Bream, Segovia, Monteux, Debussy Nocturnes and the New York World’s Fair

I mentioned in an earlier entry how much I like Julian Bream and his records for RCA (and other labels too). I found myself spinning this LP tonight – what looks like Bream’s debut record for RCA. Somehow I found a near-mint copy – in Living Stereo with 1S stampers no less – for a dollar. The way to tell how close your RCA records are to being “original” is easy – for any RCA releases, even Elvis, just look in the deadwax area. After the catalog number stamp there will be a number followed by the letter “S” indicating the stamper number. “1S” means first stamper and so on. When stampers wear out, new parts are created from the master tapes necessitating higher stamper numbers. I’ve seen RCA records with numbers as high as “33 S” for sure – if not higher. That’s a lot of units! So my Julian Bream album is as original pressing as you’re going to get. It helps that, in the case of RCA Living Stereo albums, this means “good sound”.  Not all RCA “1S” albums will sound good (Dynaflex jobs from the 70s are all hit and miss for example).

Anyway, RCAs up until the late 60s always sounded pretty good. This Segovia album I picked up recently is a domestic Decca LP.

Not usually good news, but aside from the odd loud pop and tick this record is pretty enjoyable. Surprising since the quality of these Decca Gold Label US pressings leaves a lot to be desired for the most part.

 The feel of the vinyl platter is really…….brittle! I don’t know what they mixed their vinylite compound with for the presses, but I’ll bet it was some cost-cutting garbage. These records are to be avoided by folks who can’t stand any surface noise. In the case of this record – a little surface noise, but not annoying groove damage. That’s hopeless stuff right there. One of these days I really ought to post some sonic examples of what I’m talking about. Maybe over the holidays………

Now, as far as the music goes – Segovia is more conservative that Bream, but we can expect that. The playing is crisp and sonorous just the same. Segovia is almost single-handedly responsible for elevating the acoustic Spanish guitar to the level of respectability as a classical instrument in the world of serious music. So, he’s not just great – he’s a key figure in the development of guitar music.

I picked up this Debussy La Mer / Nocturnes RCA mono LP the other day. I was especially intrigued with the notion of Pierre Monteux conducting the Boston Symphony in a performance of this piece - one of the few pieces I've known quite well for a long time. There were certainly some cool aspects of Monteux's version of La Mer (I'm still partial to the Pierre Boulez classic from the mid-60s), but it was the flip side piece that really caught my ear and my imagination............

I don't think I've heard Debussy's Nocturnes before. It's a pretty dreamy piece with a really modern-sounding ending complete with a wordless female chorus that kinda tips the whole proceedings firmly into the PSYCHEDELIC category for me. Speaking of psychedelic, I'm happy to say my experiences on this plane of consciousness have not been chemical-induced, but life-induced. For some reason, Debussy's Nocturnes reminded me of visiting the New York World's Fair grounds as a child with my parents when we used to live in Queens. By the time I was on the planet, the Worlds Fair was relegated to the big ol' structures, Shea Stadium, the surrounding park and the Science Museum. Speaking of the Science Museum - THAT place really tripped me out - even the outer edifice of the building is like nothing else I've ever seen to this day....

Now that is one trippy-looking building! So anyway I'm listening to this Debussy music and it sounds all futuristic and spooky and weird which got me thinking about the Worlds Fair grounds with all these mysterious looking structures that I HAD NO FRIGGIN CLUE WHAT WAS UP WITH THIS JUNK as a kid, because it was like some crazy abandoned freak-scene in the middle of New York City and what's all that about?? Like, what is the deal with these things..............

I mean.....are the aliens going to come and reclaim us someday landing on THIS SPOT? This stuff really blew my mind as a kid. What I didn't understand was all this was built as a vision for the future. Imagination. Kinda like music............so here's a version of Debussy's Noctures you can listen to:

While you watch this great clip of silent COLOR film footage of what the 1939 World's Fair in New York City looked like!

Well, the 1939 footage runs well beyond Debussy's piece, so I'll let you come up with your own soundtrack for the rest of the 90 minutes or so..........pretty wild stuff indeed!!

Music can take your mind to some interesting places. That's the whole point, isn't it?

Toscanini, Classical on 45 RPM and Open Reel Tape

Now that's a great picture of the Maestro in action and totally in control! This is just one of many stark and stern-looking images that helped to popularize the cult of Toscanini in the first part of the Twentieth Century. From the scattered accounts I've read about Toscanini so far, he was a pretty fierce and fearsome presence on the podium. Yet, his influence on the world of serious music continues into the present as the echoes of his work aesthetic continue to reverberate in the approaches of even modern conductors like Alan Gilbert. I recently found this book about Toscanini at a local thrift store.........

I believe the author is one of Toscanini's grandchildren. Part of the premise of the book is to explore how Toscanini's American career rose with the emergence of consumer culture in the United States. Toscanini managed to gain celebrity status on par with political and popular figures of his day. This status helped to set a standard of classical music appreciation in the United States on a hitherto unknown level. I'm only a chapter into the book, but I did happen to notice a pretty unusual photo on the inside spread. Check this out:

I reckon this was a promotional picture RCA used to advertise its entrance into the world of 45 RPM discs. And, indeed, classical music did briefly have a presence in the marketplace on 7 inch vinyl! I found a bunch of these a few months ago. Interesting to note how red vinyl was used - and not just by RCA - to designate classical releases on 45. See here:

Some of the boxes contained as many as four discs. The idea being that a person could stack the discs in order to hear an extended piece over several discs - flipping the entire pile to bring the work to conclusion. I brought home a few of these sets to check out the fidelity overall. In general, I found the results to be less than compelling. Which is a shame since 45 discs can often be quite exciting, at least for pop and rock and roll music. I think one look at the enormous amount of dead wax (the area between the end of the grooves and the start of the label in the middle) pretty much tells the whole story - the goal was to cram music onto the disc, not to create an audiophile experience. Well, at least these things look cool!

If the 45 RPM disc didn't really deliver the sonic goods, an even more inconvenient format WOULD. Here's a picture of the latest addition to the family:

I bagged this TEAC X-3 Mk II machine off the 'bay recently. I had been wanting to replace my old reel to reel machine (which bit the dust) for some time now. The TEAC is a modern upgrade to the old AKAI machine I've had for many years. This is what the AKAI I have looks like in comparison:

A pretty cool machine (with an 8-track deck built into the side) generally, but not exactly audiophile. I wouldn't have bothered to upgrade were it not for the fact that I must have done something really wrong since the left channel is toast (no sound, no nothing alas!). Well, in terms of sound quality, the TEAC is a major upgrade! And, as luck would have it, I chanced upon a major score of epic proportions at a thrift store last weekend.........

Eight classical reels - all at 7.5 IPS - for about a dollar a reel. OMFG!!! I haven't played them all yet, but the ones I have sound AMAZING. Where 45 discs failed, open reels hit the mark big time. I noticed the RCA jobs have the entire program on one side also - no flipping reels (the TEAC does not do auto-reverse, alas!).

Quite a nice pile indeed! It's too bad that Toscanini didn't live to see the stereo age. How interesting it would have been to hear The Maestro conduct some Beethoven in stereo! As it is, there are a lot of great classical reels out there - some of them quite collectable too. This certainly would have been the audiophile's choice, as impractical and wonky as it is to thread that tape through the machine each time. Here's to another obsession (as if I need another)!

Yet, as I am typing this, I find myself playing a CD of Mahler's 7th (Bernstein conducting the NY Philharmonic) for the third time today - hearing this symphony for the first time and trying to get a handle on it. Hearing great sound wasn't always so easy. Sometimes checking out past formats can be fun and rewarding. Yet, I wonder if the marketing of classical music in the digital age isn't poised for a renewed interest. No longer are consumers strapped in to the 80-minute compact disc format. Could we now have the entire cycle of Beethoven symphonies on one hi-res Blue Ray disc? You bet. Or streaming off a hard drive through foobar. Is music still a commodity? Was it ever? These and more questions to be debated in the future. Until then - no matter what the format - happy listening! Toscanini approves!

Leonard Bernstein - Fancy Free

A few weeks ago I picked up this LP along with a bunch of other classical albums at one of my local thrift store haunts. I was initially attracted to the Copland piece - El Salon Mexico - since I had heard about it yet never heard it. This was apparently Copland's "breakthrough" piece - the work that opened the door to a more appealing, populist style of writing though no less artistically valid. Before El Salon Mexico, Copland had been writing some pretty wild and ugly sounding stuff (like many modernists of the 1920s). Of course I'm a fan of his more popular pieces - Appalachian Spring, etc.... - so I wanted to hear Copland's turning point.

The Copland piece was not the main event of the album, however. That honor went to Bernstein's own composition - the music for a ballet called Fancy Free. Placing it into context, the ballet debut was in 1944 - at the height of World War II. Reading the description of the ballet on the back cover notes, there is nothing terribly revolutionary about the storyline. In fact, it seems to be not much more elaborate than what is depicted on the front cover - sailors chasing women on shore leave. Ho-hum. Yet, the music for the ballet is interesting in its own way (much like how Stravinsky's ballet music for The Firebird and The Rite of Sping does not require the visual - it stands on its own). I've often found this about ballet scores - I could care less about the half-baked storylines and leaping about - the music, since it is designed for dance routines, often is much more rhythmic and experimental than the typical Symphony or Concerto. So, although I'll pass on the dance routines, ballet music - at least the modern kind - is pretty wide open for me.

As it is, the Bernstein music is pretty good. I can't help thinking that Fancy Free was a dry-run of sorts for him. Bernstein only started his conducting career in earnest in 1943 with his debut conducting the New York Philharmonic. He was a young guy who needed to prove his worth. Fancy Free's immediate commercial appeal can't be denied. This is probably why the record was not issued on the grey Columbia masterworks label, but on the pop-oriented red label instead.

Although the ballet dates to 1944, this LP issue must have appeared in the mid-to-late 1950s. By that time, Bernstein was already riding pretty high in his career with new vistas ready to conquer (West Side Story was unveiled in 1957 - arguably his peak). As it happens, the idea of the ballet for Fancy Free would eventually morph into a full-blown musical (and later still - movie) called On the Town. Same mundane, yet commercially appealing, storyline.

However, this particular LP did manage to catch my interest for another reason. As goofy as the cover art is and as blatantly commercial as the ballet it illustrates was, the other material included on the record turns this platter into a quick synopsis of American-influenced "classical" music of the early 20th Century. Here's what I mean..........

The Fancy Free piece could be considered the quintessential World War II period-piece. The year is 1944. Although Americans have made tremendous sacrifices, this war is a just war and we're winning it. Though victory would be another year off, I can imagine the feeling in the country was that it was merely a matter of time before the world fell at our feet. How else could an American composer have the courage to compose a piece of light-ballet to elevate the nobility of the cause while the battles were still raging? Well, Bernstein wasn't alone - Hollywood had been cranking out plenty of patriotic movie musicals to raise the spirits of the soldiers as well as the folks at home during the war. So, in that context, Fancy Free is a great example of this type of populist art though perhaps not one of the more well-known examples (which makes it even more interesting, ultimately).

When we flip the record over onto Side Two the listener travels back in time to two previous decades - long before the call to war and the seemingly inevitable victory that awaited us on the other side.....

Aaron Copland was a "difficult" composer in his early years. Like many other serious composers at the turn of the 20th Century he took it as his sacred duty to challenge the old order to replace the syrupy sentiments of the Romantic Age with bold, new and sometimes frightening sounds. The Great Depression changed all that. Copland would be hired on as part of New Deal programs to create populist, accessible and, with any luck, uplifting and uniquely American music to bolster the spirits of the demoralized American population. His first successful attempt toward this new approach was El Salon Mexico. He took as his inspiration traditional folk melodies he heard while visiting in Mexico and molded them into a bold and cohesive (not to mention sonically pleasing) tone poem. This is the same approach he would later apply to all his more famous American compositions.

Even before the Great Depression, there were moves being made to discover what kind of contribution American music could make to the "serious music" world. In France, quite a number of composers had been testing the limits of western music for some time. Erik Satie and his elliptical piano pieces had been setting the more adventurous listeners on their collective ears. One of Satie's disciples was Darius Milhaud. Mildhaud's 1923 composition "La Creation Du Monde" is included as the last piece on the above LP and is arguably Milhaud's most famous work. In it, he successfully incorporates tonalities from American jazz music - a style that would later influence George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, as well as other classical-jazz amalgamations. Milhaud himself would eventually find among his own disciples none other than future jazz great Dave Brubeck who was quite taken with Milhaud's jazz-inflected classical composing style. There were other, less successful attempts to infuse jazz tonalities into classical forms in the 1920s - to the point where a good many composers considered the bridging of those two worlds nothing more than a mere passing fad. How wrong they were!

So, you never quite know what could be lurking on some goofy-looking platter tucked away in a thrift store. This Bernstein LP turns out to be a brilliant little exposition on musical trends of the early 20th Century and the influence of American culture upon the highbrow world of Classical Music. Well worth the $1 I invested. Happy Listening!

Is it Music? Is it Noise? Is it Memorex?

On a recommendation I picked up this book by Alex Ross as summer reading. I’m really only a few chapters in so far, but this is an excellent piece of work. The main objective of the book is to sketch a reasonable argument for the development of “serious music” in the twentieth century along historical lines. As anyone who reads or writes history will know, there are always multiple perspectives and Ross has his own understanding of what the great watershed musical events of the last one hundred or so years have been. Just like a rock and roll writer will usually extol the virtues of Elvis, Ross acknowledges the pioneers and the popularity-contest winners while offering interesting arguments for which composers are most likely to be remembered from the latter part of the twentieth century. Having a working knowledge of the history of western music is good before jumping into this book, yet the writing is clear enough to appeal to the non-obsessive music listener as well.

What I am enjoying most about Ross’s book so far is how he is bringing to life some composers that I have been less enthusiastic about up to now. The book begins with a chapter about Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler. Mahler has been much more appealing to me since I started listening more intently several years ago. While Strauss’s genius was certainly apparent to me in his more popular pieces, I felt a certain indifference towards his music. Some pieces resonated more than others. Pretty early on in my listening journey I picked up a copy of the Living Stereo sacd of Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony performing Strauss’s “Symphony Domestica” and it was not as enjoyable as I had hoped it would be. I get the feeling that there could be something I’m missing about that piece since just about every other Reiner / Chicago album I have is top notch. So I just kinda gave Strauss a bit of a miss for the most part.

Ross’s book makes a wonderful argument that Richard Strauss was responsible for one of the earliest breaks with older musical forms with his opera “Salome” – the very ending of which has a famously “ugly chord” pointing the way to the sound of the future. This is fascinating for me considering two words I’ve been less interested in so far have been “Strauss” and “Opera”. So I broke down and listened to the whole “Salome” just to give it a chance. I was able to hear some of the musical innovation Ross writes about, but I have to give it another few go-rounds to get into the storyline – it’s a pretty fascinating work from a historical as well as philosophical standpoint. And I’ve barely scratched the surface. But there I was listening to a whole Strauss opera for crying out loud. Wonders never cease.

While I’m digging the journey through the twentieth century in Ross’s book, I’ve been thinking more about Richard Strauss and his music beyond just the pieces discussed there. For some reason I never thought about the juxtaposition of Strauss and Mahler, yet they were contemporaries and quite familiar with each other. It could be argued that Strauss achieved more commercial appeal and popularity, at least in the first half of the century. Mahler seems to have overtaken Strauss, however in the way his music inspires such fervent devotion from fans (Mahler-ites) particularly in the latter half of the twentieth century. Mahler also never lived to witness the disturbing turn of events his country took before and during World War II. Strauss’s passive response to the rise of Nazi-ism in Germany has continued to cast a shadow on his character from a historical point of view (even though his family was also harassed by the lunatic Nazi government). Yet Alex Ross makes an interesting case for Strauss. Consider how the scope of his life stretched from the beginning of Germany’s unification in the 1800s to the post World War II era. What a tumultuous time to have lived through! I reckon a Strauss biography will be on my reading pile in the near future.

For now, I’m making an effort to revisit some Strauss records I’ve listened to in the past as well as trying some new ones. Recently I made the trip down to the Princeton Record Exchange – a bit of a drive for me, but worth the effort every so often. And they’ve got tons of used classical CDs and LPs. Out of the dollar LP section I grabbed this mono LP:

I thought it was pretty interesting pairing Byron Janis with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony on RCA. I have a Janis record on Mercury with Dorati conducting the Minneapolis Symphony. Didn’t know he recorded with the Chicago. Plus the title of the Strauss piece caught my eye – “Burleske”. According to the liner notes, this is the only time Strauss wrote an extended piece for piano and orchestra as a standalone work. It was composed early in the composer's life - 21. As such, it is an interesting combination of elements from the past that look toward the future. Although it is not one of his more well known pieces it has caught my ear enough for several repeat airings over the last few days. There’s a great tympani part that runs through the piece as a theme (and I like tympani). I also get the feeling that this was Strauss’s attempt at a tribute of sorts to Franz Liszt since the climactic ending is highly reminiscent of Liszt’s volcanic piano pounding! But “Burleske” is not all Romantic Era histrionics – quiet and near-minimalistic interludes provide contrast to the hurricane-like sections.

I have to give this piece and performance some credit in the appeal department. Yet there is still a slight intangible SOMETHING about Strauss’s music that I can’t figure out yet. Beethoven, Mahler, Brahms – you get a clear sense of what those composers were feeling right off the bat in their music. Strauss is guarded, secretive – slow to reveal himself (even in more popular works like “Also Sprach Zarathustra” – as emotive as that is I fall short of believing just how much it reflects Strauss’s inner person). No matter. Life is full of mysterious ambiguity and weirdness. If music didn’t reflect this somehow we’d all be listening to Kenny G. and Michael Bolton, wouldn’t we?

I've been doing a LOT of listening this summer, just not a lot of documenting. But there will be more reflections about music courtesy of Mr. Ross's fine book in the future. Until then, Happy Listening!                                                                     

Szell, Mahler and the 33 1/3 LP Record

June 21 came and went with scant notice of a significant anniversary noteworthy for music lovers in general and record lovers in particular. Apparently, on June 21 1948 Columbia Records rolled out their microgroove, 33 and 1/3 RPM vinyl platters for popular consumption. Just as Beethoven’s 9th Symphony would be the decisive piece of music less than forty years into the future to determine the length of the compact disc, I am quite certain that classical music was the intended genre to dominate the new Long Playing, 33 1/3 vinyl discs. Getting that Beethoven 9th to consumers prior to 1948 meant several 78 RPM discs shipped in thick cardboard sleeves – talk about HEAVY and impractical. (Side note – as a kid I found out just how heavy a pile of classical 78s could be when I got the bright idea to carry an armload down the block from my house – IN THE SUMMER – with the hopes that the local junk shop might buy them from me. No luck – ended up lugging those suckers back to the house in the summer sun. DOH!!) Record distributors must have been very happy indeed when the industry started to shift to 33 and 45 rpm discs.

Columbia ML4001 was the first release on that fateful day in June. The recording was the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E Minor with Bruno Walter conducting the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of New York. I don’t own this record yet, but I did recently stumble upon a pretty early 2-record set from Columbia Masterworks of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 – the gargantuan work also called “the Symphony of a Thousand” in reference to the enormous orchestra and choir needed to perform the piece to the specifications of the composer. This recording was done in 1951 and I’m figuring the record is from the same year.

The packaging looks similar to the type of thing one would see 78 discs stuffed into – an oversized box. Mine is still intact, though a bit torn and crumbling in spots. The discs are in decent shape though and that’s what really counts – at least for the listener. Imagine my surprise when I did a little research on this release to discover a mint copy having been auctioned off on ebay last September for $77! Wow – I only paid $1 at the Goodwill for mine. Then again, if the item was in fact totally mint – how many totally mint ANYTHINGS exist from 1951? Still – I’m pleased with my $1 purchase. Still I wonder – is this record rare for some other reason? I think it was pretty unusual for Mahler’s stuff to get performed, let alone recorded and pressed onto vinyl, in 1951. The Mahler Renaissance was still a few years down the line. So maybe this is a pretty unusual disc.

The only other performance of this work in my library is the famous one George Solti did in the early 70s for Decca (in stereo). I haven’t listened to that version in a long time, but I remember being very blown away by not only the piece itself, but also with the quality of the recording. There seemed to be a lot of depth and nuance to that particular recording – I could tell right away how difficult it must have been to capture well on tape since there are so many performers including roaring choirs and intimate solo vocal parts. Bloody maddening! That Mahler was quite the character!

The 1951 version – performed by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra conducted by (the venerable) Hermann Scherchen – tries to tackle the same problems in terms of recording technique and the end result is not exactly a product of balance! I reckon in an effort to keep the solo singers from getting lost in the cacophony they must have placed them very close to spot mics and when they let loose – WWWOOOOOOAAAH they’re LOUD! Meanwhile you can hear the choir waay back in the mix with the orchestra. Sometimes things level off, but this must have been a very challenging situation for the technicians of the day to pull off. Really, my description is based on what I can hear off the record – I WISH there was a written account of how they attempted to record this piece in 1951. Probably me and about three other people on the planet would care to know that story and I’m sure everybody who WAS involved was only too glad to get it over with – and banish the memory for good!

In spite of the primitive technology, Columbia SL-164 is still enjoyable. Though I have to give a little credit to another experiment with a new turntable cartridge. I had read that old mono LPs and 45s can sound better with a different shaped stylus – a conical shape. The most popular shaped stylus is the elliptical shape. Yet the elliptical stylus can tend to ride a little thin in old mono record grooves – the conical shape fits the groove more precisely for records cut in mono before 1968 when old mono cutting lathes were phased out for good. I scored an Audio Technica 3482 for under $20 and lo and behold! That Mahler 8th sounds much nicer indeed!

Now, I’m not going to pretend that I’m some kind of Mahler expert. It actually took me some time and effort to gain a better appreciation of Mahler and I’m still working on it. The first piece I listened to was the famous Reiner / Chicago “Living Stereo” RCA version of “Das Lied”. Serious business! It wasn’t until I heard a Bruno Walter version of the First Symphony that I felt like I could really dig into some Mahler. I think the only symphonies of his I haven’t yet put my ears to are the 7th and the 9th. And I’m in no rush. It was only this year I gave the 6th a try.

Here’s what happened – two years ago there was a big Mahler Anniversary of his birth or something and there were all kinds of Mahler deals out there. So I got a CD Box set of everything he ever composed for, like $25 or something. Totally cannot say no to that kind of thing. But I’ve found when trying my ears on a new Symphony I have to work with vinyl to get into the darned thing. Hearing it all in one long shot on an 80 minute CD for the first time is just too much! So I’ve been trying to find cheap LPs as entry points.

Szell conducting Mahler's 6th is great, but what's with the quasi-surrealistic cover art? Not very flattering for either man I'm afraid. Looks more like a Terry Gilliam reject for a lost Monty Python episode! Yikes!

I found this version of the 6th Symphony by the Cleveland Symphony under the direction of George Szell. Now, I have some other records by the Szell / Cleveland coupling and my appreciation for Szell has been steadily increasing. Apparently he ruled over the Cleveland Symphony with an iron fist from 1946 to his death in 1970. If it can be imagined, he was also considered to be a more prickly character than Fritz Reiner. But the results were of such a consistently high quality that the only criticism the Cleveland Symphony would get under Szell’s direction was – too clinical. Well, isn’t this music supposed to be about the details?

Tucked inside the record jacket was a “bonus” 7” disc with an interview with Szell on it. Not only is it worth hearing since, well, its SZELL. But also because right off the bat he is asked about Mahler and the recollections are fascinating. The whole thing is quite fascinating so I’m making it available here – at least until somebody complains and I hope that doesn’t happen.

In the golden era of classical LP recording, RCA had Reiner and Munch primarily. Columbia had Bernstein and Szell. I’ll let the man speak for himself here, but I certainly have come to the point where Szell’s name on a record jacket is now a go-to for me. Szell’s recordings with the Cleveland Symphony set new standards for performance. The birth of the LP record in 1948 made classical music more accessible for the public at large to study it at length. And I think it is no coincidence that Mahler’s popularity as a composer ascends with the improvement in technology in the latter half of the 20th Century. Mahler's music would only benefit as recording technology improved over time. With exacting conductors like Szell, the bar of excellence was continually raised though perhaps we are not likely to see or hear from such men ever again. The miracle of records continues to inform us well into the 21st Century - still listening!!

Alan Hovhaness and a return to foobar......

 I probably would not have ever heard of this 20th Century composer had it not been for my fascination with the Living Stereo series of classical releases from RCA which helped to propel me towards taking on the world of  “serious music” more seriously. When the production of stereo LPs was the new innovation in the late 1950s, RCA’s classical division was ready to flood the market with great sounding product since they had been recording orchestras in stereo since at least 1954. The time that it took to perfect and fine-tune the process of creating stereo LP discs from those tapes meant that there would be a backlog of material ready to go once the stereo cutting lathes were set by about 1958 or so. Many of these original LPs go for big bucks in mint shape since they are, in many cases, audiophile quality as well as historically fascinating documents of great orchestras and conductors getting down with their bad selves.

Among the baddest of these orchestras and conductors was Fritz Reiner who led the Chicago Symphony from 1953 to 1963. RCA’s recordings of his interpretations of classics like Rimski-Korsokov’s “Sheherezade” are still considered benchmark recordings. When BMG started releasing some of these classic recordings as super-audio compact discs (including a layer with the original 3-track recordings presented as front right-center-front left “surround sound”) at a reasonable cost – I jumped at the chance to use the series as a way to dig deeper into classical. Some recordings were not released as SACDs, but as CDs only. Such was the case of a Chicago/Reiner disc of Hovhaness’s “Mysterious Mountain”.

This release is apparently Hovhaness’s most famous composition, most likely because of the success of this particular recording. What little I’ve read about the composer, who is firmly in the 20th Century camp, reveals that he has been quite prolific over the years though none of the other works have come close to the popularity of “Mysterious Mountain”. Since I do like to check out the work of some lesser-known composers when I can, I was happy to find a recording of Hovhaness’s Fourth Symphony at a thrift store last year.

This record comes from RCA’s chief classical rival in the audiophile world – Mercury’s Living Presence division. The recordings on this label are also noteworthy for their generally fabulous sound, though I have to admit I don’t think Mercury’s album cutting and pressing quality was quite on par with the RCA Living Stereo series. RCA had some serious MOJO going on with their records up to the introduction of the whole Dynagroove system when quality control started to slip (Dynagroove’s critics claimed that distortion artifacts were purposely introduced into the grooves through this system – a fascinating, but highly controversial claim).

Hovhaness’s 4th Symphony is an interesting piece. Unfortunately, on the record I brought home, it was obvious that the record’s previous owner(s) liked it better than the side containing the Giannini piece since the Hovhaness side was kinda worn out in spots. The Giannini symphony was probably placed on the same record for contrast purposes since it is overbearingly upbeat, happy-sounding and, frankly, totally forgettable. The glib statements from the composer on the back-cover notes don’t do much to alleviate the situation. But what to do when you want to replace an album that you only half-like? For me, finding a well-mastered compact disc of a piece of music that I might only own on a beat up LP is a very acceptable alternative. Compact discs, if produced well, are certainly not as bad as the media has been portraying them in recent years. It’s a bit funny, really to consider the fact that CDs often sound BETTER than MP3 files, yet CDs are getting the shaft in the marketplace – go figure!

So I found a CD release of the Hovhaness Symphony #4, except it was placed alongside that dreadful Giannini composition and a Morton Gould “West Point Symphony” which, though I have never heard it, somehow fails to appeal to me at the moment. Do I buy a whole CD for what essentially comes down to 3 tracks (the Hovhaness piece has only three movements)? Not when I’ve got three dollars worth of Amazon mp3 promotional credits!

Welcome back to foobar! I decided to forego the CD and just use my free credits to download the Hovhaness composition. Now, having listened to it I am happy to hear the performance minus the groove damage evident on my LP copy. I do notice a little tell-tale fidelity compromise since the files are 256 kbs quality, but overall not bad for free! And, although I am still quite enamored with the whole vinyl experience – listening to classical pieces streaming off my hard drive through my stereo system is actually quite acceptable. I could see this being a good way to hear more obscure stuff in the future.

All of this without much comment about Hovhaness as a composer! Well, what I like about the two pieces of his that I have heard so far is the willingness to use different sounds to create unique expressions that are modern, yet not purposely abrasive. I do enjoy challenging music once in awhile, but Hovhaness seems to make a case for modern, yet approachable, music. Although “Mysterious Mountain” gets the nod for popularity I have to admit to liking Symphony #4 better as a composition. This is, of course, EXACTLY why I enjoy seeking out offbeat compositions even from more well known composers. You just never know – sometimes it’s the less-heralded stuff that is more enjoyable to you personally!

Well, no matter how the music is delivered in your house – keep those air molecules vibrating! Bright Moments!

The Angel record label - a re-evaluation!

 Over the past few years as I've been trolling around the shops for classical LPs I have managed, through trial and error, to gather some good data about record labels and the pressing quality one could expect from those labels. Some patterns have emerged. For instance - it is with good reason that pre-Dynagroove RCA pressings, both Living Stereo and regular mono, are sought after. Found in good shape, those pressings have something special going on that is lost in later RCA pressings. The same can be said for most London Records (import - UK produced) pressings - especially those from the late 60s and early 70s. Great sounding discs from that era. One label that I usually avoided (until now) was the Angel imprint from Capitol / EMI - at least the 50s and 60s era discs. For the longest time I just could not find a single pressing on that label that didn't sound like, well......POOP!

As the years went on through the late 60s into the 70s and 80s, Angel records (basically Capitol Records) started to improve in pressing (and therefore, sound) quality. The label pictured above hails from a US pressing from the mid-to-late 1950s. In the early 60s, the label design changed from red to baby blue like this:

These pressings, many manufactured at the Scranton, PA factory,  were similar in quality to their red-label ancestors. Sometime in the late 60s, a modern logo replaced the blue one:

These brown-label jobs were a bit better than the earlier ones. By this time, the old mono cutting lathes (and practices) were discarded as the industry standard moved to a mostly-stereo format. By the mid-70s, a nice sunset-orange colored logo replaced the brown one - as seen below:

This design lasted into the 1980s, concurrent with an alternate black and tan colored label with the pressing quality improving along with all the other domestic Capitol / EMI releases of the era (shout-out to Wally Traugott and Ken Perry!).

I had picked up a few of the 50s era red-label pressings and was not wowed by any of them. I did, however, keep this one only since it was a pretty good performance of Rachmaninoff's 3rd Piano Concerto, a pretty unusual recording and I like Emil Gilels. Plus, this record was manufactured in England, as opposed to Scranton. But all to no avail - the record looked clean, but was pretty yucky-sounding. Especially on side one where the first two movements got crammed on (with movement three taking up all of side two). When too much information is squeezed onto one side of an LP, the sound quality gets compromised no matter how talented the mastering engineer is. Here's that Gilels LP:

Notice how the label design features some unique elements - the "Recording Angel" legend as well as the "EMI" legend on the bottom perimeter. It really is a nifty variation on the more common domestic design. But, what good is any of this if the record sounds like a dog?

Over the weekend, I wound up at one of my usual haunts and discovered a bunch of mono Angel red-label pressings in the bins. And they looked stone mint too. Bugger! Here's what I brought home in hopes of better fortunes...........

All of these were domestic pressings with the red-label design. But here's where my record-freak brain kicked in.........they all looked UNPLAYED. How often can you get to hear a stone-mint, unplayed looking record from the 1950s? This is what drove me headfirst into classical vinyl in the first place. The music is great, in most cases, and the wow factor is pretty up there when exploring sounds cut onto vinyl over 50 years ago. In quite a few cases, the sound is really a joy and a wonder. When that happens - it's like a time machine! Years ago I had the chance to buy still-sealed, original black-label RCA Skeeter Davis records from the 1960s. Slicing open the shrink-wrap along the length of the record cover, pulling out the "new-old-stock" LP from the sleeve and playing a "new" vintage LP was such a total high - it was like opening the sarcophagus of King Tut's tomb for me! However, I digress..........

I also recently rescued another old turntable and decided to put this cart on it that I had lying around since the summer.

This is the Audio-Technica 120E. I picked this up used from an online forum I belong to last summer to see how it performed against the more expensive (and my personal favorite) AT 440 MLa  model. Well, I just didn't care for 120E very much so it sat in the box and I wrote it off as a loss. When the new rescue turntable came in, I decided to put 120E on the headshell just to see if it was a decent match. THEN, I played one of those Angel LPs and..........lo and behold! Pretty good sound! This tells me two things:

A.   I can safely pick up more of those Angel pressings if they look good............and............

B.  Most likely I need to replace the needle on my SONY Linear-Tracking turntable pretty soon. As much as I like that Grado Red cart - I can't deny that I've been running the same needle on there for the last five or so years! Though its only in the last year or so that I've put that Grado to work. But, still - time to replace the old stylus there.

As for the music................

Great to hear David Oistrakh performing that Khatchaturian Violin Concerto. Interesting piece (similar in quality to the Piano Concerto) and great tone from the soloist! I have a few other Brahms' Violin Concertos that I like very much. I never heard of Leonid Kogan before, but he's got a great tone too! And what can I say about Beecham? Really enjoyable Greig pieces on that disc. And I've been playing those three records a LOT with the AT 120E.

It just goes to show - better to check your gear before totally writing off a whole record label's output. Now that Angel records are fair game I don't have to shy away from taking a chance on them in the future.

Hi - I'm new here.........

The joys of being a newbie………

It’s interesting to compare the traffic of my two music blogs – Catchagroove, the anything-but-classical one, has had a surprising number of “hits”. This one, however, is certainly the classical annex. Kinda how years ago, in Manhattan and Paramus, the main Tower Records stores would have a Classical Annex next door – a whole different building dedicated to nothing but classical music. Sad to say that back in the day -  I never ventured into the classical side of Tower Records. But even from a distance it seemed kinda – quiet! So it is with this blog. Not as much traffic. But, as it happens, this works as a bit of a writing experiment for me, as well as a musical discovery experiment.

For the past few years I’ve done a lot of listening, collecting, thinking, reading and theorizing. Sometimes I get down about how little I know and whether or not I ought to bother keeping up a blog about something I know so little about.  I grew up on popular music. These days I can be pretty intuitive when it comes to rock, blues and jazz. The first time I heard Tom Waits was on the radio – I think it was “Step Right Up”. I had, prior to hearing his music, only READ about Tom Waits – descriptions of what his music was like. When I heard that song on the radio, even before they announced who it was – I knew what I was hearing was Tom Waits, based entirely on what I read about him. Yet – as of right now, I might struggle to tell the difference between a Mozart or Schubert symphony. I’m just not that savvy yet. Eras I’m better at. Individual composers……….eh, I’m workin’ on it!

Yet, what I lack in sophisticated and scholarly appreciation I try to make up for with unbridled enthusiasm. I’m just eating this stuff UP. Just tonight I listened to no less than three full Mozart symphonies – 25, 40 and 41. Considering the brevity of these pieces, well – compared to a typical Mahler or Bruckner symphony, Mozart’s are brief indeed – it’s like eating POTATO CHIPS. So there you have it – I have compared Amadeus to junk food. I may be lowbrow, but darnit – I’m SINCERE! Of course this kind of enthusiasm is open to ridicule, especially from those who would be able to tag those Mozart pieces as nothing but “warhorses”. Yet, for me, they aren’t warhorses at all. In fact – part of the excitement is due to the fact that this is NEW STUFF for me.

And therein lies the justification for my blathering on here. Quite frankly I would LOVE to read the reflections of someone hearing “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band” for the first time in middle age. In fact, it’s a bit of a sad reality for me knowing that I will never be able to hear that great record afresh – I heard it so long ago and so frequently that the whole thing is etched into my consciousness (even the mono mix, though I didn’t discover that until I was in college – exciting experience indeed!!). Yet, there is a whole world of so-called classical music that, while certain pieces may be overplayed to some, aren’t overplayed to me. It’s that excitement of musical discovery that leads me on from composer to composer, from piece to piece, from orchestra to orchestra and so on…………………..

In fact, the variety of variables involved in the listening experience of “classical” is enough to keep a listener busy for a lifetime – even with individual pieces: conductors, orchestras, recording techniques. Like how Bernstein recorded two different versions of Tchaikovsky’s 4th – one in the late 50, one in the mid-70s. What on earth for? Well, when you can get both for $1 apiece it creates an interesting evening’s worth of sonic debate. And if I manage to discover some arcane reason for recording the same piece twice in one lifetime I get excited. Matter of fact, I spent a number of hours this past weekend playing Glen Gould’s two recordings of the “Goldberg Variations” – the 1955 and 1981 ones – back and forth ……… back and forth. And you know what? The 1981 version was basically slower. Ah, but it was more than that. Although it was technically the same notes on the page – apart from the recognizable melody lines – the two renditions really did sound like two different beasts altogether.

Glenn Gould 1955

Glenn Gould 1981

So, it’s great being a newbie. Most everything sounds pretty fresh to me, even if I have heard some melodies before. More often than not, recognizable melodies were taken out of their original context so hearing them in their proper, original form is a blast! Ah, I’d better watch out or I’ll start sounding like this guy:

Personally, I’m closer to this guy:


But I dig “classical” music just the same as good rock and roll. Maybe if I keep writing here I might discover why. Or at least make attempts at understanding the intangible appeal. Next time, I’ll get more into what I think I DO know, if I know anything at all. Until then – happy listening!

Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4

Okay, so this is Tchaikovsky. Long before I got the bug to dig deeper into this genre I knew enough about Tchaikovsky from the "Nutcracker Suite" - a holiday classic perhaps, but not anything I felt a great affinity for. That kind of material has little appeal for me. Or NO APPEAL, actually. So when I started off on my "serious music" journey, Tchaikovsky was not on the intended radar at all. For the longest time I just skipped over anything by him other than the 1812 Overture (and gads! I wound up with a boatload of those somehow). Then I got suckered into grabbing this record because the cover reminded me a lot of the Fleetwood Mac THEN PLAY ON cover! Right?

Plus, the record label was a really interesting variation on the classic Capitol rainbow design with this wicked-looking EMI symbol on it:

Aww, man - how could I say no to this? Plus the inner sleeve (not pictured - too lazy) was a custom job with a neat history of the EMI company on it. At the same Salvation Army there was a Tchaikovsky 5th too so I grabbed both (don't get me started on the 5th Symphony, I wound up with a slew of those overnight too - dang!). When I first played this piece I was pretty baffled by the first movement - the rest made sense, but it struck me as a real mystery. Eventually I made it to the 5th Symphony and was convinced I liked that better. Then, inexplicably, I kept picking up different versions of the 5th without realizing how many I already had - it was weird, man! One day I just poked into the Tchaikovsky section and I was like, DANG - WTF!?!? Anyway, for the longest time I thought the 5th was IT, right?

Alright - I think I kinda got the handle on the fact that Tchaikovsky's main deal is really in his symphonies. And, for that matter, the main event of those are the 4th, 5th and 6th. There's an unfinished, sorta 7th, but that's a controversy I haven't dug into yet. But those main three are THE DEAL for this guy. One through three.......I think I have a First Symphony somewhere.....it's alright, but kinda "surface" y'know? Most people ain't into those. So I got a buncha 4ths, 5ths and 6ths now. So much for putting Tchaikovsky on the back-burner, eh?

Recently I watched that Otto Klemperer film and vowed to pick up anything he did in reasonable shape just because he's awesome. And that led me to another 4th:

This was an early 60s recording, but the label betrays a late-60s pressing..........

Actually not bad - especially for Capitol / Angel pressings. It can be a real hit and miss affair with these beasts. Just some surface noise, but overall QUITE enjoyable. And, I felt like I understood and dug the 4th for the first time with this record. Plus, I noticed a funny thing............
PINK FLOYD! Yeah - all you classic rock fans know how the song "Wish You Were Here" starts on the Pink Floyd album right? The radio stations are being changed from one station to another and there's a very brief burst of an orchestral piece right before the iconic descending guitar line of the song "Wish You Were Here". Okay, find a copy of Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony and cue up the 4th movement right at the beginning. Well whadda ya know! Heh heh heh!

I liked the Otto Klemperer version quite a lot, but then I found this one:

Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Obviously a 70s reissue from RCA - nice job on the new cover art (no idea what the original looks like)! Even the dynaflex vinyl sounds decent enough...

But I'll tell you....... there's something MAGICAL about this record / version. I don't know what it is...maybe the sound of the orchestra in Boston Symphony Hall, maybe the pacing of the music but Munch just NAILS this one in my opinion. I've played it quite a few times over the last few months and it's a keeper for sure. Just to make sure I pulled out this Leonard Bernstein / New York Philharmonic version tonight and did a shoot-out with the Munch performance...........

I have a mono copy of this, but I know a stereo exists and has been reissued since the early 60s when this was done. Now, don't get me wrong - I'm a big fan of Lenny Bernstein. He did the planet a lot of good with the work he took on which was not limited to the "stuffed shirt" set at all! Lenny was one HIP dude. He recognized Brian Wilson's genius as a composer and that's just scratching the surface. So, you gotta dig Lenny. But........his Tchaikovsky 4th is a little tentative and, well - just not flowing like Munch's version. I dunno - there just seemed to be all these weird dramatic pauses. It's amazing to me how different interpretations of a written score can yield such dramatically unique results. Gotta love those six-eye, grey label Columbia Masterworks labels though..........

Just for laughs, I pulled out this Karajan version.........

Now, Von Karajan has a bit of a rep for being a kind of "cold fish" conductor and I figure this can't be good for a Russian composer, but really - even in spite of the compromised and yucky early 60s Capitol Angel pressing, this is not a bad listen at all. Normally I get pretty defensive when I see this label color and design:

There's been many a time when these pressings have let me down, but being the fool that I am I still take the odd chance here and there. I lucked out with this one. Acceptable sonics, all things considered. And, oddly, a somewhat more engaging interpretation than the Bernstein.

I didn't make it back to the Beecham version tonight. That's okay. Maybe tomorrow night - that's the nice thing about being vinyl-ready......lots of opportunity to compare different recordings cheaply. Plus, its a great way to learn more about individual works to hear different performances and perspectives. But for now.....my vote goes to the Charles Munch / Boston Symphony disc. Munch does a beautiful job at highlighting the many wonderful themes of this great Symphony. Check it out!