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Pristine News: Friday 11th December, 2009
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A Beginner's Guide to Downloading - Five ways to find recordings at Pristine Classical - Full printable Pristine Audio catalogue New release today: STRAUSS: Der Rosenkavalier Pristine Audio PACO 036
Transfers and XR remastering by Andrew Rose at Pristine Audio, December 2009 Total duration: 118:26
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The classic 1933 Lehmann abridged Rosenkavalier In astonishingly open and vibrant XR-remastered sound Die Feldmarschallin Fürstin Werdenberg - LOTTE LEHMANNDer Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau - RICHARD MAYR Octavian, called Quinquin, a young nobleman - MARIA OLSZEWSKA Herr von Faninal, a rich, newly-enobled contractor - VICTOR MADIN Sophie, his daughter - ELISABETH SCHUMANN Marianne Leitmetzerin, her Duenna - ÄNNE MICHALSKY Valzacchi, An Italian Intriguer - HERMANN GALLOS Annina, his accomplice - BELLA PAALEN A Police Commissary - KARL ETTL An Inn-Keeper - WILLIAM WERGNICK Four Lackeys of the Marschallin's household (Two Tenors and Two Basses) Four Waiters (One Tenor, Three Basses) Chorus of The Vienna State Opera The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by ROBERT HEGER This legendary 1933 Rosenkavalier recording, abridged down to a mere 26 sides of 78rpm discs, is one of the great recordings of the early days of electrical recording. Known commonly as Lehmann's Rosenkavalier - though she makes no appearance at all in the second act and is somewhat marginal for much of the third - it is rightly regarded as a pinnacle performance of its era, with sparkling performances from all of the cast, given sterling support by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Robert Heger. From a sonic perspective it's always been a difficult recording to deal with. This new restoration has aimed to address a number of the shortcomings of the original recording. The focus throughout has been on the singers, who are now presented in what will for many be a whole new and most wonderfully revealing light.
Notes on the recordings: The twenty-six sides which go to make up this recording are not the easiest to remaster. In his notes for the Naxos 2002 issue of the recording, Mark Obert-Thorn wrote: "Although recorded over a five-day period on twenty-six consecutive sides by HMV, this legendary abridged version of Der Rosenkavalier poses many problems for the restoration engineer." And a few days ago he confirmed this to me by e-mail: "my source discs ... came from about a half-dozen different copies (Victor Z, Victor Gold and Electrola), none of which was perfect all the way through. I had to use sides from each of the copies I had to do the transfer..." The Naxos edition is of course still in print, and offers the prospective purchaser an alternative to this new XR-remastered release. Naturally both of our approaches at the remastering of a recording such as this are quite different in many respects, and I've been able to take advantage of a number of significant technological advances which were simply unavailable to the restoration engineer as recently as seven years ago. Although my discs, which were a near-mint set of British HMV pressings, were in very good, clean condition, the effect of using XR to open up the top end - and it really does open up, with vocal harmonic extension at times reaching up to somwhere in the region of 10kHz, roughly double the expected frequency response for a set of 78s - is to reveal a plethora of other shortcomings in the discs which might previously have remained hidden, most prevelant of which on a good number of sides was the dreaded swish. Swish on discs is a problem for which, until recently, there was little or no solution. The current state of technology, in 2009, is that we can either ameliorate or, often, completely 'zap' each swish in such a way that the music remains untouched. The downside of this latest technology is that one has to process a swish at a time, which on a recording of this length means over 9000 individual selections and interventions purely to tackle this issue. It's a laborious task, but one which I believe yields results which are worthwhile. What you'll hear in this remastering is a sense of openness and clarity which has perhaps not been heard before in this recording. I've opted for as light a touch as possible with hiss and noise reduction - always a difficult balance to strike with a recording of this vintage - but I think the results speak for themselves. Mark Obert-Thorn notes in his previous restoration a considerable variation between sides with regard to balance between soloists and orchestra and overall levels. I felt perhaps less aware of this after the re-equalisation of the recording in XR remastering, beyond the occasional sense that a singer may have taken a step closer to the microphone at one point or another - something which is to be expected in a staged opera, if not a studio recording. As such I let this pass, and did not attempt any adjustments of levels or perspective. It's a marvellous recording - and one which I think this XR remastering manages to shine a refreshing new light oupn.
Available as 320kbps MP3, 16-bit FLAC, 24-bit FLAC, Ambient Stereo FLAC, CD
or listen on demand with Pristine Audio Direct Access (PADA) New release today: BEETHOVEN Symphonies 6 and 7 Pristine Audio PASC 206
Transfers by Edward Johnson from his private collection
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With a rare observance of Beethoven's own tempi!
Paul Paray's decade with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra is perhaps regarded as a highlight both of his career as a conductor and of the history of an orchestra which had temporarily disbanded prior to his arrival. Paray quickly brought them back to the attention of the world, making over 70 recordings with them for Mercury's Living Presence label. These are two such recordings, and fine and intriguing readings they both are. The Pastoral appears to dash off at a ridiculously swift pace until you examine Beethoven's score markings and discover Paray is following the composer's own metronome markings - which may come as something of a shock! The sound is excellent, with XR remastering opening out the rather hard and constricted original into something truly delightful to the ears.
Download listening sample:
 (Symphony 6, 1st mvt., 224kbps mono)Notes on the recordings:
Thus wrote the Gramophone critic on hearing - clearly for the first time in his life - Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony taken at precisely the speed its composer had intended when he added metronome timings to the score. It is astonishingly swift, and very few conductors have abided by the composer's instructions in this respect. But it makes for a quite different reading - and once you've climbed over the metaphorical stile that is this sudden increase in tempo, and stroll into Paray's pastoral world, you may well find it's one which agrees with you. Certainly there's much to like here in both recordings - Paray had molded the Detroit Symphony into a world class orchestra, and Mercury's Living Presence sound recordings were the perfect way to capture them in the early years of the LP era. This is the first of a short series of Mercury recordings by Paray at Detroit that we have planned for the coming weeks, and it's a great start - transferred from near-mint British Pye pressings by Edward Johnson. The somewhat constricted and hard sound of the original recordings has really opened out wonderfully thanks to XR remastering, and with the additional (optional) Ambient Stereo processing you might be forgiven for thinking you were listening to a recording made a decade or two later.
Available as 320kbps MP3, 16-bit FLAC, 16-bit Ambient Stereo FLAC, CD
or listen on demand with Pristine Audio Direct Access (PADA)
New MP3 transfers at PADA Exclusives
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My Top Five of 2009
It's always difficult to compile a best-of list, especially as my choice may vary from day to day or week to week. This list picks a single recording from each of five genres of music, and in each I could have picked several more (especially in the crowded Orchestral category). Choices here are for a variety of personal reasons, either as a listener or as a remastering engineer. But each sticks out for me as being particularly worth remembering in 2009. I've excluded this week's two releases from the judging as they are still far too fresh in my mind as restoration projects for me to have any real perspective on them. 1. Orchestral Music This recording has been chosen as much for the adventure involved in acquiring the source disc and the excitement and anticipation of hearing it for the first time as for the (excellent) performance and (quite reasonable) sound quality. The entire process, from the discovery that it existed and might be available to me, through a long journey to collect the record, to my return and the revelation of what was in those grooves, will remain with me for a very long time. BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 2 Pristine Audio PASC 171
Source disc from the collection of Christophe Pizzutti: Transfer and XR remastering by Andrew Rose at Pristine Audio, June 2009 Total duration: 42:59
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2. Chamber Music I've just finished reading an excellent biography of the Budapest Quartet, and this recording finds them at their best, with the classic line-up which delighted audiences in the 30s and 40s and returned to do so once more in the 50s and 60s. A rare collaborative effort in the remastering process, the recordings are astonishingly vivid in sound quality and exude the performance quality which confirms the Budapest Quartet as one of the finest of all time, and for fathers of the modern string quartet. RAVEL & DEBUSSY - String Quartets Pristine Audio PACM 065
RAVEL Recorded 8th September 1940, Liederkranz Hall, New York Transfers & restoration by Andrew Rose & Dr. John Duffy Total duration: 54:11 For MP3 and CD orders, see our website
BEETHOVEN Hammerklavier Sonata (plus music by Liszt)
All transfers from original UK Columbia 78rpm discs from the Pristine Audio collection. Total duration: 50:51
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This is one of those where personal musical taste is perhaps the overriding factor in a very strong field. This year has seen three Verdi operas from Toscanini, as well as a recording of Louis Ganne's rare Les Saltimbanques and of course, this week (and ruled out of the judging here) Lotte Lehmann's Der Rosenkavalier. But of all of these treasures, the one I'll be listening to the most is likely to be this. BEETHOVEN Missa Solemnis Pristine Audio PACO 034
Source recording from the private collection of Christophe Pizzutti Total duration: 79:27
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A very tight decision here between three excellent contenders - Blind Blakes's superb "ragtime" guitar picking is astonishing; Blind Willie McTell's 12-string guitar blues has been a long-time favourite of my. But it was my discovery of the strange and quite unique musical world of Skip James captured on these lo-fi recordings which takes the prize. A real challenge for the restorer, as are all recordings from the Paramount Record Company, I'm really proud of what I was able to do to make the sublime "young" Skip James recordings more accessible. SKIP JAMES - Yola My Blues Away Pristine Audio PABL 009
Recorded in February 1931, Grafton Wisconsin. For most of these discs there are only between 1 and 4 known copies, often in very poor condition. As a result the sound quality of some of these recordings has been severely impaired. Restoration and XR remastering by Andrew Rose at Pristine Audio, April 2009 Total duration: 53:43
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