Old favourites of the Classical catalogue

We're looking backwards this week with things that changed expectations and one lies in recording.

In the beginning there was a horn, a great big one that artists performed into, cutting their record and by the mid 1920's the horn was replaced by electronic recording of the session to an acetate to make the discs from using microphones.

While shallac 78 rpm records tended to be noisy thanks to the harsh abrasive used in making them, the Decca Record company in England worked throughout the 1940's in increasing the range of low and high frequency sounds that could be captured on to them.

That with a combination of the new quieter plastic records, finer grooves and the introduction of 33 1/3 and 45 rpm speeds created the High Fidelity Full Frequency Range Recording in the early 1950's improving the quality of recorded sound in the home.

This lead to an interest in obtaining the best possible sound and the hobby of High Fidelity audio we know today.

Nothing stands still and so work continued as the new HiFi discs became the norm to enable spacial information to be recorded to records in the way tapes, developed from the late 1940's had shown adding realism to recordings of orchestras and groups of musicians.

Decca played a great part in pushing the new stereophonic record system that could play the original mono discs making many new recordings often to great acclaim and issuing demonstration records to show what what it offered.

The long playing record era had started an passion for making full recordings of classical music, some unheard outside of concert halls, some falling out of favour too that music fans embraced.

In the mid to late 1950's Decca recorded a number of popular works for the very first time in stereophonic sound that to this day are highly regarded with original lps being much sought after.

Those two lps and others featuring the works of Igor Stravinsky were compiled from the original tapes to this specially priced double compact set.

The same orchestra and conductor recorded many of the works of Rimsky-Korsakov in that early set of stereo lp releases which were equally loved and rounded up in cd sets.

They were amongst the earliest records I listened to on the Ace Of Diamonds and Eclipse reissues on record so it was nice to recently acquire these cd versions.

Classical Music sacd round up 16 - Stravinsky

It's been a while since I wrote the last entry so this week I thought I'd feature one I had recently.

One reason for less entries has been with the pandemic it has been harder for companies to get access to the tapes to reissue titles or host recording sessions for new releases with all the stuff around social distancing.

This release, an 1972  account by the acclaimed American conductor, commentator and composer Leonard Bernstein of Stravinsky's ground breaking The Rite of Spring, so ground-breaking it famously caused a riot at its first performance in Paris.

Coupled with this as it was common place in the lp era for a single work that was just over a side long to sold without any coupling was one of the last Quadraphonic classical titles, the 1977 recording of the Symphony of Psalms which in the fuss around his ballet compositions tends to be ignored.

If that wasn't enough the original lp coupling of the above record, Francis Poulec's Gloria written in 1959-60 is included which makes for a generous 75 minute program of vintage stereo and quadraphonic recordings that have stood the test of time.

Classical sacd round up part eleven - two by Stravinsky

Seeing we are into the new year, we resume the ongoing series around classical music on super audio cd staying very much with one letter-S.
Igor Stravinsky was a Russian composer that really pushed the boundaries of what had been accepted in European classical music, never more so than in his ballet scores of which Le Sacre du Printemps that actually caused a riot in Paris on its début.
The Firebird (L 'Oiseau de fue) was written for the 1910 Paris ballet season and is based around the Russian folk tales of the Firebird and the blessings and curses it brings to its owner.
It was first performed at Opéra de Paris June 25 1910  where it was an instance with public and critics a like.

 For orchestral concerts, a reduced version, the Firebird Suite was devised in 1919 and recordings of both abound.
For a long time the 1959 Mercury recording issued on cd in 1992 and briefly on super audio cd in the early 2000's have been the 'to go' version for recording quality and interpration.
More recently Sweden's BIS label issued this modern stereo and multi-channel  version which comes extremely close to matching that making for a modern replacement in Super Audio (as well as regular cd) with the improvements high resolution digital recording can bring.
It is coupled with orchestrations by Stravinsky of works originally by Chopin,Sibelius and Tchaikovsky.
While during the nineteen-sixties increasingly stereo recordings and matching equipment superseded monaural high fidelity, in the recording studios and research centres people were looking toward  not just sounds from left and right but also how to transmit the ambience of a concert hall into a living room for greater realism.
This lead to "Quadraphonic sound" with two speakers left and right behind you as well as the by now standard front left and right to send that additional sonic signature (and in popular music, effects too).
As was the requirements of that era the results were recorded for lp record and tape and an artist and composer who featured was  Pierre Boulez with the New York Philharmonic conducting the works of Stravinsky.

 From those sessions the British company Dutton Vocalian have re-issued in stereo and quadraphonic two lps in that series Petrushka with David Jacobs on piano originally issued in 1972 and the Pulcinella suite from 1978 on a single Super Audio cd that plays for just under 80 minutes.
These interpretations have stood the test of time and in this disc that also plays on regular cd too, Michael Dutton's mastering from the original analogue tapes affords the best sound these recordings have ever had .
I personally found both of these discs hugely enjoyable for the playing as well as sound.