Four Cranks With Opinions

Sony/BMG Dips Into the Archives

2006-10-01T23:11:00.001-04:00

Puccini: Madama Butterfly: Price, Tucker, Maero; RCA Italiana Orchestra and Chorus, Leinsdorf, cond. (Sony BMG 82876-82622-2)

I haven't been able to hear this on my SACD player yet--which means I don't yet have the full measure of its sonics--but as a regular CD, it's really lovely: richer, with a fuller, less treble-happy balance than the older Living Stereo CD's, and minus some tape hiss. In fact, this is so free of background noise that I'm inclined to suspect that either it was removed via computer--a no-no in my book--or else it just was sourced from higher-level source material lower in hiss. It's also missing the occasional soft electronic click evident in the older transfer, which leads me to lean toward the second scenario: better source.

Even in its regular (redbook) CD format, this set sounds very close in tonal balance and general presentation to my old open-reel tape version, which still comes off best of all, in spite of its obviously higher level of tape hiss and occasional dropout. Ultimately, this one is a trifle short on sparkle and air--the top is very slightly attenuated--meaning if you have the older Living Stereo version, this one doesn't cry out to replace it.

A mild disappointment, though my general preference toward a brighter frequency balance my differ from yours. If it's significantly more impressive in its SACD guise, I'll follow up to that effect.

This is still my favorite Butterfly, BTW, edging out Scotto, Bergonzi, Barbirolli. Price is glorious, and so is Tucker, in spite of the occasional corny over-emphasis. This was the recording that made me an opera fan. And had, say, Merrill been engaged in place of the barely adequate Philip Maero (Sharpless), its critical reception might well have been even greater.

Original notes included, and libretto available via BMG on the net. The packaging is a slim SACD double jewel case, similar to the other issues in this series.

Verdi: La traviata--Moffo, Tucker, Merrill; Rome Opera Orchestra and Chorus, Previtali, cond. (Sony BMG 82876-82623-2, Hybrid SACD)

Again, I haven't heard this in SACD yet, just regular old redbook CD. So my comments are preliminary.

The remastering work on this set is is first-rate. Extended on top (listen to the detail in the flutes in the introduction to "Sempre libera") and bottom, transparent, and impactful. It is so far superior to any other version of this performance I've ever heard that it sounds like a different (and better) recording. Furthermore, the peak distortion that used to plague this recording seems largely to be gone--no doubt thanks to the use of superior source material (probably the studio masters, since the recording may also be played in three-track on capable systems).If you already have and like this set, you need this new remastering, so far superior does it sound. A technical triumph.

I like the performance very much, though I can't say I'm a big Moffo fan: she strikes me as a moderately talented but wan lyric soprano, one you might be happy to encounter on an average night at, say, the NY City Opera. Joined with voices like those of Tucker and Merrill, she sounds seriously out of her depth. Compared to a Violetta like Callas--not even in the same league (or the same sport, for that matter). Alfredo is not the ideal role for Tucker--he's a tad heavy-voiced, especially at this point in his career--but in the event, he makes a positive impression. Merrill recorded the role of Germont three times. This is as good as any of them: big-scaled, gorgeous singing.

Previtali conducts a nice, alert, middle-of-the-road performance, less frantic than Toscanini's, but with a lovely orchestral sound and energetic bounce. It's not the best or worst-conducted Traviata on disc, but it'll do.

If you already have this performance, buy the new discs for the sound. If you don't, run, don't walk.

Puccini: Turandot--Nilsson, Bjoerling, Tebaldi, Tozzi; Rome Opera House Orchestra and Chorus, Leinsdorf, cond. (Sony/BMG 82876-82624-2)

This one's another disappointment. While in redbook (regular CD) format, it sounds fine--the best of this title in digital I've ever heard, and competitive with, though not quite in the class of, the LP's--it still is nowhere in the class of the superlative open-reel tapes. Those are noticeably more open and extended on top *and* bottom, and seem better able to convey the "stage movement."

I do still enjoy the performance very much, and consider it on approximately equal footing with the 1973 Decca recording (Sutherland, Caballé, Pavarotti and Mehta). Richard Mohr--who produced the RCA--stated on a Met intermission feature of the '70s that he considered this the greatest opera recording ever made. I don't know about that, but I think I'd place it in my top 20 or 25.

As to why the extreme highs and lows might be missing, I'm afraid we now have to consider the possibility that the master tapes are irreparably damaged in some way, since all CD's of the performance have been so afflicted. Truly a pity, because in its original form this was a demonstration-quality recording.

MK

A "New" Reiner Meistersinger: Conducting "Ja," singing mostly "Nein"

2006-07-15T02:10:00.000-04:00

At the end of the Entrance of the Meistersinger in Act III of Orfeo's recent first authorized issue of Fritz Reiner's 1955 Vienna State Opera performance of Wagner's Die Meistersinger, the audience goes wild, almost stopping the show--extended cheering and applause...frankly, I've rarely heard anything like it. While I still think the greatest performance of this scene I've ever heard was Furtwaengler at Bayreuth in 1943, Reiner's orchestra (the VPO) is superior--the brass is especially magnificent, and we all know what Reiner could do with brass. It's one of my favorite scenes in all opera, and while Furtwaengler's is one of the most thrilling things I've ever heard in a live performance, Reiner runs a very respectable second.

Unfortunately, the singing is variable throughout. Paul Schoeffler's Sachs (though not at his best vocally) and (especially) Gottlob Frick's Pogner are both superb (this may be one of the finest pieces of work in Frick's recorded legacy--he sings with great intelligence, and is in his absolute vocal prime). Irmgard Seefried's Eva is very fine if a tad lightweight, and Hans Beirer's Walther (pun intended) is unbearable; the rest are a decidedly mixed bag. Rosette Anday's Magdalene is awful--almost ruining the performance at times, and the chorus--so central to this work--is not at its best; a bit sloppy.

Paul Schoeffler as Hans Sachs

The sound--another one of those excellent 1955 Vienna festival tapings--is vivid and alive, almost miraculous, given the date. (Rule out Furtwaengler only because of the singing [which, all told, is really better than the Reiner] and the missing Quintet, not the sound. M&A has rendered it more than listenable--it's stunning for a 1943 tape [and yes, it is tape].)

MK

Ring Musings

2006-07-05T19:45:00.000-04:00

I've got an unreasonable affection for the Böhm Ring which perhaps relates to imprinting: it was my first Ring back in the days when Philips had cut out the LP's for $3.49 a disc--a godsend for a student. Not only are the sonics--particularly on vinyl--among the best of all Ring recordings (and to my ear superior to the Keilberth), but the singing is of a uniformly high standard. Yes, there are exceptions: Rysanek is in not particularly good vocal form in Walküre, and oldies like Mödl, Windgassen and Greindl have their rough and ready moments. Still, it's hard to get everything right in a piece as vast as the Ring, and while Böhm's conducting can be prosaic, this one makes as good a case for the work as most.

I've thus far invested in only the Siegfried from the Keilberth. (And let me assure you that after a long and diligent search, I haven't been able to find it more cheaply than at MDT.) The only problem I have with the sonics, which are otherwise superb, is that the stereo stage is annoyingly narrow. Whether this jibes with the actual Festspielhaus acoustics I do not know, but it doesn't make for particularly grand or enveloping stereo reproduction.

A disaster recently forced me to re-purchase the '56 Kna Ring, this time on Orfeo, after owning it on M&A. The sound--still mono--is very noticeably improved, with more low end and more resonance. A much greater pleasure to listen to than before, and a better buy than the Keilberth, my only real objection is the conducting of Kna, which can at times be so slow as to practically grind to a halt.

I'm still waiting for a good-sounding issue of the Solti Ring. Should it be issued (as rumored) in their new Originals series, which has produced some stunning dubs (like the Price/Karajan Tosca and the Britten War Requiem--the latter of which is a slightly earlier transfer), we might finally have a CD issue worthy of the recording.

MK

A vivid Don Carlo at long last issued in definitive (read "legal") form

2006-06-27T03:53:00.000-04:00

The German "live performance" label Orfeo d'Or (not to be confused with the dreadful "Opera d'Oro" from which it couldn't be more dissimilar, and on which this performance was also issued, adding to the confusion), recently issued this 1970 Don Carlo from Vienna. It had previously seen the light of day on various private labels, but these CD's appear to have been dubbed from the original ORTF tapes--the sound is magnificent, one of the best-sounding live performances it's ever been my privilege to hear. It's in genuine stereo, and for once it really enhances the recording's live ambiance, bringing the soundstage forth with great immediacy and realism. This also may be the most realistic recording of the voice of Franco Corelli, though unfortunately it captures him a few years past his prime.

Horst Stein's conducting is superb--Germanic conductors seem to have a "thing" for this score. (It was Karajan's best Verdi opera, IMO.) Corelli is nearing the end. The voice still has plenty of bite and ring, but seems to have lost fullness and some of the dark-hued timbre of yore. (He obviously sensed this when he began to gravitate toward lighter roles in the last few years of his career.) Still, in the duet with his Elisabetta, Gundula Janowitz, he nearly stops the show with his "O maledetto io son!" For her part, Janowitz makes for a better Verdi soprano than one would expect, with more fullness in the middle and a dark edge to the tone--there's only a hint of chest voice, however, and it shows in the big duet with Corelli, where the music fits *him* like a glove. Eberhard Wächter (Posa) is at that stage of his career where he's beginning to lose steadiness, which causes his singing to be a bit more loosely-bound than ideal. As Eboli, Shirley Verrett's Veil Song and "O don fatale" are both magnificent, as is Nicolai Ghiaurov's Filippo--thriling not only in his great aria, but in the scene with the Grand Inquisitor, no less than the superb Finnish bass, Martti Talvela.

This is a much livelier affair than the best-known studio set, the roughly contemporaneous Giulini, and would be up there among my favorite Don Carlo sets (of which my absolute favorite is my off-the-air tape of the '76 Karajan Salzburg performancem with Carreras, Freni, Cossotto, Cappuccilli, Ghiaurov, and Bastin), if it weren't for the big hole where the role of Posa/Rodrigo should be. Insert, say, Cappuccilli or Milnes into that slot, and you've got it. The big surprise is Horst Stein. Who knew? The Vienna Philharmonic plays as stunningly as one would expect, however.

The sound is really grand, in every way the equal of Karajan's live '58 Salzburg performance on DG (mono only). Not without a blemish, but an exciting, entertaining night of opera to be sure. Recommended.

MK

How I Got Hooked on Fantasy Tennis and What Happened Then

2006-05-20T12:46:00.000-04:00

What It's All About

I love tennis—men’s tennis anyway—and it is hard for me to believe that I could be more enthusiastic about the sport than I already was, but then I got hooked on fantasy tennis. The ATP has done a couple of smart things this year. The first is that nearly every tournament features a player blog (these can be accessed on the ATP website, www.atptennis.com) so that we armchair warriors can get a little insight into how the athletes prepare for their matches and what they do during their “off” time during a tournament. The second is that they have made fantasy tennis free this year. Considering that thousands of people are taking part, the interest in men’s professional tennis must have increased.

I know that lots of people play fantasy baseball and other sports. For example. my cousin Patrick routinely wipes the floor with a bunch of local fantasy “managers” in Oswego, NY. The fantasy managers pore over the copious statistics available and choose their players, with due deference to the salary cap and whatever other considerations are relevant. And of course, every possible kind of statistic is kept in baseball. In addition to such mundane things as e.r.a. and r.b.i., there are on-base percentages, slugging percentages, how pitchers do in day games versus night games, etc., etc., ad nauseum. If you like numbers, fantasy baseball must be heaven, and I do hope it's more interesting than the actual games, which are bo-ring, in my humble opinion.

Not being particularly interested in statistics (or baseball, for that matter, although I think Derek Jeter is adorable), no one would ever find me playing fantasy baseball, but the ATP Fantasy Tennis is easy to play and not particularly statistics-driven. Every week, you get to pick 8 singles players and 1 doubles team for the tournament(s) being played. If your players do well and win money, you do well. Each team (mine is called the Gremlins, don't ask me why) is ranked based on the amount of prize money its players win for the week. There are over 11,000 teams, and mine is ranked 513 at the moment, which is pretty good for an amateur, if I do say so myself.

The great thing about fantasy tennis is that you have to pay attention to players you might not normally root for and tournaments that might not be among your favorites. I like grass court tennis (shortest season of all, worse luck) and indoor tennis best, although I am beginning to find a place in my heart for the summer hardcourt season, but clay? Other than Roland Garros, I never used to pay it much heed. But this year I have been poring over the results at smaller tournaments in Valencia, Barcelona, Casablanca, and Munich, as well as the big tournaments in Monte Carlo, Rome, and Hamburg. Next week I have a tournament in Poertschach, Austria, of all places! (Not much money there, but there are big bucks on the line at the ARAG World Team Cup in Duesseldorf) By the time Roland Garros rolls around, I will have so much clay on my socks they'll never get clean.

The catch in fantasy tennis is that you can only use each player or doubles team 5 times. With an 11-month tennis season, you can't use up the big guns early and expect to have much success. True, I have been prodigal with Rafael Nadal during the claycourt season, but I have not even used Roger Federer yet, and I am saving Andy Roddick for grass and the summer hardcourt season. Federer has played well on clay this year, and I am going to use him for Roland Garros, just in case the Roger-Slam becomes a reality, but otherwise it would be a waste to use him now. In fact, I haven't used any American players yet for obvious reasons.

Learning to Love Spanish Players

Strange as it may seem to some, there are Spanish players other than Nadal. During the clay court season I have used a number of Spanish and South American players with varying results, not to mention the odd Eastern European or two. When it comes to winning on the clay, you can get to love guys like David Nalbandian and Tommy Robredo. But in addition to those players, whose names were relatively familar to me before I started playing fantasy tennis, I have used David Ferrer, Fernando Gonzalez and Nicholas Massu to good effect. I haven't had much luck with Gaston Gaudio, and I have given up entirely on Guillermo Coria, but what's a game without some ups and downs? Soon we will be on the grass, and the Spaniards will disappear from my team to be replaced with Federer, Roddick, Hewitt, Henman and Rusedski (maybe), and a new discovery for me, Mario Ancic. So I'm being prodigal with the Spaniards while the claycourt season lasts.

Probably my biggest frustration so far has been having to root for Rafael Nadal when my heart is with Roger Federer, as was the case in Monte Carlo and Rome. But soon it will be Roger's turn, and Rafa has come through for me, although I wish I had used him in Barcelona. One nasty little catch about ATP Fantasy Tennis is that if you use a player and he withdraws because of an injury, you can't replace him and you have lost one of your 5 opportunities to use him during the season. That happened to me with Rafa this week in Hamburg, but considering that I have ended up with two players in the finals (Robredo and Stepanek), I can't complain too much.

If it sounds like I am having fun, you're right, I am. However, I have already learned that betting on sports would not be a good career for me. I have backed too many losers to be optimistic about my chances. But that's all part of the fun of it, isn't it?

"Players, time!"

Billie Holiday: The Box

2006-01-01T09:49:00.000-05:00

Billie Holiday: The Complete Verve Studio Master Takes (6 CD's Verve 000429102) is a really terrific set. It gathers her recordings for the various Verve labels (Clef, Norgran, and Verve), culled from singles and albums--in chronological form from 1952 to '59, by and large her last period of recording activity. The sound of the transfers is excellent, even the mono. (Actually, though the few stereo cuts sound better on an absolute basis, the mono are better mono than the stereo are stereo, and the stereo are at least very, very good. That said, many of the tracks from albums like Body and Soul and Songs For Distingue Lovers, which were recorded in stereo and mono form, are presented in mono, and there seems to be no logic to the choices.)

It's true that by the time of the last CD here, Billie's singing was mostly pretty poor from the technical standpoint (though I'd still have to say that the Columbia album, Lady in Satin is even worse). But there's very little that isn't worth hearing, and the soloists--including Charlie Shavers, Sweets Edison, Ben Webster, et al.--are all wonderful, and in the case of the aforementioned, right up there at the level of those from her Columbia years--speaking of which, though the Columbia (Vocalion and Brunswick, mostly) recordings of 1933 to '44 are among the most highly-regarded jazz records ever made, these are at an exalted, albeit somewhat lower, level. There are no embarrassments here, either artistically, interpretively, or yes, vocally as well.

Frankly, I find these generally superior to her Decca recordings, especially the later ones, where they mostly tried to relegate Billie to pop status (or should I perhaps say "Pops" status--a kind of female Armstrong). At least Norman Granz recognized her unique genius, and backed her with great jazz musicians and--this is a big one--blessed her with the great American songbook as her material. There is nothing less than excellent music to be found here.

I do harbor some reservations about the packaging, regarding which I'm of two minds: I love the big, chunky tin box, which is not only gorgeous, but is an attractive and effective way to store and protect the discs, but I hate what they've done inside, which is a long, longer, longest accordion of digipaks. It was fine for the Charlie Parker set of Verve masters, which was only three discs, but ridiculous for this, which is six.

Excellent discography and annotation are included, and for once they've taken it easy on the eye-straining overprinting of the text and the pictures. But the booklet and text are still too small for easy handling and reasonable readability. Furthermore, they've die-cut the first section of the accordion in such a way as to guarantee that it'll be defaced every time you grab it and try to open it. Oh, and the CD labels are fugly: they should've used reproductions of the original labels.

Those are relatively minor complaints, however. This is a box set that was sorely needed: the essential portion of Billie's recordings for the Verve labels, all gathered chronologically in a mostly beautiful package in superb sound.

My advice: run, don't walk.

MK

Tales of Hoffmann: How to Make Opera Into a Movie?

2005-12-14T15:24:00.000-05:00

Criterion has issued the 1951 Powell-Pressburger film of The Tales of Hoffmann on DVD. The movie doesn't succeed on all levels in its intended synthesis of various of the arts, but it's nonetheless a fascinating attempt: a qualified failure.

First, let's cut to the chase: how does the new disc look? The picture--one of the peak examples of three-strip Technicolor--looks more deeply colorful and has better contrast via Apple's DVD software than the screen captures at dvdbeaver.com (one of which is reproduced below) would seem to indicate. There are some color misregistration problems resulting in "fringing," most seriously in the last half hour or so, and worse in some segments than others.* The high-definition transfer emanates from the negatives stored at the British Film Institute, and is not likely to be bettered in the here and now. (As for hi-def, we shall see.)

Nothing is likely to ever make me care for the opera, which for some reason I've never cottoned to, but the film--which combines opera, dance, film, and visual effects in a way that would not be possible on stage--makes a reasonably good case for it. It's presented in an English translation which is not always easily intelligible. The performers are all dubbed with the voices of opera singers; the technique here is less distracting than it can be, in spite of the fact that it's often ballet dancers who are miming the soundtrack.

Tenor Robert Rounseville (the only one of the opera's principals to appear onscreen) may not rise to the level of the best tenors in the part, such as Tucker, Kraus, and Domingo, but in the event, he sings prettily and acts acceptably well in an operatic way. There's also some attractive dancing by the film's ostensible star, Moira Shearer, and an excellent commentary by film historian Bruce Eder and director Martin Scorsese. (Your film education is not complete until you've heard Scorsese draw parallels between The Tales of Hoffmann and Taxi Driver.)

Musically, the film has one unbeatable asset: Sir Thomas Beecham,** who finally appears on-camera in the final frames, vigorously conducting the Royal Philharmonic. Those moments alone are priceless.

MK

* Lowry Digital Imaging, the firm that has been responsible for many of the most prestigious transfers of vintage Technicolor films for Warner (Gone With the Wind, Singin' In the Rain, The Adventures of Robin Hood, et al.), has developed a system to correct for misregistration, but Criterion tends to do better with its own transfers (The Red Shoes, The River, Black Narcissus) in terms of color accuracy and the authentic look and feel of three-strip Technicolor. If only the best points of each technique could be combined...

** whose original preference, according to Eder, was to film either Carmen or La boheme, both of which were rejected by director Michael Powell as not fitting properly into his conception.

Everything you never wanted to know about Belafonte at Carnegie Hall and couldn't imagine asking...

2005-11-03T15:13:00.000-05:00

As I write this, I'm listening to one of my favorite albums, Harry Belafonte at Carnegie Hall. This is a complete amalgam of two performances from 1959. It's justifiably considered one of the greatest of the RCA Living Stereo recordings, and quite possibly the best of the pop ones. Whatever one thinks of Belafonte the artist--and time has not treated him kindly (Louis Farrakhan was probably more of a genuine calypso artist fer chrissakes!)--it's a wonderfully spirited performance and quite a communal event in the hall.

It also happens to serve as the best example on record of the sound of the pre-renovation Carnegie Hall. Perhaps the very best is the stereo album on Vanguard of the Weavers reunion concert from 1961, which is mind-bogglingly realistic, but it's so short and the music so ephemeral...well, it hardly does justice to the building. The Belafonte, on the other hand, is two well-filled LP's long, not unlike the Judy Garland Carnegie album. That one is probably the ultimate pop performance ever taped there (including even the famous Benny Goodman concert of 1938, which was recorded onto disc, of course, not tape.) But the Garland concert, good as it sounds, has a bit of an electronic patina surrounding it--it's a tad artificial sounding, no doubt due to the fact that it was heavily amplified in the hall. In those situations, the microphones are not just picking up the live sounds of the performers, but their amplified sounds as well--not a recipe for good sound.

The Belafonte concert, on the other hand, employed only a small orchestra, which really didn't play much during the concert: Belafonte was mostly accompanied by a small group of solo musicians.

While the whole thing is something of a sonic miracle from the first downbeat on, the final number, the sing-along "Matilda," is the piece de resistance. You can hear the various sections of the house singing along as Belafonte summons them. When he asks for the whole lower floor, it's something of a sonic explosion--you can almost feel the floor vibrating as you used to be able to when the low frequencies thundered forth (or when a subway entered the station below!).

If you've got a good stereo that produces a reasonable stereo image--or even a decent pair of headphones--you can precisely place each section in the hall as they sing their "parts." Plus there's plenty of laughter, coughing, shouting, whistling...I mean, this thing virtually defines "Living Stereo."

I've written a piece for Audio Asylum on the various issues of the Belafonte Carnegie Hall Concert, reproduced below. It was actually solicited by one of the frequent requests on the forum for "which one should I buy?" If you're at all interested, I hope you'll find it of some use.

MK

Just look around. Fine copies of the original LPs can be had for quite reasonable prices. If I recall correctly, I paid no more than $20-$25 for an excellent set of the original LPs.

As for the link to the $71 set of "1s" pressings, no one said there aren't people out there trying to get more money for their records. I recently saw a copy of the commemorative set RCA put out for the closing of the old Metropolitan Opera House for something like $600--this for a set that's worth about $3 at best. So there will always be auctions like this.

My evaluation of the Belafonte discs is as follows:

1. The original black dog RCA pressings: these can be gotten fairly noise-free in the $20-30 range. This was not a rare set, as it sold in huge numbers. The originals have an incredibly effortless presence, and instrumental and vocal timbres are immediate and realistic, with an almost total lack of harshness. This set is complete.

2. The German BMG CD reissue. It's hard to believe these CD's are copyrighted 1993, but so they are. They sound like a brand-new remastering, even though they're not. Highs are incredibly open and alive for a CD of any vintage, and the whole thing just jumps off the disc, with an incredible sense of you-are-there realism and a "busy-ness" to the sound that usually eludes CD's. These are not only the best CD's of this concert, they are among the best CD's I've heard—period. Only caveat is a little residual brightness, but I believe this to be inherent in the master tapes. It probably was corrected for in the original production master but appears here undisturbed. Available for $25 at CD Universe, this is an incredibly good set, and is note-complete.

3. The Classic 200g LP reissue. This is very close to being number 2, but lacks the high-end extension of the German CD issue. It sounds like these were EQ'd to sound like the original LP pressings, but it may be that the source tapes have lost a bit of life and the extended top of the original pressings. (It may be that the German discs, as is not unusual for foreign reissues, come from a set of copies of the original tapes that may have survived in better shape than the tapes used by Classic for their remaster. There is also a 45 rpm set which I haven't heard. If experience is any indicator, this should sound marginally superior to the "regular" 200g pressings, but probably not as good as the German CD's or the original black dogs. These pressings are all note-complete, and the cover art is an exact copy of the original. A lovely set if LP's are your thing.

4. The U.S.CD and the Hong Kong SACD. These are essentially one and the same: the HK SACD's are a dub of the tapes used for the RCA CD's or perhaps even a dub of a copy thereof. This is an abridged copy of the concert to fit on one disc: several selections and between-song patter are missing. The sound is representative of early CD's: hard and not especially open on top. Not horrible, but clearly a CD. The HK is essentially a waste of money: if you want an inferior, edited copy of the concert, you can just as easily waste your money on the U.S. CD. But why, oh, why, when the German CDs are so readily and inexpensively available?

5. NOT AUDITIONED: The original U.S. open-reel tape edition. If experience is any guide, these should be right up there with the original LP's, or possibly superior. I do have the second concert on open-reel, and it's a tad better than the excellent U.S. CD set of the second concert or the Classic 200g LP reissue.

Winner: the original black dog LP's in good condition.
Honorable mention: the German BMG CD 2-disc set.

MK

Not So Happy Days at Hogwarts: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

2005-08-02T14:57:00.000-04:00

As most of the civilized (?) world knows, J.K. Rowling's children's novel Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince went on sale in English-speaking countries at 12:01 AM on Saturday, July 16, 2005. This is the sixth installment in Rowling's 7-volume series featuring the young wizard Harry Potter. The Potter novels have been an enormous success, and the first four have been turned into films. The latest, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, is currently in production and debuts later this year.

It seems as if everyone has an opinion about Harry Potter, from elementary school kids (in favor) to Pope Benedict XVI (opposed). Quite a few people are less than enthusastic about all the marketing hype that surrounded the release of the most recent book in the series, suggesting that the objective was less to make the book available to all young English-speaking readers at the same time and more about boosting sales. Anyone who is plugged into any kind of media was swamped with "Harry Potter is about to be released" stories for weeks before July 16th, including descriptions of Amazon.com's immense pre-release sales (more the 750, 000 copies at $16.99 apiece), the security precautions surrounding delivery of the books to stores, the inadvertent (?) early sales of 11 (!) copies by a store in western Canada, Harry Potter costume parties at bookstores on the night of the impending release, and an unauthorized early translation in China. It all got to be almost as annoying and exhausting as a USA presidential campaign. Anyway, July 16th finally came, kids did or did not show up at 12:01 AM to buy their copies of the book, and kids did or not did get their copies delivered as promised by Amazon and other stores. (Amazon promised to refund the money of those who ordered the book in advance by a certain date and didn't get delivery on July 16th as advertised.) Then the fans settled down to read, and the news coverage shifted to reviews by fans and then professional critics. Is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince another commercial success? Obviously. Did most of the kid readers like it? Yes, most of them did, although some were disappointed. Is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince a masterpiece of children's literature? Well, the jury is still out on that. In my opinion, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, like the previous Harry Potter novels, is fun to read but no masterpiece, and, unlike the Pope, I have actually read them.

And yes, I broke down and actually bought a copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince instead of waiting for it to come to my local library, although I had vowed I wouldn't do it. Well-- it was 95 degrees in the shade where I live, I really needed a pick-me-up, and the relentless "which major character dies in this novel?" hype finally got to me. I had a theory, you see, and I wanted to know if it was correct. (It was.) So, here are my impressions of J.K. Rowling's latest phenomenon, and it contains spoilers, so if you don't want to know, you'd better stop here.

In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry is sixteen going on seventeen (Oops! Sounds like Rogers and Hammerstein.) and about to start his sixth and penultimate year at Hogwarts School for Wizards. He scored well enough on his O-levels (Oops! OWLS.) to continue his studies as he hoped to do and is anticipating his A-levels (NEWTS) in his final year and thinking about careers. Unfortunately, unlike most school kids, Harry has other things on his mind, as well, because the evil Lord Voldemort, who murdered Harry's parents and tried to kill infant Harry, too, leaving him with a lightning-shaped scar on his brow, is well and truly back and creating evil and chaos wherever he goes. (Harry survived the murderous attack, which rebounded on Voldemort and nearly destroyed him, making Harry the most famous orphan wizard of all time.) This uproar has even penetrated the Muggle (non-wizard) world, and the novel starts with a briefing of the Muggle prime minister by the new Minister of Magic. (And yes, Tony Blair was asked about this by the media and replied in the proper diplomatic spirit.)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince proceeds as a bizarre mix of high school hijinks and desperate measures to fight the spreading power of the evil forces of Lord Voldemort. Harry, whose attempts to convince his classmates and the Ministry of Magic that Voldemort had survived and was regaining power had been ridiculed in the previous couple of books, has been vindicated, but now comes the difficult and dangerous task of trying to stop (= kill) Voldemort before he returns the favor. So, one minute Harry is doing his homework or playing Quidditch (what one writer has described as polo on broomsticks), and the next minute he is meeting with the Headmaster of Hogwarts and powerful wizard Albus Dumbledore to learn more about Voldemort and determine how to defeat him. It is really disconcerting to make a quick cut from Ron Weasely (Harry's best friend) discovering the joys of snogging (Brit-speak for making out) to exploring the past of Lord Voldemort in search of clues to how he maintains his power. Apparently this doesn't bother youthful readers, but I found it very unsettling, as if Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee had taken a night off from trying to destroy the Ring to go out drinking and give rein to their raging hormones.

Anyway, if you stick it all out, you find that Lord Voldemort has rendered himself nearly immortal by hiding bits of his soul in objects called Horcruxes, and Harry and Dumbledore must find and destroy these soul repositories in order to make Voldemort vulnerable to being killed. They have some limited success (two of seven horcruxes destroyed), but while the duo is trying (unsuccessfully, it turns out) to destroy a third horcrux, a plot to attack Hogtwarts is going forward, leading to the Death-eaters invading the school. An exhausted Dumbledore is killed by the loathsome Professor Severus Snape, whom he trusted and Harry hated, and at the end of the book Harry and his young friends Ron, Hermione, and Ginny are left to carry on the fight alone. At least, Harry is resolved to fight on, and by this time everyone knows that the other three will follow.

Will Harry Potter defeat Lord Voldemort in the end? (The final book is due to be released in two years.) No one knows, and J.K. Rowling isn't saying. Many young readers were shocked when some of the characters in the novels were killed (Cedric Diggory, a student, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire [Book 4] and Harry's godfather Sirius Black in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix [Book 5]), and all these same readers know that it has been prophesied that either Harry Potter or Lord Voldemort is fated to destroy the other. Rowling has fulfilled her promise to keep Harry alive until Book 7 (This is hardly a surprise. I doubt if many people would pay to read The Late Harry Potter and the Triumph of Evil!) , but she has been mum on the subject of whether Harry will still be standing at the end of the final installment of the series. The fans will just have to hold onto their patience and wait for the last book to be published, and the Potter opponents can rejoice that Rowling insists that Book 7 will really be the last.

The thing is, the Harry Potter novels, including the most recent one, are really entertaining stories. At their best (and they are really uneven) they are page-turners in the mode of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, but when they lag, they really lag. Book 5, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, was a bloated 800+ pages long, and even the new one is a more than slightly obese 652 pages. It is somewhat astonishing that kids will devour these porkers in a matter of hours and read them over and over, but they do, and that's a fact. And Harry has a lot of adult fans, as well, but the books are not as easy for adults to enjoy, because they really are written for children, and much of what goes on is both boring and unappealing to adults. On the one hand, it is easy for adults to enjoy and appreciate the clever names of people and places, such as Cornelius Fudge, the weak-willed former Minister of Magic, or the amazing wizard-mall called Diagon Alley (= diagonally). And one meeets just about every magical or mythical creature imaginable, from centaurs (bitchy and hostile) to basilisks (poisonous and petrifying) to zombies (menacing and hungry). Devices such as port-keys, floo powder, and horcruxes are inventive and engaging, and creatures like dementors (emotional bloodsuckers) are properly frightening. When Harry achieves his first successful patronus charm (his symbol of protection is a stag, as was his father's), one is riveted. When the villainous Dolores Umbridge forces Harry to write his punishment lines in his own blood, one can only be impressed by Rowling's evil imagination. On the other hand, the references to snot, vomit, and other bodily wastes that kids find hilarious are tedious at best for adults, not to mention the boy- and girlfriend troubles, the snogging, the cramming for exams, the Quidditch descriptions, etc. I think that most adult readers would find that Harry's anguished resolve to keep feeding Dumbledore the contents of the basin that holds a horcrux even though Dumbledore is in agony is a better indicator of Harry's maturity than the rise in his testosterone level. What the kids think may be quite different, of course.

I don't claim to be an expert on children's literature, although I have many childhood favorites, from Tolkien and C.S Lewis to Edward Eager's Half Magic series to Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons to Eleanor M. Jewett's The Hidden Treasure of Glaston. What those books share, and Harry Potter lacks, is a consistent adult language and perspective, even though the books are intended for, and much loved, by children. There is no difference between the language used by C.S. Lewis in the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and that of his Perelandra trilogy for adults. True, Harry Potter suffers during the course of the Rowling novels, but his suffering is rather trivial compared to that of Andrew Wiggin in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. And perhaps I'm wrong about this, but it seems to me that children of all ages can appreciate the genuine masterpieces of children's literature, whether they read them themselves or are being read to, while the later Harry Potter books seem alien and almost unreachable to the young kids who are just discovering the Potter books. Conversely, all the adolescent angst aside, an adult can appreciate Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince better than the first Potter novels.

And that's why I have reservations about calling these books masterpieces of children's literature, even though I am just as happy as the next person to know that kids out there are actually reading something, not just goggling in front of the tube or the computer monitor. And I hope that many of these young readers will find the great children's works and enjoy them, even though they are not as jazzed up and snazzy as Harry Potter. And I, for my sins, will most likely buy the final Harry Potter novel when it appears instead of waiting for it to reach the public library. I may be critical, but that doesn't mean I'm not hooked.

Otello on DVD: mixed bag

2005-07-15T08:59:00.000-04:00

This is the second DVD issue of this performance I own. The first, also on DG, was visually poor: grainy, faded color, speckles throughout.

The superb quality of the Ponnelle/Böhm Figaro led to high expectations for this reissue, and sure enough, it's a major improvement visually over the first issue--less grainy, deeper and more saturated color, and clean as a whistle. The stereo PCM soundtrack is excellent, about on par with the first issue, which did at least have remastered audio.

The performance is equivalent to the EMI studio recording. Vickers was going through a bad patch, vocally speaking, and there are some rough moments--his Met performances of a few years later are superior. Freni sings prettily, but she's utterly devoid of feeling. Glossop's Iago is a reasonably intelligent performance, but the voice is in ruins.

Karajan's leadership is altogether more precious and less dramatic than his 1961 Decca recording, one of the great sets in the catalog. The Berlin Philharmonic plays well, but the slick, polished sound is all wrong. The chorus is satisfactory--no more.

MK

The Sopranos return...and I don't mean Leontyne and Renata

2005-06-19T05:41:00.000-04:00

Season five, after a marathon of DVD-watching, is now firmly ensconsed "in the books"--and as always, I'm stunned, breathless, and awash in admiration. This is something so far above the realm of "regular TV" as to not really belong to the same genre. It's an incredible 13-hour movie that leaves everything in the film department I've seen over the last few years utterly in the dust. Tell me about one film you've seen that even begins to approach the screenwriting, cinematography, casting, and acting of this.

There really is hardly a false note. (O.K.--the "acting" of Patti D'Arbanville is an eye/earsore, and for once some of the secondary roles--Robert Loggia's Feech La Manna is a conventional over-the-top gangland impersonation--don't really ring true.) As usual, at the center, James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano demonstrates the value of low-key underacting (or is that a drug-induced coma?), and Lorraine Bracco shows how talking funny can win you too an Emmy. My favorite remains Uncle Junior (the great Dominic Chianese), who can still provide us with one of the season's most obscenely memorable moments in his admonition to two patrolmen who've just picked him up wandering dementedly in Newark: "Go shit in your hat."

Although the season aired on HBO a year ago, I won't reveal specific plot details, other than to note that there's the customary disposal of one major cast member three-quarters of the way through the season (closely followed by another one), and mention that Christofuh ends the season with a tenuous grasp on sobriety. Oh, yeah: he and fiance Adrianna both are allocated brand new mothers.

There are those spoil-sports who will tell you the series is played out, and that there shouldn't be a season six. I'll say only this: you'll be sorry when it's gone. (Please, though: no more guest stars--Frank Sinatra Jr. was cool a few seasons ago, but we could do without former football great Lawrence Taylor sitting there at the poker table like a dummy.) I for one will be waiting anxiously for season six.

The video--er, film--looks glorious in its 1.78:1 "widescreen" format, and the transfers are faithful to the beautiful photography, though faces look a bit brownish-ochre pasty (by design?). Anyone who could criticize something that gives us a terrific half-a-feature film for 13 weeks is the very definition of churlish.

The Sopranos: winner and still champion.

MK

Leontyne's Christmas album all dressed up

2005-06-11T05:05:00.000-04:00

Decca recently re-released all three of their big-opera-star Christmas albums: those of Joan Sutherland, Renata Tebaldi, and, perhaps most memorable of all, Leontyne Price. This was recorded in Vienna in the Summer of 1961 with Herbert von Karajan on the podium, and members of the Vienna Philharmonic and several of the city's best-known choruses. A real Cadillac--make that Mercedes--setting all the way. John Culshaw produced and Gordon Parry was the engineer--both famous for the great Solti Ring.

All these high-class elements make for a holiday album for the ages. Price is in her best, most youthful voice, before her crisis during La fanciulla del West at the Met that Fall, after which even her most loyal fans will admit the voice never quite sounded as effortlessly radiant. Here it's simply glorious--listen for proof to the ending of "We Three Kings of Orient Are," a floated high note that a cranky friend of mine calls one of the most efforlessly gorgeous tones ever comitted to record. Likewise the opening lines of "Von Himmel Hoch"--simply ravishing. There's very little here that fails to make its full effect.

I'll say only that I detect a slight lack of "festiveness"--the album lacks a celebratory aspect, something that simply pervades the Sutherland. It's more a low-key, private recital, thanks no doubt to Karajan, who views this all in abstract, beauteous terms. It succeeds on that level, to be sure. But don't expect jingle bells all the way, or Santa coming to town. Honey, you ain't gonna find it here.

The transfer is lovely. Everything floats in the air of the Sofiensaal, as it did on the far hissier open-reel tape edition way back when. This is much better in every respect, and the digipak cover is a nice reproduction of the U.K. original.

Two thumbs way up and a hearty Christmas cheer.

MK

Much ado about nothing

2005-05-08T15:28:00.000-04:00

I've been watching the DVD's of Seinfeld the past few days. Oddly enough, I rarely if ever caught the show during the years of its first-run status: I've only recently discovered it via reruns on local stations, and have found it to be incredibly addictive. It's not so much that the plotlines suck you in (as with, say, The Sopranos, quite possibly the greatest TV series in history), but rather that the characters are so appealing (or appalling, as the case may be) that you want to keep coming back to visit with them. You become part of their social sphere. That's a tribute to the realism of the dialogue and the fact that most of us can relate in some way to the people and situations depicted.

The first box set consists of the pilot episode (where the characters and the situations seem oddly threadbare and underdeveloped, at least as compared with the later shows), and all of the (abbreviated) first and second seasons. There's also a dryish documentary about how the show got started, which serves mostly to demonstrate that TV actors tend to be less appealing in real life than in television life. As for the writers and executives, that's why they invented chapter skip.

At least the exterior is real. (Not a DVD screen shot.)

Once the series really begins to take off--with the "Chinese Restaurant" episode--you're hooked. Most of us can relate to the agony of waiting and waiting for a table while everyone else's name gets called, even people who've come in a good half-hour after you, while your promised wait time remains frozen at "5 or 10 minutes." That's the genius of Seinfeld: it recognizes the fact that some of our biggest frustrations in life--at the moment they're occuring--arise as a result of the dumbest and least significant things. Hence, as the saying goes, a show about nothing.

The video transfers of the first two seasons, which are high-definition jobs from the original film sources, are superb--far better than most of us can receive on regular TV. The colors and details of the basic sets, for example--Jerry's apartment and the cafeteria, to name the two most notable--can be discerned for the first time. This adds immeasurably to the enjoyment of the show, which (depending to some extent on your screen size), now plays more like a light movie than a TV series. Nor can I detect even a touch of edge enhancement, that teeth-gnashing bugaboo of home video.

While it may be true that surveys place this show in the company of classics like The Honeymooners, I can't go quite that far: there's no sitcom of the modern age that competes on that level (even Jerry--the real one--might agree). That said, it's almost always a funny and absorbing half-hour (or 24 minutes, as the absence of the commercials reveals), and easily one of the best-written and -acted television series of the past several decades. As for the DVD's, while the box is flimsy and the extras listless and obligatory, the video looks great, and the main attraction is hugely entertaining. I'm just now starting to watch season three (which occupies the entire second box), and am signed up for a pre-order of season four, which is coming soon. Bring it on!

MK

Books in Honor of the 80th Birthday of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

2005-03-16T12:24:00.000-05:00

Legendary German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau celebrates his 80th birthday on May 28, 2005. Two new books have recently appeared to commemorate the event.



Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau: Ein Leben in Bildern
Hans A. Neunzig
Henschel Verlag (2005)
ISBN: 3894874996
Price: 34.90 Euros at www.Amazon.de (approx. $47.00)

I received my copy of this book a week or two ago and have been thinking about how to judge it. It's a large format, almost coffee-table-size, book from Henschel Verlag that combines text with a large number of photos, most of them black and white, with a center section of color reproductions of a selection of DFD's paintings. Basically, the big attraction of the book is the pictures. It's a great book for anyone who wants lots of pictures of DFD, especially if you don't already have a great many of them. As is the case with most publications about DFD, the more you already know or have collected, the less the book has to offer. There are personal photos, many photos of DFD in opera roles, pictures of concerts and recitals, some conducting photos, and, as mentioned above, reproductions of paintings, including several shots taken of the exhibtion in Polling (Bavaria) that ran for a couple of months last year. There are a number of personal photos that were new to me, including a couple of childhood pictures of DFD at around 4 years old, one alone and one with his older brother Klaus, a picture of DFD in Wehrmacht uniform that I had not seen before, and a couple of pictures of DFD's mother. There is also a spread of pictures of DFD with his first wife, Irmgard Poppen, and their two older children. Probably the most eye-catching is a small photo of DFD giving infant Mathias a bottle. Interestingly, there are no childhood photos of DFD's youngest son, Manuel, and no adult photo of his oldest son, Mathias. There are young adult photos of Martin and Manuel (one apiece). There are a couple photos of DFD's second wife, Ruth Leuwerik, and one of his third wife, Kristina Pugell. There are a few new (to me) opera photos, including one of a very young DFD in costume for the premiere of Honneger's "Ein Totentanz" (1949). There is also a hilarious picture from Zillig's "Troilus und Cressida" that illustrates DFD's remark in his memoirs that wearing the short Greek tunic embarrased him. DFD barelegged looks like a stork, God help him. The concert and conducting photos are pretty much all known quantities, as are the DFD paintings. There is just one photo of DFD giving a masterclass. Don't worry about the text being in German. It is basically an abbreviated rehash of material in Hans A. Neunzig's 1995 biography of DFD. There is very little in it that is new. I don't exactly want to use the term "hack job," but it's close. So, you won't miss anything if you can't read the text, and if you have read Neunzig's biography, you pretty much know what the text says anyway. Now for the weaknesses. There are two major flaws in the book, in my opinion. One is the rather haphazard way the material is arranged. At first you say to yourself, "Ah, it's chronological," but it isn't. You can leap years from one page to the next. Then you say, "Okay, it's thematic," but that turns out not to be true either. Pictures of every type are scattered through the book. Personally, I don't get it. I would have put all the personal pictures in one place and arranged them chronologically, then done the same for the opera photos, etc. (Although the opera photos could have been arranged by composer, as it done to some extent in the book, but if so, then it should at least be consistent, which it isn't.)The paintings are a special section anyway, so they don't count. The other weakness, which is nearly fatal, is the lack of an index. There is no index whatsoever, so if you want to find a photo, you have to leaf through the entire book. It's ridiculous. Did I mention the term "hack job" a couple of paragraphs ago? You know, now that you mention it . . . . Oh well, your mileage may vary of course, but at about $48 plus shipping, you may want to think about it carefully before you buy.


Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau: Diskographie
Monika Wolf
BoD GmbH, Norderstedt (2005)
ISBN: 3833424702
Price: 29.90 Euros at www.Amazon.de (approx. $40.00)


Anyone who is familiar with Monika Wolf's previous Fischer-Dieskau discography (Schneider Verlag, 2000)knows the kind of detailed, accurate work she produces. This new discography, computer-published via Books on Demand, differs from the first one in several ways. First, the entries are arranged chronologically, instead of by composer. Second, it gives information about the recording producers and sound technicians, to the extent that it is available. Third, it contains entries that had not yet been released at the time of the original discography in 2000. And finally, each entry (except two) is accompanied by a color reproduction of the album cover. The book is more comprehensible to the casual reader than the earlier work, and thus gives a better impression of the sheer volume and scope of DFD's recorded legacy. It is simply a must-have for collectors of DFD's recordings, and it is also just plain interesting reading for DFD fans who are not obsessive collectors. The album covers are a great addition, and it's fun to see that the European covers are often different from the ones I know from the USA. If you collect DFD's recordings or would like to, you need both of Monika Wolf's discographies. If you're just starting, I recommend you begin with this one. You will not regret it.

Anne Bachschuster: Watercolor on paper (2000)
23 x 32 cm
www.ArtResearch.de

Report from Home: School Days

2005-03-07T19:07:00.000-05:00

When I was four, my parents sent me to kindergarten. I had wanted to go to school for as long as I could remember. The boy next door started school the year before I did, and I was terribly jealous. He went to Saint Mary’s school, to morning kindergarten, and came home at around noon. We played together in the afternoon, and he would tell me what he had done in school that day. It all sounded so wonderful, and I was embarrassed to admit that I didn’t go to school yet. What had I done in school that day, he asked me. So I lied. I told him that I went to the public school kindergarten and described my morning, which was remarkably like his, but he never seemed to notice that. I soon found out that living a lie was a tedious business. When Danny Knight left for school in the morning, I would sit down in a corner of the living room and pretend to be at school myself. I drew pictures, sang songs, looked at books, and tried to reproduce the other activities Danny had described. No matter how often my mother tried to send me out into the yard to play, I wouldn’t let myself be seen outside until after the noon whistle blew. Fortunately, I didn’t have to keep this up for long. Danny’s mother told him I was too young to go to school, and so the pretense was over.

Then, however, it really was time for me to go to school. I went to kindergarten in an old wooden building on South Fourth Street in Fulton. The residents of the city called it the chicken coop. I was anxious to go to school and had great expectations. Kindergarten, however, was a terrible disappointment. The teacher was large and forbidding and had a very powerful voice. Her name was Miss Freeman. Her first name was Gertrude, but the other kindergarten teacher, a Mrs. Hamer, called her “Gert” when they talked together. In my mind, I called her Gert. It fit her so well; it rhymed with dirt. It was abrupt and ugly and expressed everything I felt about her.

I think Miss Freeman’s mission in life was to set limits and make me follow the rules. I didn’t mind doing what she wanted—at least most of the time I didn’t mind—but I did have a habit of asking questions that didn’t please her at all. And I wanted to do all the wrong things. I wanted to get right into the sand pit and play with the dump trucks the way Danny and I did at home. She didn’t approve of that. I would get too dirty. I should play with the dolls and take turns wheeling the baby carriage. I never gave in without an argument, but Miss Freeman got her revenge. When it was time to play with the rhythm band, I never got to play the triangle or the tambourine. She always gave me the wooden blocks. I hated her, and the feeling was mutual. At report card time, my parents read that I was stubborn and would not follow directions. They didn’t seem too worried about that. Or too surprised either, for that matter.

But the worst thing about kindergarten, worse than any of my struggles with Miss Freeman, was that I missed every school party during the whole year. I never imagined there were as many kinds of chicken pox and measles as I suffered from during my first year of school. While everyone wore costumes and ate cookies and drank punch, I stayed home and tried not to scratch my sores. My older sister said that if I scratched them I would be scarred for life, so I only scratched them a little bit, when no one was looking.

I never had good luck in school. That continued from my first day in kindergarten to the day I got my diploma from high school. Teachers didn’t like me, for some reason. Of course, it might have been because I had a big mouth, but I prefer to regard it as prejudice. God knows, I gave enough teachers heart attacks in my time, like the day Mrs. Colitre, an elderly high school English teacher, confiscated my notebook during a study hall and discovered my first attempt to write a pornographic novel for public consumption (meaning my neighbors in study hall). It wasn’t all that great, but it made her blue hair stand on end, and I got a free trip to the principal’s office out of it. He laughed at my porno novel, which hurt a lot more than being caught in the act by Mrs. Colitre.

But once, only once, I felt that I came off best in an encounter with a teacher. I was in the fifth grade, and I came to gym class one day to find that the class was learning to play soccer. I had missed the class before, when the fundamentals had been explained, so I was a little at sea. As fate would have it, the gym teacher, a Mrs. Tully, who wore stockings with socks and sneakers, picked on me for a review of what had been learned the class before. “Here,” she said, the black and white ball on the gym floor between us, “Show the class how to tackle me.” Tackle her? I hesitated. I really didn’t know what she wanted, but who wants to remind the teacher that she was absent for the previous class? So I just stood there. “Come on, “ she said, growing impatient, “tackle me.” I couldn’t do it. I just stood there. Mrs. Tully’s patience was at an end. “Tackle me, stupid!” she hissed. Stupid? I gritted my teeth and measured her through narrowed eyes. And then I tackled her, just as I had learned playing football with the boys on the playground. I took her down at the knees so hard that she nearly bounced on the gym floor. Needless to say, I got a trip to the principal’s office that day, too. But it was worth it. That time it was worth it. Not too long ago I saw Mrs. Tully at the assisted living residence where my father was living. She looked tiny and frail, and she didn’t recognize me. But I smiled inwardly when I remembered what happened when she insisted that I tackle her. Stupid, huh?

Munch's Berlioz Requiem on SACD: Almost, but not quite

2005-03-03T00:57:00.000-05:00

Charles Munch's RCA recording of the Berlioz Requiem is as commanding as you'd expect any recording of Munch conducting Berlioz to be. The Boston Symphony sounds great as usual, but the chorus is clearly singing English-inflected Latin. Good chorus, though.

This was never quite out of RCA's top drawer, sonically-speaking, though it has its moments. The SACD is quite obviously superior to the version on the now out-of-print "Munch Conducts Berlioz" 8-CD set. (The new 10-CD set apparently uses mostly the same transfers for duplicative material.) This is apparent at both ends of the frequency spectrum: for example, the light bass drum taps during the tenor solo sound deeper and more audible on the SACD, whereas on the CD you barely notice they're even being played. On the top end, the new disc is more open and far less edgy, especially when the chorus sings loudly, and more of the capacious Symphony Hall sound is captured.

One audio cavil: Leopold Simoneau's solo sounds undermixed on the SACD, whereas it's well balanced and clear as day on the CD. It looks as if (as with the Gershwin disc) Sound Mirror Studios, who did the remastering, lowered the center channel of the three-channel master. This gives the sound more stereo separation--in the CD, many of the woodwind passages are quite prominent as part of the center "ghost image" (making the section sound almost as if it had been recorded in mono) whereas on the SACD the spread is wider. I prefer the latter mix, except where it causes the imbalance in the tenor solo.

RCA was already starting to use more mikes by 1959, when this recording was made, and for this reason the imaging is a bit vague vis-a-vis the very early two-mike stereo recordings such as Reiner's Heldenleben or Fiedler's Gaite Parisienne. There, everything is in its proper place on the stage, and in spite of the inevitable "hole in the middle," the precise location of the instruments is easy to discern. Perhaps the results would've been better if the recording had been made in 1953 or '54.*

At any rate, the performance is at least competitive with the other stereo versions I've heard (including the Telarc conducted by Robert Shaw--talk about a bass drum!), and the sound is very obviously improved.

MK

* The brief excerpt that's survived of the lost stereo version of Munch's Damnation of Faust (recorded in 1954) is sonically sensational--far superior, even on red book CD, to this SACD of the Requiem. C'est la vie.

Judy at Carnegie Hall: The magic of recordings at its most magical

2005-02-21T03:29:00.000-05:00

As we speak, I'm listening to Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall with some new stereo equipment. This is the first time I've felt I'm really at the Judy Garland Carnegie Hall concert. You know (even via headphones) that you're doing O.K. when that happens.

Please buy this one. Even my friend Bob, who is one of the crankiest of the Four Cranks, says it's the bee's knees.

Get the recent Capitol reissue (40th anniversary, copyright 2001, or something like that). It beats the stuffing out of the super-expensive Steve Hoffman-remastered DCC label version, which is out-of-print anyway. He's a famous mastering engineer with whose aesthetic sense I do not agree. He likes to get rid of any ambience, and place the performer in your living room. Well, I don't want the very late Judy Garland in my living room: I want her in Carnegie Hall, where she belongs, dammit, and I want to go to Carnegie Hall, or at least as close as my cruddy little stereo will get me. (Ultimately, you know, they're all "cruddy little stereos," albeit to varying degrees.)

You place this in your CD player and put on your headphones, and crank up the volume, and you...are...there.

Ain't recordings wonderful?

MK

Krauss does Strauss: Salome

2005-02-18T13:30:00.000-05:00

This is the Decca recording from 1954, which has seen very little circulation in recent years. It was available for a long time on Richmond budget LP's, but I can't recall ever seeing it on CD. So here it is.

The conducting of Clemens Krauss (who died two months after this recording was made) is magnificent. The key to getting Salome right is on the one hand, the tempi, of course, but on the other it's the orchestral balances. It's complex orchestrally, and unless the various strands are properly balanced it can go awry. Here Krauss has it down to a 't'. Everything seems "right." The VPO is glorious, and the music is in its blood.

Christel Goltz is a damned good Salome. She's got that mixture of little girl voice and grownup bloodsucker that the role requires, and which only Welitch has completely nailed. Goltz doesn't have that kind of voice, but within her limitations she hits a ground-rule double if not a home run. I would've liked to have heard/seen her live.

Hans Braun is an exceptionally good Jokanaan, in many ways the most important role in the opera (certainly the most important male role--Eberhard Wächter in the Solti recording is my favorite), and Julius Patzak is luxury casting as Herod (though the role does have a bit of a history of being played by older star tenors; Vickers sang it for awhile, for example).

Sonics are terrific late-era mono, without the top-end boost of the roughly contemporaneous Kleiber Rosenkavalier. The only thing missing is stereo, from which this opera, practically above all others, benefits.

Highly-recommendable to Salome-lovers, especially at the budget price. Kudos to Decca for rediscovering this "lost" recording.

MK

Report From Home: Denture Adventures

2005-02-07T20:53:00.000-05:00

Dad kept his false teeth in the top drawer of his bureau, about a dozen pairs in various states of disrepair. The uppers and lowers didn’t always match. Sometimes he’d break one half of a set and tried to match up the remaining one with an orphan left over from another mishap. And then there was the time he broke his upper plate in half, just because he was mad and needed to break something. That was when he was in the hospital one time. He was out of his mind when he did it, of course, but it was genuine Dad just the same.

Dad worked on his dentures all the time. He mostly used two or three files and a couple of blades on his Swiss army knife to make adjustments. Out in the garage he had rigged a vise on the end of an old picnic table. Sometimes he put a plate in the vise and worked on it with his files. Dentures are pretty fragile to put up with that kind of treatment. Most of the broken plates were the result of Dad’s energetic attempts to fine-tune his dentures. Even when the plates held together, he was never satisfied with the adjustments that he made.

The way I see it, Dad was operating on a false premise. He thought dentures were supposed to work, maybe even better than natural teeth. I think he never figured out what false teeth were really about. My aunt was different. When she got her upper plate Mom said, “Mary, they look very nice. How do they feel?” Aunt Mary said they were fine as long as she didn’t try to use them. She saw and accepted that dentures served an aesthetic function, mainly. She understood it and acted on it, and she got along pretty well.

But Dad wanted to eat apples and chew steak the way he did in the past, and the way they do in denture adhesive commercials on TV. His own teeth had let him down and he figured that a bought set, a scientifically engineered and manufactured set, so to speak, would be better and more reliable. That did not prove to be the case. So Dad kept making adjustments and breaking plates, and the collection in his bureau drawer kept on growing.

You might wonder why he didn’t just throw them away when he was dissatisfied with them. He’d try on a set once in while, but they didn’t improve sitting in the drawer, so he didn’t end up wearing them for long. Of course, they had cost a great deal of money, and Dad was known to be tight with a dollar, but he knew they had no use. No use to him—and he certainly didn’t think anyone else was going to wear them.

But he had a perfectly good reason for keeping them. He kept them because they made him mad. Dad liked to be mad. He felt more alive when he was mad about something. He could work up a pretty good rage complaining about his dentures, and whoever was near him at the time had to listen to it all. That was Mom most of the time, but she stopped hearing him a long time ago. She would sit quietly at the kitchen table and work on the bridge problem in the newspaper while Dad cursed all dentists and their conspiracy to prevent him from having a pair of workable dentures.

You could tell what state of mind Dad was in by whether his dentures were in or out. Mostly, he started with them in, of course, but sooner or later the upper plate—or it might be the lower plate—would be out of his mouth and he’d be working on it with one of his tools. When he was feeling well-disposed toward the rest of the family he did his denture adjustments out of their sight—or at least at a distance. When he was feeling mad at the world he did the fine-tuning right at the kitchen table while everyone else was eating lunch. When things were really bad he’d go around with no teeth, his two plates rattling in the breast pocket of his shirt. If you walked into the house and saw that, you knew to be careful. He was a little more circumspect around strangers, as long as he was feeling good.

Dad did do at least one good deed through his denture habits, even though it was entirely inadvertent. When my nephew, Mom and Dad’s only grandson, was very little he had the habit of sucking his thumb. Everyone had tried to persuade him to stop doing it but he persisted. Somebody—his mother or Mom, I’m not sure which—warned him that sucking his thumb would ruin his teeth. Well, he happened to be visiting and discovered Dad asleep on the sofa. His dentures had slipped out of his pocket and lay on the sofa next to his face. My nephew was horrified and stopped sucking his thumb almost immediately. So we chalk up at least one success to Dad’s dentures, even though he had no idea what he had accomplished.

Dad, now 87, is living in a nursing home at present, and “the family” does his laundry so that his clothes won’t be ruined by the industrial laundry and excessively hot water. Which means that I do his laundry, and it took a little time before I learned to search his pockets very carefully before I put his clothes in the washing machine. One weekend my older sister took over the laundry responsibility for me, and, not quite as careful about searching pockets as I have been, ran one of Dad’s upper plates through the wash. We all agreed that the denture had not been that clean since it came from the dentist.

The staff of the nursing home where Dad lives is obsessed with labeling his belongings to prevent loss. They have even labeled his eyeglasses, which makes sense, since he is always misplacing them. But I will believe that they really know all there is to know about Dad when they attempt to label his dentures, which they have not yet done. We’ll see how long it takes.

Reiner's Pictures: A digital face-off

2005-01-23T07:48:00.000-05:00

First up for audition in today's blizzard-induced stereo-listenin,' bagel-and-lox eatin' extravaganza is the RCA Living Stereo recording of Moussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition in its Ravel orchestration. Fritz Reiner conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.* This is one of the great classic recordings of the golden age of stereo. It has tremendous personal resonance for me, since it was the recording that first turned me on to the music. Check that: it was the recording that first turned me on to music, period, paragraph.

Taking into account the "imprinting" factor--where one favors the version that made the first positive impression--this recording is by acclamation one of the best-ever versions both musically and sonically. For me it's one of the top four or five Living Stereo recordings for sound quality, and one of the greatest recordings of an orchestral score ever made.

Sadly, it's never sounded like that on the little silver discs. Neither the first, mid-'80s iteration or the Living Stereo CD series version was up to snuff. Nor, surprisingly, was the JVC xrcd--for which my expectations were very high--or the Classic Records vinyl reissue, though it won the competition on points. In comparison to even a poorly-pressed Dynaflex LP of the '70s, these presentations were oddly dead and boxy, lacking the copious hall reverberation of the original in the huge orchestral perorations like the Bydlo section or the Great Gate, and seemingly rolled-off on top, so that the lighter portions of the score, like the Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells, failed to sparkle as they should--and as they so gloriously do in the earlier analog iterations of the recording. So question number one upon release of the new Living Stereo SACD was whether a satisfactory job of restoration had been accomplished.

Chicago's Reiner: "I vant...to suck...your blood..."

In fact, the high-rez version is not quite there, though it gets decidedly closer than any other digital issue, and even, for once, improves upon the Classic LP reissue in many (though not all) respects. The high string partials are largely restored, the great Chicago brass growls menacingly as it should, and the hall sound, while not fully in evidence, is easier to discern. Finally, one can say that the merits that made the original recording so singularly appealing are back, albeit not particularly with a vengeance.

My receipt of a new DAC (digital/analog converter) for my stereo system--an outboard device that takes the place of its counterpart inside the player and (one hopes) improves its sound in the process--prompts some re-listening to the CD layers of many of the new hybrid SACD's from RCA and Mercury. Until the last few days I'd totally ignored the "red book" (conventional CD) layers of these discs in favor of the high-resolution SACD portion.

What of the CD layer of this Pictures disc? Does it score points over even the high-resolution portion, or is it back to the usual CD drawing board? Unlike the Mercuries, which utilize the old, '90s CD transfers for the red book layer of their SACDs, the RCA's are said to use the new transfers prepared for the high-resolution portion of the disc. Thus, it can safely be said that any differences one encounters between the two layers are attributable to differences in the formats.

Or differences in the performance of one's hardware.

And you thought this would be easy.

So how did the "low-rez" version do?

In one sense the CD lacks the smoothness and easy listenability of the SACD layer. In its place are more sharply-etched transient attacks and more fierce orchestral playing. (Yes, it's true: the impression given by the sonics can cast a new and different light on the musical performance; which of two conflicting versions is the "right" one can sometimes be a major conundrum.)

Here's old Fritz looking debonair...and still pissed.

The strings of the CD layer are ethereal, extended and non-brittle, and the brass has that characteristic etched quality, this to a far greater extent than the SACD layer. The red book layer strikes me as more in keeping with the general character of the original recordings as I grew up with them on LP records for so many years.

Even if I were blindfolded (smoking a cigarette and making a final request), I think I'd know that this is a CD and the other is an SACD: without labeling either as "better" or "worse," each has a characteristic sound; one could never be mistaken for the other. Unless, of course, one wasn't paying proper attention. Or worse yet, one's stereo is physically incapable of revealing those differences--a lack of resolution in the electronics, or the loudspeakers perhaps.

What, then, is that special sound of SACD that your equipment should be revealing to you? In fact, it's really neither fish nor fowl, animal or vegetable. It doesn't sound like analog, and it's missing most of the aural cues we associate with digital.

The main question before the house, however, is whether or not it sounds like music.

We'll leave that one open for discussion for awhile.

MK

* It should be mentioned that this disc is jam-packed with other Russian orchestral blockbusters, many of which approach the same exalted class of performance and recording as the Pictures. In order to keep this review to a sensible length, I've chosen to omit them from the discussion. As for how they sound, suffice it to say that most of the comments regarding the Pictures recording hold more or less true for the other pieces as well.

The cover art seen at the top of this review is the "revised" art first seen in the second, Living Stereo series CD version, loosely based on the original. The original (and in my opinion, superior) cover art is reproduced above.

Paray's Chabrier on Mercury Living Presence: Lookin' for fun and feelin' groovies

2005-01-22T01:38:00.000-05:00

The justifiably famous early stereo recording of Paul Paray conducting French music including Chabrier's Espana has been issued by Universal in their Mercury Living Presence SACD series. Paray's Espana is also one of the LP's released by Classic Records, a company that specializes in high-quality audiophile reissues of classical and jazz material primarily of the 1950's and '60s.

Paray was of course Mercury's "French specialist," and while I generally prefer RCA's Charles Munch in the same repertoire, Paray could at times be the more energetic and (superficially) exciting conductor. Certainly his Espana is generally acknowledged to be among the greatest on record; while it's unquestionably a high-voltage reading, if pressed for a choice, I'd have to go with Artaulfo Argenta's on Decca: a classic performance in vivid sonics by a tragically short-lived conductor.*

I absolutely flipped over the LP** when I first played it. For one thing--and I know this is a crude criterion for judging records--it has some of the hugest dynamics ever inscribed onto a vinyl disc. I mean, you can read it and feel it in the grooves (not that I spend a large portion of my life reading and feeling record grooves, mind you). It's so loud at the climaxes as to border on frightening. The high and low frequencies are maximally extended and the whole thing is concert-hall realistic.

The SACD, I'm sorry to report, is a total stiff.*** It's so lacking in any of the qualities that impressed me about the LP that it almost seems as if the engineers made a mistake of some kind (getting out of bed in the morning perhaps having been the first and most egregious).

Paul Paray: poor man's Charles Munch?

I confess to not having A-B'd the two items in question, but I have in fact done what I always prefer to do: sit down at different times and listen to the respective discs all the way through. My experience has led me to find that switching back and forth from one disc to the other tends to mask rather than reveal differences. I also feel I have a reasonably good audio memory, which helps.

I regret not being able to recommend this disc in its Super Audio form: a real shame, since it's one of the true glories of the Living Presence catalog. Perhaps next time...if there is a next time.

Meanwhile, support vinyl and make yourself gleefully happy: order a copy of the Classic LP reissue post haste.

MK

* Though I've yet to hear a CD iteration that doesn't make my fillings hurt; the Speaker's Corner LP reissue is the one to own.

** One has to do this in order to play Side 2, by the way.

*** By no means a finding common to all the Mercs thus far released on SACD. I'll eventually be reporting on other releases that far surpass this one in faithfulness to the original source and all-around audio satori.

Why Roger Federer is my number 1 tennis player

2005-01-20T19:07:00.000-05:00

When it comes to men’s professional tennis, I have been lost in the wilderness for the past few years. All of my favorite players of past years have long since retired, and although I have had plenty of favorites since—from Richard Krajicek to Pat Rafter to Gustavo Kuerten-- none of them has inspired lasting enthusiasm. Krajicek and Rafter came the closest, because, although they also played often from the baseline, they played serve-volley tennis enough to keep me really interested. But Krajicek’s career was plagued by injuries and he retired for good a couple of years ago.

Pat Rafter was much the same, and it made me sad that he never won Wimbledon because he came so close. And his career, like that of Krajicek, came to an early end due to injuries.

Of course, Kuerten isn’t even remotely a serve-volley player. He is the sort of player who, to quote Fred Stolle, only comes to the net to shake hands with his opponent at the end of the match. But I love his personality and his ground strokes.

However, let it be known that I am a serve-volley enthusiast. Yes, I admire a player with a big serve, but what I want to see is someone who follows that serve to the net and volleys his way to winning the point. He doesn’t have to serve and volley on every point, but the more the better.

My revered favorite in this regard is Stefan Edberg. With Edberg, there was never any surprise. He served, went to the net, and the opponent either passed him or had to cope with a volley. And what a volley it was—forehand, backhand, half-volley, it didn’t matter. They were all sweet. And if it came to groundstrokes, Edberg had a backhand that was a pleasure to see-- unless you were on the other side of the net, of course. Best of all, Stefan Edberg was an elegant player, handsome, gentlemanly, and exquisite in form.

After Edberg, I had an unhappy love affair with 1991 Wimbledon champion Michael Stich. I can’t think of a prettier player to watch when he had his head on straight. His Wimbledon final against Becker was a thing of beauty, as was his 1993 Masters championship victory against Pete Sampras. I can’t think of a player with more beautiful form and a more brittle mental constitution than Stich. When injuries forced him to retire in 1997, I found it something of a relief, even though I missed his beautiful serve and almost as beautiful volley. I never missed the tantrums and the racket-throwing at all, of course.

And after that, I wandered in the desert until Roger Federer came along. Could I really fall for a tennis player with a pony-tail and a nose like Bob Hope? Oh yes, I could. Obviously, he’s not a pure serve-and-volley player like Edberg, but he’s an all-court player in the best sense of the word—what Michael Stich might have been if he had been a harder worker and not such a basket case mentally, or a Pat Rafter who could play well on clay. And he’s smart, well-disciplined, and a gentleman. I mean, this kid is really smart—smart enough to win three grand slams and eleven tournments in 2004 without the benefit of a coach, and also smart enough to go out and woo Tony Roche to be his coach for 2005. Can Roger Federer improve? Obviously, he thinks so. He has already won his first ATP tour title of 2005 (in Doha) and clobbered Andy Roddick in the final of the exhibition tournament in Kyooyang the week before the Australian Open. Will he defend his Aussie title successfully? I hope so, and I’m having great fun watching him try.

God, it’s nice to be out of the wilderness and enjoying tennis again!

Rumpole's greatest triumph: Worth waiting for?

2005-01-20T18:51:00.000-05:00

John Mortimer’s free-spirited barrister Horace Rumpole, self-proclaimed “Old Bailey hack,” has been around for many years now, both in print and in a series of dramatizations on PBS’s “Mystery” series (with the late Leo McKern as Rumpole). Anyone who is familiar with Rumpole knows that his finest hour was his victory in the case of the Penge Bungalow murders, which he carried on “alone and without a leader.” No more details of the case were ever given, however, until now, when Mortimer tells the Penge Bungalow murders story in novel form.

All the rest of the Rumpole saga has appeared in the form of short stories, and the Penge Bungalow case, although greater in length, still has a short story feel. The aging Rumpole sits in his room in Chambers writing his memoirs, with obligatory appearances by such old friends as Claude Erskine-Brown, Mizz Liz Probert, and Soapy-Sam Ballard, Rumpole’s current head of chambers. Of course, Rumpole’s wife Hilda is very much in evidence, as well, and in this novel we learn how Rumpole met his wife and what form their courtship took. Indeed, one of the pleasures of The Penge Bungalow Murders is that we experience Rumpole’s first meeting with a number of continuing characters: Mr. Bernard, the solicitor who often sends him briefs and helps him with his investigations, the numerous members of the Timson clan, who supply Rumpole with so much of his work, and, of course, Hilda, a.k.a. “She Who Must Be Obeyed,” without whom the Rumpole stories would lose much of their savor. We also meet Rumpole’s first head of chambers, C.H. Wystan, father of Hilda, Albert Handyside, Rumpole’s first clerk, and T.C. Rowley, Rumpole’s pupil master at Number 4 Equity Court, also known as Uncle Tom. It will surprise no one to learn that Uncle Tom was practicing his golf in chambers even when Rumpole was a “white wig,” a novice barrister.

However, the focus of the novel is the story of the Penge Bungalow murders, the killing of two former RAF flyers after a reunion celebration. The son of one of the victims is the alleged killer, and C.H. Wystan has been briefed for the defense. Somehow, young Rumpole gets a brief as Wystan’s junior in the case, and the fun begins. The presumption of innocence, the “golden thread” that runs through all the Rumpole stories, is very much in evidence here. Wystan, convinced his client is guilty, only wants to go through the motions, while Rumpole is hot to prove the client’s innocence. No one will be surprised at the outcome, but it’s fun getting there, as always.

Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders is painless reading, and Rumpole fans will enjoy having various odd corners of their Rumpole knowledge filled in at last. Great literature it is not—the Rumpole formula is very much in evidence—but it’s a fun read nevertheless. The only shame is that Leo McKern is not around to bring this story to life on the screen as he did with most of the earlier ones.

Munch's Symphonie: Bad is good and good is bad and never the twain shall meet

2005-01-17T01:05:00.000-05:00

I thought I'd try it again after several years to make sure my mind wasn't playing tricks on me. It wasn't

The recording at hand is the CD issue of Charles Munch's famous recording of the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique, the older (1954), more famous recording. For some reason, on which I can only speculate, all digital and analog reissues of this recording have sounded deadly dull, opaque, lifeless, and lacking in high frequency extension. All but one.

The only one that lived up to its reputation as one of the classic RCA Living Stereo recordings was...get this*...the original CD release of the mid-'80s.

Smile and say "cheese!"

That release came packaged with the Munch recording of the Berlioz Requiem, almost as filler, really--the headline item was the Requiem, not the Symphonie. The latter was there to flesh out the second CD.

Well, let me tell you, folks, my ears weren't deceiving me--it still sounds great, far, far greater than either the Living Stereo CD, the version on the 8-disc "Munch Conducts Berlioz" box set, or even the Classic LP reissue, oh, surprise of surprises. For all I know (I don't), it may be the best-sounding issue of this recording ever to see the light of day.

The variable here apparently is source material: the source tapes used for the original CD transfer are more lively, more extended on top, more extended on bottom, more of just about everything that gives a recording a sense of life. They breathe.

Black mark? Yes, of course, there's always one, isn't there? There's a very severe tape dropout on the right channel that intermittently plauges this release throughout. As for why this tape was never again apparently used for any subsequent reissues, this may well be the smoking gun. There's also some prominent tape hiss. Can I live with all this in the interest of better sound down the road apiece? You betcha.

My guess is that the tape used for this initial CD set may have been several generations down from the studio master--a production or protection copy of some kind, as was often the case with the original CD releases of the '80s. These were often "thrown together" out of whatever tape sources the engineers could lay their hands on. In this case, by some bizarre happy accident, the "bad" tapes were good and the good tapes were...bad.

Long live the bad tapes.

MK

* Literally, if you can. Frankly, I couldn't even find a scan of the mid-'80s CD cover art on the net. As you can see by his expression in the mug shots, Berlioz isn't too damned happy about it either.

Hector Berlioz or Monty Python cartoon man?

Munch's Living Stereo Daphnis sounds best on...

2005-01-12T16:15:00.000-05:00

Facing the prospective purchaser are at least four issues of Charles Munch's 1955 recording of Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe (the complete ballet score): the Living Stereo CD, which dates from the mid-'90s, the JVC xrcd2, the recent RCA/BMG SACD, and the Classic LP reissue. There is also an older Chesky LP reissue which I haven't heard. Add to this the original LP pressings and assorted tapes and other reissues, and the situation is confusing, to say the least.

Let's cut to the (Leslie) chase: the Classic LP, among current reissues, is tops--bottoms, too: its low-end extension sets it apart from any of the three digital iterations, and the fine high-end detail is similarly in a class of its own. The score isn't what one would call a showoff kind of spectacular: its magic lies in the subtle orchestral colors and flourishes. Contrary to popular belief, digital tends to be as weak at this end of the dynamic spectrum as in the louder fare--at very low levels, digital noise increases markedly, with a concomitant loss of inner detail and life. The result, at its worst, can be flat and synthetic. While none of the digital versions of this recording could be said to fall into this category, neither does any succeed in fully conveying a realistic sense of the scoring.

Best amongst the three is probably the xrcd2, though it and the SACD have different strengths and weaknesses: the xrcd is at its best in delineating the varied orchestral strands and details; the SACD better conveys the weight of the orchestra. That said, the latter has a heavy, thick, opaque quality that seems to be common to certain of the first round of RCA SACD issues. This may be a result of poor judgment in terms of EQing, as opposed to an inherent weakness of the format: for example, I recently auditioned a sensational Columbia SACD of George Szell conducting Richard Strauss which has stunning transparency and detail--precisely those areas in which the RCA demonstrates its most severe shortcomings.

MK

Ella's Irving Berlin Song Book back on LP

2004-12-31T17:09:00.000-05:00

Back in the LP catalog after at least 20 years is Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Irving Berlin Song Book, now issued by Speakers Corner, a German firm, on deluxe 180g pressings. Everything about the original U.S. release of 1958 has been duplicated, including the gatefold cover art, the liner notes, and the labels. This is the fifth volume of Ella's Song Book series to be so issued: preceding it were the Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart, Duke Ellington, and George and Ira Gershwin volumes.

"Nu?"

Though in many ways the weakest of the series, the familiar assets of Ella's beautiful voice and the savvy arrangements, in this case by Paul Weston, are fully in evidence. Sonically there have always been problems: though originally issued in stereo, Ella's voice is well-recorded, but the orchestra is for some reason hard and steely in the top frequencies. Though the transfer here is flawless and the pressings immaculately clean and vibrant, there's little that can be done to tame that aggressive high end without damaging the musical content. And so it remains.

Speakers Corner will probably next tackle the Arlen volume, one of the strongest of the Song Books; then it's a question of the two single LP's: the Mercer and the Kern. At that point, they will have restored to vinyl all the Ella Song Books. Caveat emptor: the Gershwin box set is already out of print and fetching sums in the $250 range. Smart shoppers will buy the Speakers Corner Ella Song Book reissues before they become scarce.

MK

Fiedler's Gaite Parisienne on xrcd: close, but no cigar

2004-12-29T01:16:00.001-05:00

Just so you don't think I'm being biased about the sound of the xrcd's vs. the SACD's (because I might be trying to justify a big, expensive purchase--though I think you already know me better than that), the xrcd2 of Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops' version of the Offenbach Gaite Parisienne, one of the most famous of all the Living Stereo recordings, has some serious problems regarding drop-outs in the left channel. There's a hint of this when the disc is played on the speakers, but it's blatantly obvious on headphones, and ruins some pretty important moments in the score. The drop-outs are by no means constant, but they tend to pop up at the worst moments (as these things seem inevitably to do).

The regular RCA Living Stereo CD was always very good; it never had any problems of this nature that I recall, so I can only assume the two releases used different source material. Which was closer to (or actually was) the original session tapes I'm not sure--it's hard or impossible to tell by listening to the CD's. If I had to guess, I'd wager the xrcd uses the first-generation source because it narrowly beats the RCA on fine detail. It's surprising that two different tapes would be used, because this was originally a two-, not three-track recording, meaning there was no two-channel mixdown tape from the three-channel master.*

Offenbach: is this man's hair on upside-down?

In terms of listenability, I wouldn't go so far as to say that the drop-out problem rules the xrcd out of court. But it is a noticeable flaw, and a factor in evaluating the results. It's really too bad, because the xrcd otherwise sounds better: more open on top, with more instrumental detail and more musically accurate timbres.

All things considered, the best currently-available issue of this recording is the Classic LP reissue, which does not seem to have the dropouts and is superior in fidelity to both the Living Stereo CD and the JVC xrcd. There is also an earlier LP reissue on the Chesky label, remaining copies of which still occasionally pop up from time to time at Acoustic Sounds. That reissue was made using an Ampex tape deck with tubed electronics (unlike the Classic disc), and has been very highly-reviewed, though I haven't heard it.

Good news! Listeners will soon have a fifth choice: the Fiedler Gaite Parisienne will be one of the forthcoming hybrid SACD releases in RCA's January schedule. We should all be looking forward to this breathlessly, with the hope that it finally will represent a digital issue of this recording worthy of its status as one of the great sonic blockbusters of all time.

Added January 28, 2005:

I've just had the pleasure of hearing the SACD of this recording for the first time, and let me tell you that it's a masterpiece. It zowies both the xrcd and the old Living Stereo CD, and even the Classic LP reissue. In fact, it reminded me of why I considered this at one time among the greatest recordings ever made. The material may be slight, but the achievement isn't. A bravura piece of work from RCA and SoundMirror Studios, who did the engineering and mastering work.

MK

* This resulted in a lot of Living Stereo recordings that essentially had two sets of masters: one set of three-track session tapes (the first-generation source), and one set of two-track mixed masters (the second-generation source, from which a lot of the Living Stereo CD's were mastered, it's been claimed).

RCA's Living Stereo Bartok: Which to buy?

2004-12-24T13:48:00.000-05:00

Those faced with the pressing decision of the day--whether to buy the recently-issued RCA SACD of the Fritz Reiner Bartok Concerto for Orchestra or the much more expensive JVC xrcd now have an answer: read on.

I cannot fathom why it should be that a lower-resolution medium should produce superior sound, but so it is: the xrcd has the SACD beat on every sonic point you can imagine. The only way in which the SACD is superior is in its ability to separate the strands of the orchestra--the strings sound like a group of individual string players working together; the xrcd strings are more of a massed force. Is this musically meaningful? Not particularly, and not to me.

The SACD has several problems: it is weak in the midange and upper bass, which causes the orchestra to sound relatively anemic. There seems to be plenty of energy in the highs, but they take center stage, which should not be the case. The xrcd sounds more like the real thing.

Whether the transfer engineers (SoundMirror) have somehow improperly equalized the SACD is an open question. In a recent edition of The Absolute Sound, they make certain statements regarding how the Living Stereo master tapes should be equalized which may be debatable. Apparently there were a number of different EQ profiles used in the making of the original recordings, and some guesswork was involved on the part of the transfer men. I'm not sure they've made the proper choice in every case, and the recording under question may provide evidence to that effect.

MK

JVC: working miracles with old tapes

2004-12-20T16:01:00.000-05:00

It may not be the most enduring music ever to bear the RCA Living Stereo banner, but JVC has applied its xrcd24 process to these 46-year-old tapes with stunning results.

Arthur Fiedler's Marches in Hi-Fi was never considered one of Living Stereo's finest moments: it was produced and engineered, respectively, by the famous team of Richard Mohr and Lewis Layton; but in careers marked mostly by hits, this one was a miss. The original Shaded Dog LP's were poor relations to such primo titles as the Offenbach Gaite Parisienne of 1954, or the various vividly-recorded Gershwin LP's. Even when RCA tried to revive it for compact disc early in their Living Stereo series, it was sonically something of a dog. Not Shaded.

I don't know exactly what the JVC engineers have done to get the results here: they claim only to take the greatest pains to assure quality control in the transfer and mastering process, and they state that the latest and most advanced hardware is used. There's no wizardry or knob-twiddling involved. Nothing added. Nothing taken away.

What has resulted is one of the great-sounding CD's in my experience, quite possibly the best of all. It not only buries all previous iterations of this title, it also knocks the recently-issued Fennell Sousa SACD in the Mercury Living Presence series right out of the park. It's a staggering testimonial to what can be done with the standard red book compact disc using the best of today's technology and the sharpest of ears.

This is a wildly expensive disc, like all the other xrcd's. I'm tempted to say "too expensive," but if ever a CD was worth $27 street price, this is it. I've already played it three times as much as most other "audiophile" discs in my travels. The math works out in its favor.

If your budget and curiosity allow you to purchase only one of the xrcd's, let this be the one. The unfortunate result is that it'll sell you on the rest of the series, and then there's no turning back.

Absolutely magnificent. A stunner in every sonic respect. And most impressive of all, completely unrecognizable vis-a-vis its previous incarnations. Who knew? Me, I'm going back to listen to it again.

MK

Heifetz, Sibelius, and navel oranges

2004-12-19T09:20:00.000-05:00

The original Living Stereo LP issue of this mind-boggling, blockbuster recording contains only the Sibelius Violin Concerto (approximately 26 minutes in length).

The JVC xrcd ($27 street price) duplicates this issuance, with a running time of only 26 minutes.

The forthcoming SACD ($9 street price) will contain the Sibelius, the Glazunov, and the Prokofiev Concerti, with an undetermined but much longer running time!

That having been said, the xrcd sounds like a million dollars--the most diaphanous, luscious tone I've ever heard from Heifetz' instrument (except possibly for the similarly-priced Classic LP reissue--but I must admit that the xrcd is closer in all the musically-important ways than I would ever have thought possible).*

You can literally hear Heifetz taking a deep breath a few seconds before his second entrance in the first movement. That particular sound is not of musical interest, I know, but just one of the elements that goes into placing the listener in the acoustical space in which the performance is taking place.

I don't weigh my music at the checkout counter. It's not a bag of navel oranges.

My headphones (and my head) eagerly await the SACD.

MK

*There are, in fact, a couple of instances of static, for which JVC apologizes, and which are artifacts on the master tape. Either this gem wasn't properly stored over the last half-century, or else Lewis Layton was human after all.

Britten does Britten does xrcd: The Young Person's Guide

2004-12-17T22:58:00.000-05:00

This is yet another beauty--the first of several items from the Decca catalog JVC has been licensed to release on xrcd. The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra is magnificently-recorded (1963); the performance is also beautifully-played by the LSO, though I find Britten's conducting a bit slack and underpowered. I also miss the narration (it would've been nice to have him do it [he could've "tracked" it]), though it does allow one to hear niceties of the orchestration usually missed in narrated versions. The accompanying Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge is really lovely, and if anything even better-recorded (1966).

In comparison to other versions of the YPG, I find the Slatkin LP reissue (Capitol) a bit of a disappointment, especially for such a legendary recording: miked too close-up; most competitive, I think, would be the Fiedler (RCA Living Stereo), narrated by Hugh Downs, also a magnificent recording: stronger in the bass, but more "colored" and overtly spectacular than the Britten, which I feel is more transparent and natural. JVC is demonstrating a lot of imagination in selecting the items to be reissued: no doubt they could've chosen to release the Fiedler, given their extended Living Stereo project, but this one was smartly-chosen.

Very highly-recommended, in whatever form.

MK

The best-sounding CD I ever did hear

2004-12-16T20:26:00.001-05:00

My one-sentence reaction to the JVC xrcd24 of the Kondrashin Tchaikovsky Capriccio Italien and the Rimsky-Korsakov Capriccio Espagnol is as follows:

Holy mother of JEEE-zus!

Folks, take it from me: this one's got it all. Oodles of hall reverberation (courtesy of the gloriously oodly reverberant Manhattan Center) from which musical sounds of sheer realism emerge unscathed. All variety of percussion bonging and clanging all over the damned place. Effortlessly excellent in every way the common garden-variety CD tends not to be.

"LIVING Stereo?" You betcha.

This one is, technically-speaking, a regular ol' CD which will play on all machines. It's the greatest piece of five-inch polycarbonate I've ever heard. The fact that it costs around $27 from most vendors should not frighten you away: I firmly believe that you cannot live without this thing. Price-wise, give it the following break: it comes all the way from Japan, and is manufactured by highly-paid Japanese labor. Not only the sound, but the packaging--tiny hardcover book style--is beyond classy.

On a scale of one to five stars, this one gets an eight-and-a-half.

Among other reputable establishmemts, you may purchase it here:

The kindly folks at Elusive Disc

MK

JVC's xrcd24's: the Shaded Dogs given a run for their money

2004-12-14T16:05:00.000-05:00

The third iteration of xrcd releases--the so-called xrcd24's--is easily the best. The original xrcd's and the xrcd2's were very good but a little cold and threadbare. The few 24's (for 24-bit) I've heard are super: every bit as good as can be expected given the state of the digital art. I can hardly imagine the SACD's sounding better, though I have no direct comparison available at this point. But the xrcd's, though of "normal" CD 16-bit resolution, appear to be "voiced" more closely to the sound of the Living Stereo LP's. The Kabalevsky "Comedians" disc (Kondrashin and the "RCA Symphony," taped at the Manhattan Center in 1958) is very competitive with the Classic LP reissue, and far superior to the Living Stereo CD of around five years ago.

Great, great discs, assuming one has the system to appreciate them, though I feel most of their superiority will be evident even on modest setups.

MK

Furtwaengler's uniquely unidiomatic Otello

2004-12-07T22:05:00.002-05:00

Verdi: Otello. Vinay, Martinis, Schoeffler; Furtwaengler, cond. Vienna Philharmonic Orch. & Chorus (EMI All429: 2 CD's, recorded in 1951 at the Salzburg Festival)

Furtwaengler's 1951 Salzburg performance of Verdi's Otello isn't exactly to the manner born. Nor is the singing ideal from the technical standpoint; but the cast collaborates magnificently to bring Furtwaengler's conception of the score to life. Just compare the exquisitely detailed performance of Vinay to his straitjacketed work for Toscanini, and there you have in a nutshell the difference between the two conductors.

Before listening to this performance, one needs to throw any preconceived notions about "idiomatic" Italian opera out the window. Toscanini's Otello is most emphatically that: Toscanini's. In the Furtwaengler performance, however, the conductor's ego is subjugated to the composer's/author's. The drama springs forth from the page as if it's happening for the very first time.

It's one of the most dramatically gripping performances of opera I've ever heard.

MK

The xbox and me: work in progress

2004-12-04T17:19:00.000-05:00

I bought an xbox.

What's an xbox? Er, for those of you who just landed on this planet, it's the Microsoft video game system. It's like a Sony Playstation 2, but better. This according to the technician at the hospital's hyperbaric facility who has Playstation, xbox, and Nintendo. She obviously knows whereof she speaks.

The xbox package came with two games: an NCAA football game (yecch, I hate football, though who knows--maybe it'll grow on me) and Top Spin, a tennis game. I also ordered MVP 2004 (a baseball game) and NBA Live 2005 (guess).

The thing took three minutes to hook up. Being an electronics whiz tends to give one a false sense of hope.

I started with the tennis game. It has all the famous tennis players. I decided to be a male player, for obvious reasons. My opponent would also be male, I decided. Don't want to take advantage of the weaker sex, you know.

I checked the manual to see how to serve the ball and how to swing at it. Well, the serving came fast, the swinging not so fast. Except that I kept serving so hard that the ball was constantly out of bounds. I lost game after game.

Top Spin allows the player to express various emotions of his choice, including exasperated and pissed off. Seeing as how my opponent seemed fairly confident and self-assured, I chose pissed off. Nothing like realism.

On to baseball. Giants vs. Mets at Shea Stadium. Where the hell is Barry Bonds? Did they not pay his licensing fee?

It took me a couple of hours to figure out that when you play by yourself, you're one of the two teams: you pitch while the computer hits; you hit while the computer pitches. Totally ingenious, really.

Four innings: Mets (computer) 34, Giants (me) 2. I got the two runs on a HR, I think by pressing the "swing" button accidentally when I fell off my chair.

The NBA game was Da Bomb (that means "good" in the game-playing world). I played games like the 1950's All-Stars against today's Knicks, meaning I had guys like Bob Cousy and George Mikan on the one side, and lots of guys I never heard of on the other side. I was the Knicks, and I did O.K., losing 65-31. That's with five-minute quarters, not the regulation 12. (You can set the length of the quarters.)

The announcer is Marv Albert. Some guy I never heard of (Marv keeps referring to him as The Czar, but I don't think it's Nicholas II) does the color commentary, which generally consists of things like, "The Knicks need to rethink their defensive strategy--the zone defense doesn't seem to be working for them." No shit, Sherlock.

All told, I'm having a massive amount of fun. However, the fun will soon wear off if the losing doesn't stop. Maybe if I had my guys shoot up some "clear"...

MK

Ella's Gershwin on CD: not S'wonderful

2004-12-03T06:01:00.005-05:00

There's an interesting conundrum regarding the sonics of Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book, the greatest (and biggest) of the albums in the series. This one was originally five LP's plus a 7-inch EP (duplicated precisely in the gorgeous Speakers Corner LP reissue); art prints; hardcover book. One of the century's landmark achievements, and quite possibly the greatest record album ever.

The separate CD issue, which postdated the complete Song Book box set, sounds ear-bleedingly bright and brassy--too much high-end. The Speakers Corner LP reissue is more like it--possibly from the same source material, but less aggressively EQ'd.

It's mentioned in the technical notes to the separate issue that the studio master tapes of the Gershwin set are lost. Hard to believe but apparently true.

I'd estimate the source material used for the box set is at least one, possibly two generations down from that used for the separate set. That means there's considerably more tape hiss. There also seems to be some "sweetening" applied to the signal, meaning a high-end cut and a bit of echo enveloping everything, voice and orchestra. I'd guess these were the production or cutting masters used to create the original LP's.

Since the separate issue is less monkeyed-with and closer to the "lost" session tapes, one would automatically assume it's best. The problem here is the EQ'ing issue. Verve has chosen either to EQ it extremely brightly on the high-end, or at least left some very bright tapes alone, without trying to compensate for their flaws.

The Gershwin set is very pleasant and listenable on the box set. Still, I can't escape the annoying feeling that there's information missing here: fine detail and real (as opposed to phony, applied) ambient sound.

The good news is that on the box set version you don't have to deal with that explosive high-end, and this makes the recording easier to listen to.

Which to prefer? My head tells me the separate issue, because it's closer to the master. My heart tells me the box set, because it sounds more like music.

I'm glad to have both, but I must tell you I've rarely heard two transfers of the same recording sound so wildly different. With the strides made in digital, and particularly the CD format, since the box set was issued in 1993, it would be interesting to hear what a current transfer from the "sweetened" tapes used for the box set would sound like--say, in SACD format. I won't hold my breath, of course.

All said, the monumental Speakers Corner LP reissue is still easily the best way to see and hear Ella's Gershwin Song Book in the here and now. And the notes are actually big enough to be legible, too. You should see the tiny replica of the book included with the CD box set. It's about 2-1/2 inches by 2 inches, and made me laugh out loud.

MK

Ella's Kern Song Book: lost masterwork

2004-11-30T17:15:00.000-05:00

I've come to this one late in life. Today was the first time I've ever heard this recording.

It was the next-to-last installment in the song book series, from 1963. It and the last (the Mercer) were one LP each, the briefest of the series. The concept was clearly running out of steam.

Oh yeah?

This is the great lost masterpiece of the series--I'd go so far as to call it one of the great lost masterpieces of American popular singing. The arrangements are by Nelson Riddle--some of his best, most unusual, gentle, understated, buoyant work, perfectly attuned to Ella's voice and style. All that work with her on the five-disc Gershwin set didn't go for naught.

One supreme example: A Fine Romance. Riddle scores this not unlike his famous chart of I've Got You Under My Skin for Sinatra, which is to say as a slow crescendo. It's a great comic song from Swing Time, as I'm sure you know, and Astaire and Rogers did it to a 'T' in the film. Ella's is totally off the map--it bears very little resemblance to the movie version, other than the lyrics and melody. Interpretively, it's a thing of such artistry (both subtle and grand) and majesty that you've got to hear it to truly appreciate it. Words, especially my feeble ones, can't begin to describe it.

MK

Gone With the Wind: DVD comes of age

2004-11-29T05:14:00.000-05:00

The new Warner's four-disc special edition DVD of Gone With the Wind is a triumph. I'll omit discussion here of the tons of extra material included, other than to point out that the feature-length documentary is one of the best ever made about a film--the screen tests alone are worth the price of admission. There's so much other stuff that it would really require a review of its own.

All that would be for naught if the visual reproduction of the film was lacking. Fear not. This is by a wide margin the best-looking Gone With the Wind ever seen on home video. Prior to this one, the CAV laserdisc edition took the honors; the previous DVD came early in the format's history, and was ruined by over-enthusiastic application of edge enhancement. What's edge enhancement? If you don't already know, I'll spare you, because it's one of those things that will bother you for the rest of your life every time you see it. Ignorance in this case can be bliss.

The good news is that I can't detect any of that here. Nor can I see any evidence of DVNR (digital video noise reduction). The techniques for "cleaning up" old films have obviously progressed beyond those, and what we have here is a video reproduction of a movie that even projected to over 100 inches (on the Plus Piano DLP) looks gloriously film-like. No phony "sharpening," no goosing of contrast or color, no elimination of film grain in the interest of "clean" reproduction. Cleanliness may be next to godliness when it comes to transfer of video material, but where film is involved, eliiminating grain is tantamount to throwing out the baby with the bath water.

The color scheme of the film is on the warm, creamy, brownish, pastel-ish side, which I believe to be true to the film-makers' intentions. GWTW is not Singin' In the Rain--eye-poppingly garish color wasn't the aim here. That said, the eye is constantly seduced by small, vivid details--the emerald green of Scarlett's Parisian bonnet, the brownish red of her hair (I find hair color a reliable gauge as to color accuracy), the baby blue of Bonnie Blue Butler's eyes. The photography is stunning, and on a big screen--which is really the only fair way to watch this film--the whole thing conveys a sense of hugeness that has virtually no equal in film.

The package is worth the price for the extra material alone. (On laser, the documentary was actually sold as a separate set.) For the movie, it's worth twice the price--that's how good this transfer is.

A truly sensational piece of work. I can't imagine this film looking any better in the here and now.

MK

Solti and Tristan: Match made in hell

2004-11-28T19:06:00.000-05:00

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde. Nilsson, Uhl, Resnik, Krause; Solti, cond. Vienna Philharmonic Orch. & Chorus (Decca 470814: 4 CD's, originally released in 1960)

The conducting on Solti's 1960 Decca recording of Tristan is of course silly--Boehm, to name just one, understands this music whereas Solti kind of slugs along from moment to moment--the opening to Act II is almost humorously jumpy. Too bad, because Nilsson is in spectacular early voice. That said, her later singing for (there's that name again) Boehm is far more inflected and passionate, though the tone isn't quite as sweet--it's a tradeoff I'm willing to make. Uhl isn't quite up to the task of Tristan, though he's not much worse than, say, a Rene Kollo, except that the tone isn't as pretty. Resnik's Brangaene? More secure than in her slightly later and distinctly wobblier and more sour-toned Decca Carmen, but none too pretty either.

Sonics: this was one of the great Deccas, but here they've de-noised it, which is a crime against humanity. They call it CEDAR de-hissing, but it's EQing by any other name, and no matter how you slice it, it takes some music--in this case fine detail and upper string sound--with it. The lack of hiss gives the whole thing an oddly dead noise floor--it's simply not meant to sound this way; something's seriously out of whack. Better they should've left it alone and done a straight transfer, which at least would've suffered only from being digitized and having all its frequencies above 20kHz being thrown out. Sound good? It doesn't. If I had it to do over again I'd go straight to the older CD transfer, or far better yet, to the LPs.

That close to Act I is still a Culshaw spectacular, though you have to take a great deal of it on faith here. Not only is it the production and engineering, it's--at the start of Act II as well--the stunning brass of the VPO, which sound like no other. Too bad Decca didn't enlist Kna for this set; Solti was their big marquee name at the time, especially right after Rheingold, and thus the obvious choice.

Played at a healthy volume, incidentally, the voices are not really recorded too distantly at all. Culshaw was no idiot, and he knew this would force listeners to play the recording loudly, thus enjoying the full impact of the climaxes. If you can't accommodate that, well, don't blame him--blame your pathetic little squawk-box.

MK

RCA/Decca's "lost" Gioconda unearthed

2004-11-24T01:54:00.000-05:00

Ponchielli: La Gioconda. Milanov, di Stefano, Warren, Elias, Amparan, Clabassi; Previtali cond. Orch. & Chorus of L'Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Rome (RCA LSC-6139; 4 LPs. Issued 1958)

After a long separation, this recording and I were finally reunited yesterday when I gave a listen straight through to the original RCA Living Stereo pressings. These you generally don't see around very often: the recording was kind of a dud commercially. It was issued on four rather than three LPs, there were numerous typos in the booklet (including the misspelling of the name of the original play and the omission of the side change markers), it was negatively reviewed, and a better-received competitor came out from Decca almost simultaneously. It soon was transferred to RCA's budget Victrola label, and eventually the rights reverted to Decca, who've had it in and out (mostly out) of print ever since.

Was it deserving of this bummer of a fate? Well, yes and no. On the debit side: This is just the sort of opera that cries out for the kind of old-style Italian repetiteur represented by the likes of Previtali, but here he seems on autopilot. The thing obviously *needed* eight LP sides, thanks to his deliberate, occasionally leaden tempi. (As a guidepost as to how it can and should be done, there's that roughly contemporaneous Gavazzeni performance for Decca; and for the Toscanini-ites among us--not I, though in this work I might be persuaded to budge a bit--there's Panizza in the '39 Met broadcast, who conducts the Dance of the Hours like it's the opening scene of Otello.) Strike one.

All three--repeat, *all three* of the principals are past their best. This (and Leonora in Forza, I suppose) was Milanov's signature role, and what a pity that she (or RCA) got around to it a tad too late. Thankfully, there are several Met broadcasts to give us a better idea of what she was capable of in the part--first and foremost that Panizza of '39, where she's partnered by the great Martinelli--but of course none in this kind of sound, about which more anon. While there are moments, none more memorable than The Note, which she sings beautifully here (but releases a bit awkwardly--though only in comparison to her best, er, "Notes" in the broadcasts), there are overall a kind of blowsiness and loosey-goosey approach to the high register typical of Milanov's late-career performances. (And to think she sang 8 years after *this!*)

Warren's best years were the '40s, so all his LP recordings of the complete operas find him varying degrees of "past his prime-ness." But that doesn't mean there's not a lot of power and brilliance to be heard; I find it heard here to greater advantage than in any of his studio recordings of the '50s, save for the Macbeth. More below.

Di Stefano is the real problem child of this recording, which is frequently cited as one of the prime examples of the self-destruction of his voice. I can't really argue with that. When he slams into and holds any of those loud, open high notes (go ahead--you pick 'em), you get this mental image of him standing on his tippy-toes, neck strained, eyes bulging, face turning a deep shade of purple. Really, it apparently wasn't all that bad (the neck thing I mostly made up), but this was still the kind of singing that did his voice absolutely no good. It was, as we now know, the beginning of the end, this in his mid-'30s, an age when most great singers are just getting their feet wet. Very sad.

So with bad marks for all three of the principal singers and the conductor, that makes four strikes, and in baseball, as we know, that's one too many (actually two too many, but you know what I mean). But because this is my review and I'll do as I please, I'll give the singers one strike combined, which gives us only two strikes total and allows this review to continue (as the crowd jeers in unison).

So what's so good about it? Let's take the points one-by-one. There are some names from the first part of this essay that will reappear in this section. Milanov: this was indisputably *her* role, and her performance, even at this late date, cannot be casually dismissed with a wave of the hand. The voice is still clearly of the right weight and timbre, the sound is still beautiful much of the time, she's got a functional chest register (though occasionally you wish she'd lean into it with a bit more gusto), and she knows how to sing--and above all, how to sing this role.

Warren practically walks away with the performance in his back pocket. First and foremost, there's the outsized, melodramatic characterization, including that anguished, hair-raising scream at the opera's close. (Can you imagine a Hampson or Terfel--to name just two who probably have never even come close to the role [or if they did, shouldn't have]-- "lowering" himself to do this kind of thing nowadays? But hey, friends: that's opera!) Although there is the usual lack of steadiness, particularly in faster passages, that tended to increasingly plague his singing at this point in his career, there is also the high register in its usual mind- boggling form, and also some of the most exquisite sotto voce, introverted soft singing you'll ever want to hear, particularly in Act I.

Funny how we remember Warren almost exclusively as a *loud* singer (and loud he could be, especially in the seemingly endlessly forte series of aria recordings in the '40s--the Romophone set, played in sequence, gives me a headache); but in reality, some of his best work was accomplished at the opposite end of the dynamic scale. Meaning "he sang soft real good."

The "Bit Players:" Alvise is hardly a comprimario role, but it gets something less than star billing on this set. Plinio Clabassi was a serviceable basso who came in handy, mostly for RCA's Rome projects, in roles like the King in Aida (both the Perlea and Solti recordings) and other assorted second tier parts. Here you get the feeling he was deputizing for someone--a Tozzi perhaps (who was the Guardiano in the Forza RCA recorded at around the same time with the same principals). He's not nearly in the same class as the big bad bassos of the era--a somewhat nondescript timbre and lack of solid tonal core (tranaslation: he's none too steady while never quite deteriorating into an outright tremolo)--but he earns his paycheck honestly enough.

The Spanish contralto Belan Amparan is a tad hooty as La Cieca, but aren't *all* the singers who take on this role? (Or so they sound to me; still, I've certainly heard worse.) Roz Elias' Laura, OTOH, is exceptionally good, and in the duet with di Stefano, she's something more than that: for once in this recording, someone's voice is in the first flush of youth. Very possibly her best recording, in a fairly extensive discography.

Di Stefano is at the end of his vocal tether, it is true, but what a tether it was! In the lyrical sections--as in most of the meat of "Cielo e mar," for example--his singing is extraordinarily beautiful, and he can still sing out in the soft passages: a genuine mezza voce, not the unsupported croon of his later years. In the "damning with faint praise" category, we can observe that his singing is steady at all dynamic levels and invariably in tune. His phrasing is as gorgeous as ever. Even compared to so great an artist as Gigli, in the "Enzo Grimaldo" duet the way he colors the words and phrases is fresh, imaginative, and totally natural.

The role, unfortunately, is about three or four sizes too big for him (I'd say it's a 9-7/8, and he's around a 6-1/2). In the aforementioned duet, the engineers have seemingly taken no measures to boost di Stefano's level to match that of Warren, and you can easily hear the way the poor little guy is swamped. And the ways in which he tries to boost his *own* level are unacceptable, audible, and ultimately destructive.

The sonics, in the original vinyl pressings, are miraculous. The voices are recorded with plenty of air around them, but also with striking immediacy. Same goes for orchestra and chorus; the ensemble sound has tremendous weight and impact, but also remarkably fine definition and detail.

The big shocker here? The names of the producer and engineer, respectively: John Culshaw, he of Solti Ring fame, and Kenneth Wilkinson, he of some of the greatest-sounding recordings of all time. The overriding suspicion is that they may have felt as if they were "slumming" here--just picking up the paycheck. But nothing of that nature is reflected in the first-rate production values and gorgeous sound, which shout "Culshaw/Wilkie" all the way.

Legally-speaking, the set was, like many of the Wilkie classics, a joint project of RCA and Decca. Decca now owns the rights to the recording. At any rate, this Gioconda makes my top ten list of best-sounding opera recordings of all time

In summation, this performance hardly makes the best possible case for the opera. Previtali is a serious debit--this in a work that practically conducts itself. But the orchestral and choral work is very good, the recording is sensational, the smaller parts are generally well-sung and -acted, and the principals, though all past their best, are still singers who demand to be heard (and in the case of Warren and Milanov, no doubt *were*--above orchestra, chorus, and even prompter).

For the average human being who needs a Gioconda (and don't *all* average human beings?), this might not be my first recommendation: that would probably be--notwithstanding some not insubstantial flaws of its own--the Decca with Cerquetti, Del Monaco, Bastianini, and Siepi, conducted by Gavazzeni on Decca. But for the rest of us who need at least 20 or 21, this one should definitely be among the top dozen or so.

MK

A "new" Flagstad-Melchior Tristan for the ages

2004-11-23T22:42:00.000-05:00

Among Melchior-Flagstad Tristan recordings, between the Reiner and the Beecham, I've always preferred the Reiner for reasons I can't quite explain, other than that the conducting of Reiner seems more in touch, more of a mind with the interpretations of Flagstad and Melchior. Even on the Marston transfer for Naxos, however -- by all accounts the best sonic choice for the Reiner -- one will often have to listen very carefully to hear Melchior in Act I: he's almost constantly off-mike. The rest of the show is engrossing enough that I can deal with the sound; I've certainly heard plenty worse from La Scala in the '50s.

As for the *best* Flagstad-Melchior Tristan, I've got a new favorite: the March 9, 1935 Met broadcast -- an incredible performance. Even with all the time freed up by the healthy cuts, Bodanzky must've been rushing to catch the 11:30 to New Haven; that said, he actually makes the quick tempi work -- it's conducting of great fire and intensity, almost what I'd imagine a Toscanini Tristan would sound like, yet Bodanzky seems more flexible, more of a "singers' conductor." His sudden death must've been a tremendous blow to the Metropolitan, especially given the fact that his successor was the prosaic Leinsdorf.

Both Flagstad and Melchior are sensational, as great as I've ever heard them. Flagstad is even fresher-voiced than at Covent Garden, and Melchior simply outdoes himself with gorgeous lingering mezza voce effects in the lyrical passages and shattering power in the climaxes. The performance has a certain spark of excitement that the Covent Garden recordings lack. Perhaps it was the enthusiasm following Flagstad's spectacular debut just a few weeks before. I'd guess that nobody of our age or younger can possibly imagine the sensation she created. This is a souvenir of those exciting days.

The sound is what it is. One has to take a lot of both the singing and orchestral work on faith. The former is again affected by the singers wandering on and off mike, and the boxiness of orchestral sound makes for loss of color and nuance. Still, I find it more listenable than the Reiner: the singers are in general more closely-miked and can be heard more of the time; as for the orchestral sound, both recordings are fairly wretched. If you're familiar with the sound of other 1935 Met broadcasts -- the Ponselle Traviata or the Tibbett Rigoletto, for example -- the Met recording is about on par with those: excruciatingly bad sound by normal standards, but experienced listeners should be able to hear through the muck.

Flagstad and Melchior are of course the draw here. We can go another century or two and still not hear Wagnerian singing like this again. I'm very happy to have it all on CD in any form.

The set is the product of an outfit called the West Hill Radio Archives, the proprietor of which is one Don Hill. It has been intermittently available on eBay. The artwork and annotation are very professionally done. Considerable time, effort, and affection was clearly lavished on this project. Here's the label and catalog number:

West Hill Radio Archives WHRA 6001 3 2003

Assuming the prospective listener is acquainted with the sound of murky antediluvian broadcasts, this is very highly-recommended. Should this be one's first or only Tristan? Certainly not. I can't imagine a recording with so much of the score missing and with such poor sound serving as one's reference or introduction to the work.

For me, the near-ideal would be the Boehm on DG, which in additon to its other merits should satisfy in the soprano department (Birgit Nilsson). After that, perhaps the Furtwaengler/Flagstad, for the great conducting (albeit less intense than his live work) and the soprano in excellent late form (those famous non-high C's aside), all in good mono studio sound.

Of course, it's a faint echo of the Flagstad of 1935 vintage. So I do think one would want to get at least one of the Flagstad - Melchior recordings later, if only to hear how the music can be sung by two superhuman voices born to sing it, both at their absolute peaks.

MK

Our opera recording legacy: shot to hell

2004-11-23T17:30:00.000-05:00

Having just listened to Act I of the reel-to-reel tape edition of the glorious RCA recording of Aida (Price, Vickers, Solti, et al.), I decided, just for fun, to pop the CD's into the machine and give them a listen. This would be the 3-disc London set released in the mid-'80s--the full-priced set. (Decca has since re-released this as a budget-priced *twofer*--about one-third the price! And the sound of the twofer may be better. But I'll get to that anon.)

According to my possibly faulty recollection, the CD's were grossly inferior to the tapes (of which I previously had the highlights), with a sharp attenuation of the high frequencies.

My CD player is now set up to perfection. I recently discovered that I had moved its AC plug from the wall socket into a power strip when I was working on a telephone jack in that vicinity; seems I had forgotten to move the CD player's AC plug *back* into the direct wall socket, where it always has sounded *distinctly* better--I kid you not. A hard-edged glare to the sound was thereby completely removed; I'd spent several months trying to figure out how to further tweak my CD player in order to get rid of the sonic annoyances, not realizing that a simple replacement of the plug to the wall socket would've solved the problem in two seconds. Live and learn.

Anyway, the CD player can now display any disc in its best light. If it's a good CD, it'll sound good on this system. If it's bad, it'll sound bad. If it's spectacular--and there are more than a few--it'll sound spectacular.

You know the punch line. The CD's of the Solti Aida were in fact shorn of their highest frequencies. This is not one of these subtle differences that only audiophiles with "golden ears" and $40,000 systems can hear. A 90-year-old guy with his hearing intact could hear this on his Victrola (assuming it plays CD's).

Why this is the case I do not know. My guess is that it was a "creative" choice: the Solti Aida was always known to sound extremely "hot" in the high frequencies; the brass was said to be over-recorded and obtrusive. Of course, this was *Solti's* creative choice (and/or possibly that of Lewis Layton, one of the greatest of the great engineers), which should have been -- but wasn't -- respected.

The other possibility is that something happened to the RCA mastertapes during their residence at Decca. All RCA issues that I've heard -- the open reel tapes, both highlights and complete, and the complete LP shaded dog set -- sound great, and have their high frequencies intact.

Same goes for the first Decca LP's. These are the ones with the cover art that featured Price in full costume with one of her '60s-style hair-do's, standing next to an Egyptian column. Unfortunately I was unable to find any scanned art for this set on the Internet. The bottom line is that these LP's sounded superb, in every way the equal of the RCA shaded dogs.

This set was manufactured by Decca/London until the early '70s, at which point it was replaced by LP's featuring the cover art featuring Price with '70s-style Afro and flowing dashiki.

This was the first issue of the Solti Aida where the high frequencies were attenuated. I've heard the LP's but not the cassettes, which were popular back then. I assume they were essentially the same as the LP's.

The next major issue of the Solti Aida was the first CD edition in the mid '80s--the full-priced three-disc set. These sound as if the same source material was used in their mastering, indicating that when Decca first issued the LP set described above (Price-with-Afro), they made a new set of masters which were then used for the first CD set, which shared the Afro cover art with the LP's.

The next set issued by Decca was the budget-priced twofer. (They were able to fit it on two discs by making a split during the Triumphal Scene; the earlier CD set was sequenced so that the discs broke at the conclusions of acts, which necessitated three CD's.) That issue has yellowish nondescript abstract cover art.

I've heard this set only via an .mp3 download. While it doesn't sound as bright as the original sets, it does sound more open and livelier than the "bad" sets. Of course, it's very difficult to make any definitive determination on the sound quality even via a fairly high bitrate .mp3 download. I'd have to rate the sound of the newest set as "inconclusive"

Believe it or not, both of the CD sets appear to still be in print! The three-disc set is far higher-priced than the twofer and may not sound as good. Go figure.

Just so you don't think I'm making a mountain out of a molehill here, let me just state that I consider this recording a very important document of some great singers and a famous conductor, and it should be heard in its proper sound. The same, unfortunately, goes for the Price/Karajan Tosca, which similarly lost its highest frequencies at Decca around the same time as the Solti Aida. There are further examples, some more blatant than others, but the fact remains that a huge number of recordings aren't being heard as they should be heard.

There have been some positive signs. The Living Stereo series on CD was a praiseworthy effort by RCA to present older recordings -- including opera -- in their best light. A few are so good (the Leinsdorf Tosca and Lucia) that they rival the original LP's. Unfortunately, not all of the recordings have been as worthy of the effort as the Solti Aida. Certain of the reissue programs of the other majors have not generally been of the same high standard, including the Decca Classic Sound/Legends series and the EMI Great Recordings of the Century. Conversely, Philips and DG have done some very nice work on their reissue projects, often limited only by the disfigurements of the CD format itself -- something worthy of another essay or two. While there are no hard and fast rules, the sad truth is that a very high percentage of our recorded opera legacy is not being properly presented to the buying public.

MK