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If you visit our website today you'll maybe notice a
few changes on the music pages. Some of the more recent ones may appear
to have lost a lot of content and become much shorter. Don't let
initial impressions deceive! It's all still there, but we felt a little
tidying up was required, both with the general information on either
side of the page relating to formats, pricing, postage and so forth,
and with the "sleevenotes" (for want of a more appropriate word!).
These can all still be viewed - a quick click of the mouse on the clear
links will reveal the 'missing' texts in their original place in the
page. But you'll no longer be bombarded with information which may or
may not be relevant, and as a result you should find it easier to find
what you do want. Similarly, lengthy biographies (the recent page on Bernard
Herrmann probably set a new record for length!) are available but
you won't need to scroll through acres of them to get to the cue
sheets and covers at the bottom of the page.
I've also tried to make the purchase buttons, especially for CDs, a
little more helpful. Trying to squeeze into a small square, 42x55
pixels in size, the information which covers single, double and even
quadruple CDs which may or may not have covers, cases and Ambient
Stereo processing is not easy, but by doing so we've cleared away a
constant source of confusion for newcomers to the site and made
immediately clear to anyone the pricing of these items.
I've also been thinking about the information and links for music on
each release and how best this is presented. The first results of a new
way of doing this can be seen on our latest release from Paul
Paray. You'll see the list of works is now appended with links to
external notes on that work (the ever-helpful Wikipedia in these cases)
as well as links to the full scores, which can be viewed online or
downloaded and saved or printed off for future reference.
There's a lot more to do, both with existing pages and with new
material to help get the best from our recordings and navigate the
difficulties of replay software and so on, but that's one of the aims
for 2010, as more and more people realise it's time to bite the bullet
and figure out how best to find and listen to good music online.
All of this takes a huge amount of time and effort for me - more than
has been available while generating at least two new CDs worth of
material each week, in addition to maintaining the website, writing
this e-mail, answering technical and other enquiries (if only I could
answer them all!) and so forth. So in order to try and spend more time
both on individual recordings and on making our whole site better for
you (and this e-mail less prone to errors!) I'll personally be reducing
my output to a single release each week for the coming weeks, together
with at least one release a month from Mark Obert-Thorn. This means
five new releases a month instead of eight, which might help a few
strained wallets too!
In between we'll be looking back at some of the riches buried deep in
the Pristine catalogue - with around 350 full Pristine releases, plus
recordings from Music & Arts, Divine Art, the National Gramophonic
Society and more, there's a lot you may have missed along the way. I'll
be plucking out some of the highlights for your delectation and
bringing them to you via this e-mail and our front page.
In a few short week's time Pristine Classical will be celebrating its
fifth birthday - if I can find a little time I hope to put something
together to celebrate this anniversary. We've come a long way since the
beginning, when it took 5 weeks to sell just one of our twelve
available downloads...
The
Detroit Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Paul Paray Recorded
1959 and 1956
Transfers
by Edward Johnson from his private collection
XR remastering by Andrew Rose at Pristine Audio, January 2010
Cover artwork based on a photograph of Paul Paray
BEETHOVENSymphony No. 2 in D,
Op. 36[notes/score] Recorded
Henry & Edsel Ford Auditorium, Detroit, 18th January 1959
Issued as Mercury Living Presence LP MG-50205/SR90205
MOZARTSymphony No. 35 "Haffner" in D,
K.385[notes/score] Recorded
Henry & Edsel Ford Auditorium, Detroit, 21st October 1956
Issued as Mercury Living Presence LP MG-50129/SR90129
MoreParay Detroit SO Beethoven: Symphonies 6
& 7: "One
of the most thrilling performances of the Beethoven 7th Symphony ever
recorded..."
Rob Cowan, BBC Radio 3 'Breakfast' - 29 December 2009
Paul Paray's Beethovenrecordings were somewhat
underrated in their day - his recording of theSymphony
No. 6was derided in
reviews of the mid-fifties for its style and, in particular, speed -
even though the conductor was sticking to the composer's own metronome
markings.
Yet modern tastes seem to have caught up with Paray - his
recording of the7th
Symphony, issued here a few weeks ago, was recently hailed by BBC
Radio 3's Rob Cowan as "one
of the most thrilling performances...ever recorded".
Here we present the only three stereo recordings Paray
made for Mercury that they have yet to reissue. Again the combination ofLiving
Presencerecordings and
Pristine's XR remastering makes for a winning sonic combination, and
again we think there's some serious reappraisal of these performances
to be made: we think you'll agree they're well worth hearing again.
These
three recordings constitute the only stereo Mercury Living Sound
recordings made by Paul Paray with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra that
Mercury themselves have not reissued on CD. Their reasons for not doing
so, along with other inexplicable omissions from Paray's mono
recordings, remain unknown and hard to understand - although Paray is
more commonly associated with French composers, yet again he is superb
both with Beethoven and Mozart.
From
a technical point of view the later recording was clearly superior to
the earlier one. The levels of tape hiss on the 1956 Mozart required
considerably more noise reduction to tame, and the top end was not as
clear or bright as the two 1959 Beethoven recordings. In fact, if
anything, the latter were overly bright, as is often the case with
Mercury's 1950s Living Presence recordings, and taming this had the
happy side-effect of reducing overall hiss levels to something far more
acceptable.
In
all cases disc surface noise was minimal. Both 1956 and 1959 recordings
did however suffer from a degree of induced main hum, something quickly
and precisely dealt with in audio restoration these days. Both also
suffered from occasional tape drop-outs on one or other channel, which
is also been cured. The Mozart does remain the slightly noisier of the
two, but neither suffers from hiss or noise to an extent which should
prove an annoyance at any reasonable listening volumes, and the
Beethoven Symphonies in particular would stand comparison to almost any
recordings made in the analogue era - after all, Mercury were very good
indeed at what they did when making Living Presence LPs, as their
long-lasting reputation for superior recordings repeatedly suggests.
Andrew
Rose
Available
as 320kbps stereo MP3, 16-bit stereo FLAC, 24-bit stereo FLAC, CD
or
listen on demand with
Pristine
Audio Direct
Access
(PADA)
NBC
Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Arturo Toscanini
Broadcast live on 28th November, 1943, NBC Studio 8H, New York
Pristine Audio XR remastering by Andrew Rose, June 2007
Another
look at a classic Pristine transfer from 2007
"Possibly
the best available Toscanini-led Tannhäuser Overture and Venusberg
Music and Tristan Prelude and Liebestod..." Rob Cowan, Gramophone, December 2007
This 2007 transfer was one of the first to benefit from Pristine
Audio's XR remastering system back and it was a real winner. The
performances, taken from a previously unissued live concert broadcast
from 23rd November 1943, here are truly wonderful, as is the sound
quality, which is astonishing for its vintage.
This is the recording which led Alex Ross, music critic
of theNew
Yorker, to write last summer: "...the
gain is substantial. In the case of the Toscanini broadcast, Rose has
pushed the old tape past the border at which an artifact becomes a
living document. Hooked on the sensation, I spent days browsing
Pristine’s archives..."
Download
listening sample:
(Tristan und Isolde, Prelude, (excerpt))
Restorer's
notes: This recording, transcribed from acetate discs of
unusually high quality, presents a truly remarkable document of
Toscanini's mid-40's conducting, perhaps all the more so for being an
all-Wagner concert, broadcast at the height of World War II. It
responded excellently to the tonal rebalancing inherent in the XR
process, bringing out a full-frequency tonal response, and my main work
was in dealing with occasional radio interference and, at times,
unpleasant surface noise. I'm pleased to report that these have been
either eradicated or reduced to the extent that they no longer
interrupt the listener as had previously been the case. I suspect these
interruptions, which only the latest computer software is capable of
succesfully tackling, may constitute one good reason why this excellent
concert has not been heard in public since its first broadcast some 64
years ago.
Available
as LAME-encoded 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
by Dr. John Duffy
in Ambient Stereo
Richard
Strauss
conducts Beethoven
Richard
Strauss
Beethoven
Symphony No. 7 in A, Op. 92
Berlin State Opera Orch.
cond. Richard Strauss Rec. 1926
This
astonishing early electric recording formed the the six side of a
multi-disc set entitled "Historical Anthology of Orchestral Music", a
collection of historic recordings culled from the library of Thomas L
Clear.
It
was recorded in Berlin in 1926 and issued only in Germany as Polydor
69836-9. It's an idiosyncratic reading and although it suffers some
heavy cuts is a fascinating account. The recording is presented here
with Ambient Stereo remastering by Dr. John Duffy.
Over
400 PADA Exclusives recordings are available for high-quality streamed
listening and free 224kbps MP3 download to all subscribers.
Remastered
by
Dr John Duffy In Ambient Stereo
Download
or stream this recording and many others from only One Euro a
week!
Hundreds
of historic recordings are available for listening and free
MP3
download
to subscribers to PADA
Exclusives, our €1/week streamed audio service.
Other subscription offers give you full access
to our entire online catalogue
Latest
Reviews, e-mails & comments
From
your e-mails:
"Just
to say thank you.
I have downloaded Kind
of Blue as a 24Bit XR FLAC file and compared it to my
recently acquired Columbia CD. Wow! What a difference! Superb.
As enjoyable as the Adrian Boult English Music last month.
Please keep them coming."
- N.C.
- - 00 - -
"As
you probably know, the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, the
largest library system in the world, along with collecting and
safeguarding America’s written and printed history, is also devoted to
gathering and preserving its moving image, musical and recorded sound
heritage as well.
As part of the Library’s preservation activities, every year the
Librarian of Congress, on the recommendation of the National Recording
Preservation Board, publishes a list of recordings deemed to be
“culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” These
recordings are then earmarked for preservation in the Library of
Congress, specifically at the LC’s Culpeper facility. You can learn
more at: http://www.loc.gov/rr/record/nrpb/
In 2005, Toscanini’s
1938 broadcast of “Adagio for Strings” was one of the recordings
named to the National Sound Registry that year. However, a thorough
review of our holdings—though vast—has determined that a copy of this
work is not currently in our Collections. Since you currently have
this recording in your inventory/catalog, I am writing to see if one or
two copies (one for “deep storage,” one for “daily use) of the work
could be donated to the Library of Congress..."
- US Library of Congress.
"An
exciting batch of vintage American recordings has arrived from Pristine
Audio: Eugene
Ormandy's 1955 Rite of Spring burning brightest as 'The Adoration
of the Earth' unfolds, a truly riveting performance (the couplings are
a so-so Petrushka Suite and some striking Rachmaninov-Cailliet
Preludes).
I was delighted to see an all-Respighi
programme from the Minneapolis Symphony under Antal Dorati,
climaxing with Church Windows, the closing 'St. Gregory the Great'
barely containable on CD let alone LP! Mind you, Dorati's Roman
Festivals isn't half bad and The Fountains of Rome is very sensitively
conducted. This is Dorati at his best and the transfers are about as
good as you could expect without access to mastertapes. One hopes that
there is more Dorati / Minneapolis material en route.
Pristine CDs devoted to Morton
Gould, Carmen
Dragon and Felix
Slatkin include a Slatkin / Concert Arts Orchestra programme of
Carnival of the Animals, Ibert's Divertissement, and a Delius programme
that has seen some snooty reviews over the years but includes much
extremely sensitive playing, notably from the cellist Eleanor Aller in
the Caprice and Elegy. Maybe this is Delius sounding like period
soundtrack music but what's wrong with that? Many a music addict has
been weaned on heart-tugging film scores, often involving standard
repertoire on a working holiday. Don't knock it. Again the transfers
work extremely well." - Rob Cowan, Gramophone, February 2010
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(Tristan und Isolde, Prelude, (excerpt))
