Yesterday I wrote about and posted a link to David Federman's second holiday collection, A Pre-Climate Change Christmas, but somehow I only included 17 of his 30 tracks in the download. This was not my attempt at editing - or "curation" in the modern terminology. It was a good, old-fashioned foul-up.
Today I've made amends by uploading the complete collection. You can
download it by following this LINK.
3 months ago
5 comments:
thanks!! I look forward to this
{Part 1 of 2}
"Missing Mercury MONOS" - Bartok Second Suite, Dorati
This recording of the atmospheric and strange Second Suite by Bela Bartok, a work published in 1921, was made in both mono and stereo mode at the end of November, 1955, at Northrup Auditorium in Minneapolis, at the time of Mercury's first adoption of multi-channel rather than merely single channel monophony. It *is* currently available as stereo on Mercury Living Presence CD, but the notes about the recording technique are a bit confusing, compared to what was published on the FIRST stereo issue jacket.
According to the CD edition, "The Second Suite was recorded...on half inch 3 track tape, using one Telefunken 201 and two U47 microphones. It was simultaneously recorded binaurally on quarter inch 2-track tape using two U47 microphones. As the 3-track master is unavailable at this time, the original binaural tape was used for the CD transfer."
HOWEVER...
The back cover notes for stereo release SR-90098, say:
"The three channels of sound were recorded onto triple track, half inch tape; later they were combined by a special Mercury process onto double-track, quarter-inch tape, from which this disk was made. Played through properly spaced and equalized speakers, the disk reproduces the music just as it was played at the time of the reording, with all the depth and breadth of sound which is that character of a fine orchestra.
"Wilma Cozart was recording director, and C. R. Fine was the engineer and technical consultant. George Piros made the subsequent tape-to-disk transfer."
Obviously, the 3-track master WAS available around 1960, when the stereo LP was released. The same recording was recoupled with another Bartok piece for a later Mercury stereo issue, SR-90533, issued in 1971. The back cover has no recording info, as far as we can tell from a rather fuzzy reproduction available on Discogs.
{End of Part 1 - by 8H Haggis}
{Part 2 of 2, and DL links}
I had *all* of these issues in my old vinyl collection of over 13,000 disks, and have long been familiar with the sonic differences between the mono and the THREE different stereo releases on LP and CD. Unfortunately, I have not heard the stereo LPs since c.1990 and can now compare only the mono LP transfer to the stereo CD; that being said, there is a remarkable difference in the CHARACTER of the performance! The mono issue has the standard, expected "Living Presence" sound, with extremely strong, prominent (edgy) brass; but the CD's stereo reproduction is problematical. I can well believe that it IS a binaural taping made by just the two "outlier" mikes used by Fine, widely spaced and lacking the mixing of the center mike. This is not a "natural" perspective heard by ANYBODY at ANY PLACE in a real hall; it's 'larger than life' and a bit grotesque: the exaggerated "glamorous" 3D Kodachrome color photos seen on a ViewMaster.
This type of stereo sound reminds me of some experimental tapes that I helped record, with two different engineers, of the early concerts of the San Jose Symphony back before the construction of their later dedicated concert hall, in an old, cavernous building, using merely two condenser mikes. Yes: the sense of spread was distinct; but the overall character seemed crude and "not like a commercial record": in that it lacked a definite "listener's perspective". I think the only way one would hear this sort of pickup is when one either plays one of the instruments near the front of the ensemble--or is the conductor at the podium! That being said, there are audiophiles who would prefer ANY kind of stereo...to mono. That individual might as well skip our experimental upload. (Years ago, when the stereo issue of this performance was out of print and a copy was not to be found anywhere, I actually spent some hours creating my OWN custom "electronic stereo" version, using cross-coupled spaced tape-head delay, for my early FM stereo broadcasts of the late sixties and early seventies! Back in those days, MONO was obsolete and to be shunned at all costs!)
For us older audiophiles, who began collecting well before the late 1950s or early 60s and therefore imprinted on 2-channel sound exclusively, I thought it might be useful, for historical perspective, to hear how the MONO original reproduced the same identical Dorati musical performance. The transfer of this LP was done by my friend A. D. in Chicago, using a mint pressing and high-end gear; he also provided, for completeness on the same CDR, the First Suite of Bartok, in the old out of print Hungaroton LP by Janos Ferencsik (that is a stereo transfer.)
{150 MB, mp3s, with Mercury mono LP and stereo LP cover images and track info, and Hungaroton cover/track data. LIMITED TIME AVAILABILITY - as ZS will not necessarily continue to offer this zipped file past 12/17/18, unless there continue to be consistent requests for DL.}
https://www78.zippyshare.com/d/FKrWXHtG/20239/BartokSuites.zip
-or-
https://www78.zippyshare.com/v/FKrWXHtG/file.html
8H Haggis
{Part 1 of 2}
Paul Badura-Skoda, pf, plays Mozart (Westminster Mono LPs)
Back in the middle 1960s, when I was a N. Californian college student, I attended a live concert at Stanford University of Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 19, played by Paul Badura-Skoda, with several orchestral works of Mozart, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra being conducted by Karl Muenchinger. I was privileged to meet both of these artists and to have PB-S autograph the record I'm including here in this upload: the Piano Sonata K.331, and the Fantasia in c and Sonata in c (K. 457 and 475, respectively.) I happened to remember this wonderful experience yesterday, while listening in the room next to my wife's piano studio, while she taught the Fantasia to one of her advanced students.
Ever since that concert, PB-S has been one of my favorite keyboard artists, and when I first obtained PC digital audio editing programs (DART 4 and Cool97), I digitized that Westminster LP. Though I had been using PCM recorders for several years, doing what I believe was the FIRST ever digitally syndicated classical music radio show, this was my very first edited digital CDR of an LP for my own archive. The declicking algorithm in DART was rudimentary and took out ONLY the loudest and most obnoxious "snaps"; but I was the original purchaser of a brand-new copy of this LP, and it had only been played by me on fine modern equipment: so the surfaces were very good. What you will hear in this upload is what I was able to put onto CDR back around late 1997. Since I now had what I considered (at least, at the time) to be a near-perfect digital copy of this relic, I later made a gift of the vinyl album to one of my best friends, a professional musician on the east coast: so I had to download the cover image from Discogs, rather than being able to show you the autographed sleeve.
The fortepiano used in this record is "the" famous Anton Walter "Mozart piano", which is kept in an Austrian museum. It was purchased by Mozart around 1782 though what is heard today, on modern records (including this old mid-fifties PB-S mono album) is the instrument as modified by Walter after Mozart's death. In addition, it has an attachment that is used in the final movement of the Sonata in C, K.331, to create the "Turkish effects": a remarkable "twanging" sound. PB-S also recorded these same pieces on a standard modern grand piano, on another Westminster LP, for contrast (I've never heard or seen that album, as a matter of fact.) You may find this Turkish sound effect to be almost *disturbing*; certainly there is no other record like it!
{End of Pt. 1 by 8H Haggis}
{Part 2 of 2, plus DL links}
I have also included some other outstanding Westminster albums of Mozart by PB-S, from the same general time period (monos, from c.1953-56): three Piano Trios (K. 496, 542, 458) with collaborators Jean Fournier (violin) and Antonio Janigro (cello); and four Mozart piano concerti on two different albums (Nos. 19, 22, 24, and 27) with Felix Prohaska conducting 19 & 27, and PB-S conducting the other two from the keyboard. Some of these transfers were from early WL-series issues dating from 1953 and subsequent years leading up to the Mozart bicentennial, and some from later XWN-series reissues of c.1958.
The chamber album I obtained years ago from a certain blog I shall not name (nearly all of its links are now dead), in a defective transfer in which the highs were severely cut above 4 kHz; I had to re-EQ this and re-encode as FLACS, and to declick it. The result is now acceptable. The concerti all came from Russian blogs, and I deemed the sound good enough to leave alone--so they are in the original mp3 format.
{327 MB, FLAC and mp3; plus covers & track info. LIMITED TIME AVAILABILITY, as ZS does not guarantee to keep the zip file active past 12/20/18--unless continued requests occur on a regular basis.}
https://www33.zippyshare.com/d/wHRZjQcB/284/MozartCtiSonatasPTriosPBS.zip
-or-
https://www33.zippyshare.com/v/wHRZjQcB/file.html
8H Haggis
Post a Comment