrating throughout the Bible; the freshness and naivete of the Patriarchs; the violence that is evident in the prophetic books; the Jew's savage love of justice; the despair of the Preacher in Jerusalem; the sorrow and immensity of the Book of Job; the sensuality of the Song of Songs. All this is in us; all this is in me, and it is the better part of me. It is all that I endeavour to hear in myself and to transcribe in my music: the venerable emotion of the race that slumbers way down in our souls."

As for the recording - it's reasonably well made for its day, and has transferred and restored well, though some of the peaks exhibit slight top-end distortion and the frequency range at the very top could have been a little greater. As early 1950s recordings go it probably sits somewhere in the middle, quality-wise - things seemed to pick up technically in the two or three years immediately after this was made, and I would be less forgiving of a 1954 or 1955 recording.

Schelomo, Bloch's rhapsody for cello and orchestra dates from the same period as the Israel Symphony, both in terms of composition (~1916) and in recording. This Philips recording was made perhaps 3 or 4 months before the symphony and is perhaps sonically the more successful of the two. The cello is wonderfully captured along with the orchestra, though again the frequency range tops out somewhere between about 10k and 12k, with little above this, and thus there is perhaps a lack of 'air' that might be heard in a later recording with greater frequency extension.

 

 

Available as 320kbps MP3, 16-bit FLAC, 24-bit FLAC, Ambient Stereo FLAC, CD
or listen on demand with Pristine Audio Direct Access (PADA)

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