In this week's newsletter:

• Toscanini - superb unissued 1950 broadcast: Prokofiev, Debussy, Saint-Saëns, Richard Strauss
  
• Scherchen - Beethoven's 4th and six Overtures in excellent mid-fifties recordings
  
• PADA Exclusives - Albert Coates' 1928 Mozart 'Jupiter' Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra
  
• Special offer - For this week only: download The Vespers of Christmas Eve for just €1.00
  

Editorial - Looking back over the year, and forward to 2010

It's been a fascinating year here at Pristine Classical, and not quite as I'd planned it. We got off to a very slow and shaky start - having finished 2008 on a high we saw our sales collapse for almost the first three months of the year as talk of global recession and doom and gloom circled the planet. Plans for regular issues from Peter Harrison, Mark Obert-Thorn and Ward Marston had to be quickly shelved as we quickly reined in our outgoing expenses, and I was quickly back to putting together two releases a week myself - in addition to manning technical support, designing covers, running the website and - most vitally - making the tea!

As this was unplanned, I ended up spending a lot of my time running to keep up, and with our carefully-laid plans scrubbed out it was all a bit hit and miss for a while. This resulted in some interesting releases of some at-times unusual and obscure material, but this didn't do much for sales, and it was only by March that things began to settle down again and some real planning start to re-emerge.

As revenues recovered I got back in touch with Mark, who was particularly keen to press on with the transfers he'd already been working on. I suspect that his other outlets were also cutting back, and so I can fully understand his enthusiasm in this respect. Fortunately we were able to get things moving again in the spring, and began to catch up on his original schedule over the summer.

Some very bad news was received from vinyl-transfer expert Peter Harrison though - a general malaise which was cutting down his work energy was diagnosed in the early summer as a particularly vicious and rapidly growing rare cancer, which forced his immediate retirement from all remastering. Fortunately for Peter - and all who know and love him - his local specialist unit was one of only three in the UK to be pioneering a revolutionary new treatment for this cancer, and an initial treatment appears to have been incredibly successful, with a second planned in the next few weeks expected to destroy the cancer completely. Without this treatment his specialist believes it would have been quite unlikely that Peter would still be with us by now - as it is he's looking forward to a good few years yet, and we wish him well in his ongoing and, frankly, miraculous recovery.

One of Peter's excellent transfers for Pristine, The Vespers of Christmas Eve, is available as a special-offer download this week - scroll down for further details.

In the spring of 2009 two highly valuable new sources of excellent recordings were offered to me. A trip to Lyon in France yielded a collection of rare recordings by Toscanini, many of which are still to be mined - I look forward to continuing our Lyra Panamericana series in 2010, as well as going through some of the many other recordings which still await my attention. Toscanini is of course one of our best-sellers, and I have to resist the temptation to release a Toscanini recording every week if only so that I can get to the myriad of other recordings that I have piled up here on shelves and in drawers at Pristine Audio.

A good number of these have come from Edward Johnson, who has been exceptionally generous with his time and collection following the winding up of the Stokowski Society and the completion of the Cala Records Stokowski series. I get the clear impression that Edward is having a whale of a time sifting through his collection looking for ideas and scouring the Internet for rare and interesting records - his enthusiasm is communicated ever week through a series of excited phone calls and a seemingly never-ending set of postal deliveries, with perhaps enough material to see us now through most of 2010!

I'd also like to take the opportunity to thank all the others who've suggested or sent recordings for remastering and reissue. One of my first questions when someone puts forward an idea for reissue is whether they might happen to have a copy of said recording in good condition, and it's surprising how often they do!

This year saw a couple of unexpected appearances in the general media - first in Channel Four's documentary on the pianist Joyce Hatto, which aired in the summer and is, coincidentally, being repeated tonight on More4, "The Great Piano Scam". There's also a BBC drama documentary on the same subject currently underway, which I was able to provide some early consultation for, and I look forward to seeing how they handle the story some time next year.

Musical fakery of another kind saw me drawn briefly into the world of the popular tabloids following an investigation into the soundtrack of Michael Jackson's posthumous movie This Is It - which to an extent it wasn't, it turned out. Sony Pictures' reaction was ultimately the opposite of William Barrington-Coupe's in the case of his wife Joyce Hatto - they issued a statement which effectively said "yes the film does use a load of old recordings. So what?", and the story quickly went away.

We also featured in an article by Alex Ross in The New Yorker which demonstrated what a powerful and influential voice he has in the world of music. The article was published at the start of August, and sales that month (usually a quiet time for us) far exceeded anything we've seen before or since, with hundreds of new visitors to our website willing to give our recordings the benefit of his advice. Hopefully the hours of work I then had to spent improving our online help files for all the newcomers, especially in the field of FLAC recordings, were worthwhile!

This year saw technology march on to an extent I hadn't expected. For the first time in more than a quarter of a century my living room holds no CDs. The nearest thing to a CD player is the CD/DVD writer in the computer which has replaced it. The DVD player is even more redundant than the VHS player. Much of this I've documented here over previous weeks, so I won't go over this ground again. Suffice to say I have at the tips of my fingers a far greater collection of music and video than ever before, and I'm learning fast the value of effective and careful naming and tagging of digital audio files!

There's been a huge amount of music this year, with an average of two CDs per week released at Pristine Classical and a similar work-rate planned for 2010. Mark Obert-Thorn's diary is chock-full of plans for next year at Pristine as is my own, but I've paused a while over the last weeks to look back over our most popular releases, as well as picking my own favourites. You can sample many of these on a free FLAC download which will be online next Thursday, Christmas Eve, alongside Mark Obert-Thorn's completion of his project to ensure the the digital reissue of all of the Flonzaley Quartet’s published electrical recordings.

Looking into 2010, the good news from the European Union is that they're still dithering and stalling over copyright extension, which means that recordings made in 1959 will fall into the public domain here. I've been doing some last-minute polishing up of my XR remastering of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue for issue on 1st January, along with something a little more traditional from Mark. Later in January we've more from Scherchen's Beethoven, some stereo Paul Paray, also from 1959, conducting Beethoven and Mozart, the distinct possibility of a collection of Broadway classics from Kostelanetz, and rare Weingartner recordings from Mark.

I'm also looking to follow up on the success of our Bernard Herrmann release with more from the great film composer as conductor; likewise we've more of Felix Slatkin's recordings to prepare, something that's gone down very well with his son Leonard, who's been a welcome new correspondent of Pristine's - and a perhaps unexpected enthusiast for the harpsichord recordings of Fernando Valenti, as transcribed for Pristine by Peter Harrison.

So 2010 has a lot to look forward to already - and who knows what else the year will bring. I hope you'll be coming along for the ride, wherever it may take us!
 

Andrew Rose, Pristine Audio

Also of interest today:

• Archive Classics - excellent weekly online radio programme dedicated to historic recordings. This week, they say:
  
  

  "Our mini-Russian symphony series continues this week with another work bursting with vigour and lyricism  – Borodin’s Second. It’s not heard these days as often as it deserves. Stephen Johnson has chosen a 1947 recording by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Erich Kleiber, whose son Carlos also recorded this symphony.
  
  Only a short excerpt is available on the free podcast: subscribers can access the complete work.
  
  And our Russian theme continues this week with the colourful  Entr’acte from Act II of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera `Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh’, based on a Russian folk tale. Serge Koussevitszky conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra in this 1939 recording.
  
  Last week we featured a complete Beethoven sonata from a set released in 1971 by the much-admired German-born pianist Claude Frank, who escaped the Nazis in 1940 and settled in the USA, where he took American citizenship. His Beethoven sonata cycle was recorded in New York during the Beethoven bicentenary year, 1970. Last week’s offering was only available to our subscribers, so this week’s podcast opens with a taster for all – the last movement of the Sonata No.7 in D, Op.10 No.3.
  
  In the New Year we’ll be featuring some Haydn string quartets that are not obtainable elsewhere. As Haydn’s bicentenary year draws to a close, here are his Variations in F minor, HobXVII/6, recorded in the mid-1950s by the relatively unknown Swiss pianist, Leo Nadelmann. And there’s another curiosity in this week’s podcast – Henri Casadesus’ Concerto for Viola in B minor  (in the style of Handel). Viola concertos are rare enough, and this one doesn’t often get aired. It was recorded in 1946 by the great William Primrose, with the Victor Symphony Orchestra under Frieder Weissmann
  
  Bonus track for subscribers only:

  • Mozart’s Symphony No.29 in A, K201 (known as `The Little A major’.  Guido Cantelli conducts the NBC Symphony Orchestra in this 195? recording."

  
  

The NBC Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Arturo Toscanini
Recorded live, 25th March, 1950

Source recording from the private collection of an American collector
XR remastering by Andrew Rose at Pristine Audio, December 2009
Cover artwork based on a photograph of Toscanini during his summer tour of 1950 

Total duration: 57:53 
©2009 Pristine Audio.

For more download and CD options, see our website

The FLAC downloads:

One of the great Toscanini broadcast concerts of the 1950s

Issued for the first time - a real treat for all music-lovers, in superb sound

1. Introduction to concert (0:17) - Announcer: Ben Grauer
   
   PROKOFIEV Symphony No. 1 "Classical" in D, Op. 25
   
2. 1st mvt. - Allegro (3:37)
   
3. 2nd mvt. - Larghetto (3:52)
   
4. 3rd mvt. - Gavotte (1:34)
   
5. 4th mvt. - Molto vivace (4:50)
   
   DEBUSSY Images: No. 2 - Ibéria
6. 1st mvt. - Par les rues et par les chemins (7:05)
7. 2nd mvt. - Les parfums de la nuit (6:34)
8. 3rd mvt. - Le matin d'un jour de fête (4:50)
   
   
9. SAINT-SAENS Danse macabre in G minor, Op.40 (7:33)
   
   
10. R. STRAUSS Don Juan, Op. 20 (17:41)

The NBC Symphony Orchestra
conductor Arturo Toscanini
Broadcast from Studio 8H, 25th March 1950
NB. Timings may include applause and announcements

New release today:

BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 4 & Overtures
Pristine Audio PASC 207

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
The Vienna State Opera Orchestra 
conducted by Hermann Scherchen
Recorded 1954

Transfers and XR remastering by Andrew Rose at Pristine Audio, December 2009
Original source recordings from the private collection of John Phillips
Cover artwork based on a photograph of Hermann Scherchen

Total duration: 71:48 
©2009 Pristine Audio.

For more download and CD options, see our website

The FLAC downloads:

Hermann Scherchen at his best in Beethoven

Excellent sound quality backs excellent performances from 1954

 

• BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 4 in B flat, Op. 60
  
  
  
  Recorded in September 1954 by Westminster Records
  
  Transferred from UK Nixa LP pressing WLP 20003
  
  The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
  
  conductor Hermann Scherchen 
  
  
  
  
• Six Beethoven Overtures
  
  The Creatures of Prometheus, Op. 43
  
  The Ruins of Athens, Op. 113
  
  Consecration of the House, Op. 124
  
  Coriolan, Op. 62
  
  King Stephen, Op. 117
  
  Namensfeier, Op. 115
  
  
  
  Recorded in June 1954 by Westminster Records
  
  Transferred from UK Nixa LP pressing WLP 5335 
  
  The Vienna State Opera Orchestra
  
  conductor Hermann Scherchen
  
  
  

NB. Initial FLAC downloads of this recording are mislabelled - they are in the order as shown above and in our downloadable covers and cue sheets. This is partly as a result of the original LP cover's title listing also being in the incorrect order. A revised FLAC download which corrects both the file names and tags will be available from Saturday 19th December - please keep your download URL safe so that you can access the corrected version if required.

Hermann Scherchen's Beethoven recordings of the 1950s have many fans, and we follow our recent release of his 2nd and 8th Symphony recordings with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with this superb reading of the Fourth Symphony, one of the great recorded performances of its era.

Coupled with this is the long-awaited and much-requested Beethoven Overtures collection Scherchen recorded for Westminster Records with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra in June 1954. It features six of the composer's great overtures, three of which were world première recordings.

Throughout the sound quality here is excellent, with both orchestras very well recorded and playing excellently (the RPO playing under the pseudonym Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of London). Definitely a set worth investigating.

Download listening sample:   (Symphony 4, 1st mvt., 224kbps mono)

Notes on the recordings:

"The gramophone's most unpredictable conductor gives a superlative performance of the Beethoven Fourth. It is powerful and tense in a degree not normally associated with the work, but made entirely convincing by the dash and skill of its presentation. The traditional view of the Fourth as a predominantly lyrical symphony has indeed much to recommend it; but the performance here of its first, third and fourth movements welds the lyrical elements briskly, and not at all unacceptably, into a vigorous whole. The slow movement, too, has its felicities: the slightest of accelerandos, just before the end, lends a new point to that familiar demisemiquaver passage. And this movement, along with the others, exhibits to the full the most beautiful orchestral playing: there are woodwind passages here to catch the heart (and, thinking of Scherchen's whirlwind tempo for the bassoon in the finale, the breath!)

As the recording is very good, having all the brilliance but not quite all the richness of the best, this must inevitably become the primary recommendation for a one-sided version of the Fourth; it outclasses Toscanini's H.M.V. on one or two counts. Less tension, if that is sought, may be found in Karajan's reading on the very well-recorded Columbia; here the symphony's finale goes over on to the second side, which is completed by the extended aria Ah, Perfido! An even less tense performance is secured by Krips on his Decca disc; but, though recorded most beautifully smoothly, that record, given wholly to the symphony, is now beginning to look expensive..." - from the Gramophone review of 4th Symphony, April 1956

Some recordings from the 1950s are a pleasure for the transfer and remastering engineer, and these certainly come into that category. Well-recorded for their day, on excellent near-mint pressings, and perfect for XR remastering to bring out the very best sound quality - and, most importantly, some really excellent performances.

Scherchen's recording of Beethoven's Fourth Symphony was originally coupled with a recording of the Fifth, made at the same time and with the same orchestra - the Royal Philharmonic recording under a pseudonym, "The Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of London". My original plan to reunite these recordings for a single release was thwarted by the length of the Overtures LP when coupled with his 1951 recording of the Emperor Concerto with Badura-Skoda, which together run to a little over 82 minutes. Hence the decision to pair here the Overtures with the Fourth, saving the two mighty "Fifths" for another issue due out shortly after this release.

 

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

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