Chopin 19 Nocturnes - the Connoisseur Society LPs mystery

There are very few things perfect in this world. Moravec’ Chopin Nocturnes recorded in 1965 for the Connoisseur Society must be one of them. You may wonder: so many great pianists having tackled these works in concert and at the studio – in fact everyone! – how can you say that? Well, hearing is believing. I had remained for decades attached to my two Rubinsteins (pre-stereo & stereo), Guiomar Novaes (on Vox – thankfully available still), Samson Francois and Moura Lympany, and a host of others (Harasiewicz also a great favorite) and came very late to the shivers sent down my spine from Moravec. Dr. Duffy, an American friend, sent me his own transfers he made direct from the CS LPs and I was hooked. I acquired the set from ebay and wallowed in the sound of the Boesendorfer Imperial Grand (8 full octaves, 97 keys! manufactured at Busoni’s behest by the German piano makers) and the unbelievably realistic – and atmospheric – recording by E. Alan Silver’s team.

A few years after the set sold handsomely and earned the pianist adulatory reviews and the Connoisseur Society a good turnover, it was withdrawn! Dr. John L. Duffy, is a psychiatrist, whose violon d’Ingres is to make transfers from 78s, piano rolls and LPs. He knew a close friend of Alan Silver’s and had the story – allegedly explaining why the precious LPs were withdrawn.

The set of 19 was recorded in 1965 – the first batch in April, at St Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University, N.Y. and the second with the company’s personnel moving to Vienna, at the Konzerthaus, during November. Now rumor has it that just before moving to the studio set up at St Paul’s, that day in New York, the pianist and the producer had partaken in company of some "elegant wine”, and Moravec found himself a little more disinhibited than his usual.

Rumor has it also that this was the reason he later pressed Alan J. Silver to withdraw the records. This done, the recording continued selling in the form of chrome Dolby C tapes, which were, it seems, stocked in profusion (in those days this format reigned supreme in the market). Then they disappeared completely. A CD transfer done by a commercial company was found unsatisfactory to many collectors who knew the vinyl discs. The unique 30"/sec tape recorded from E. Alan Silver proved a tough nut to crack. Whether this was due to the absence of Connoisseur Society’s hardware to run them on or whether it has been a recording engineer’s decision to trim the sound – the result for some was disappointing. The only way then to get closer to the sound of Silver’s tape would be the commercial LPs, guarded by collectors like the Holy Grail.

Dr Duffy (himself deeply dissatisfied with the available commercial CD transfer) grappled for years with the LPs of the Nocturnes. His latest effort, of May 2009, was entrusted to bearac_reissues for making this treasure available more generally.

We thankfully accepted the offer. We have respected the huge trouble he undertook to restore the magnificent piano sound and so we left tape hiss (and some mild surface noise) intact in order to let the extreme bass and highs free from any interference. We cleaned a few clandestine clicks left on the matrix files and secured some seconds of absolute silence between tracks. If you do get them, it is recommended that the CDs are played at realistically high volume settings to experience the terrific sound reproduced.

P.S. A friend sent a comment to point that Connoisseur Society is still going strong under its founder E. Alan Silver and have issued a set of the Beethoven Sonatas in their usual exalted tradition. The comment was discarded by my mistake and I apologize to its sender. I hasten to repeat his points and thank him. (HL)

A Fantastique revived

I have a thing about those "lesser" names. True, discography spoils the minds of music lovers: we sometimes think like "he's not on CD, so he's not at all". And yet how many great artists were studio-shy, not to mention men like Mitropoulos and Celibidache who enjoyed only live music making, on the podium, with people attending the event, or Volkmar Andre who definitely hated recording (and recordings) calling them "canned music". Well Golschmann wasn't either studio-shy or snubbed recording. And he made quite a few in his time, chiefly when he became permanent principal conductor of the St Louis SO. Very active when still in his native Paris he did not became more "provincialized" staying for over 25 years in Saint Louis; instead he toured the world and got side-work all around it. Why the "lesser" names prologue then? Because somehow I had pigeon-holed Vladimir Golschmann as one of them ... when all his recordings I have prove quite the opposite. This Fantastique was done in Vienna and I hadn't listened to it for ages. I did recently and although I must say I've heard till now a surfeit of Fantastiques, this one bowled me over. And being so well recorder too! The decision to make a transfer was taken on the spot.

Now the bed-fellow I chose for this Berlioz, was another rarity. Franz Litschauer must have recorded the Trittico Botticelliano for the first time on LP. This was an original American Vanguard, pressed on noble and pure vinyl which withstood the passage of six decades and an assortment of not always very gentle styluses. A miracle! And what a lively recording it was. I had actually to tune it down to match the sonics of the Golschmann, otherwise the stereo Fantastique would sound almost dated by the side of this effervescent sound. I hope everybody enjoys this as much as the Berlioz. Of course Respighi wasn't betting on the right horse. Both Mussorgsky and Reger saw that their picture-to-sound metaphors were in their own advantage, basically dealing with rather second tier painters (only Ravel seems to have elevated the trite pictures of that exhibition to Chagall level!) Respighi chose Botticelli - at his own risk: his work in fact appears less poetic and colorful than the paintings from which it draws inspiration. His Botticelli is more a Pre-Raphaelite study on the Italian master than a reproduction of the original. No matter; he remains a great orchestrator and the artists involved in this recording made him proud. MSE Processing makes this a very balanced CD from the sound point of view.

Ivan Moravec

Hot after the heels of Steinberg's Rach 2 and Kaufman's Milhaud cum Poulenc cum Hindemith (the closest Germany came to Les Six, come to think of it!) here comes a glorious twofer: Ivan Moravec in two CDs with the full contents of three Connoisseur Society LPs. Here is the blurb I prepared for the backside of the jewel-box:

IVAN MORAVEC AND THE CELEBRATED CONNOISSEUR SOCIETY RECORDINGS

There are the piano-buffs pianists and there are the pianists' pianists. The second very select category includes most certainly Arturo Benedetti - Michelangeli and Ivan Moravec. They are the pianists to whom their colleagues listen to in awe and get object lessons of the great art. Moravec is very little represented in today's CD catalog and even less so are his legendary recordings for the extinct Connoisseur Society, a short-lived enterprise which graced the catalogs with audiophile recordings of great caliber artists. Moravec recorded for CS (whose founder E. Alan Silver was a personal friend of his) a number of unforgettable discs some of which have surfaced transferred to CD on various labels. Collectors owning or remembering the originals never found these reincarnations up to the standard set by the Connoisseur Society vinyls. We have in the past tried to restore some of the rarest of this series (BRC-2846 with Debussy works). Today we offer a double CD set compiled from three separate LPs and comprising the unforgettable Chopin Preludes Op.28. Moravec recorded again the Preludes for Supraphon in 1976, a glorious recording -- but this one, from 1966 and probably recorded in New York is very special - if nothing else for the remarkable piano sound. Also there is a collection of 5 Mazurkas, the First Scherzo and the beautiful Barcarole. Beethoven is represented by two sonatas recorded in 1967: the terrific Appassionata and the delectable Op.90, together with the set of 32 variations composed at the time the Appassionata was.

Moravec displays a very high intellect and an unparalleled musicality as well as a phenomenal technique (his use of the pedals is legendary among pianists who know that such mastery shows the greatness of a keyboardist more than anything else). His touch, by times ethereal, unreal, reminiscent of a stringed instrument, and then crashing torrentially with immense power, sends the listener to heaven (or hell) and back. He usually recorded on a Boesendorfer Imperial Grand (with its full 8 octaves, suggested to the makers by Busoni) in preference to Steinways. This is an essential part of the magic in Moravec sound. Also part of the magic of these discs was the recording equipment (custom made) used by Connoisseur Society's engineers.

Printed on high quality virgin vinyl the LPs were a treasure-chest of sound finesse and dynamics. Listeners will get very quickly used to slight tape hiss which was left intact in order to transcribe onto CD the full spectrum from deepest bass (impressive Imperial Grand here) to ethereal and transparent highs - exactly the main defect of all commercial transfers till now in the catalog.

The source material of this compilation are three original Connoisseur Society LPs: The 24 Preludes come from CS 1366 [Matrix Nos 1366A & 1366B] recorded in New York City 1966; the remaining Chopin works come from CS 2019 [Matrix Nos 2019A & 2019B] also recorded in New York City 1969; and the Beethoven comes from CS 2000 [Matrix Nos 2000 A-4 & 2000 B-4] and were recorded in New York City 1967 except the 32 Variations which were recorded in Prague by the Connoisseur Society team and machinery. The instrument used in all recordings was a Boesendorfer Imperial Grand.

For the restoration at bearac_reissues Click Repair and Cool Edit programs were used.

I just finished listening the my "test pressings" and I must say I am bowled over by the result. What composers! What a pianist! What a piano! What a set!

Here is a sample for you. A higher quality flac file of the Beethoven 32 Variations on an original theme, in C minor from CD1 of the set. You can download it and know what you are about to receive in the complete set. Enjoy!
YOUR LINK FOR THE DOWNLOAD (copy-paste on browser) IS:
http://rapidshare.com/files/315320041/-_Beethoven_32_Variations_in_C_minor.zip

Welcome to the new site

bearac_reissues have made it to a new site after the demise of Geocities, where, admittedly the interphase was quite amateurish – the best I could do with html language. After a deadline was given by Yahoo! for the closure of their free hosting service, I had to employ a professional guy to set up the site anew. The task was daunting for me and it proved only a bit less so for him too. The catalog had grown to very much near the 400 mark (amazing come to think that this is a private enterprise) and I would be otherwise pleasantly occupied till October 26, 2009, when Geocities would go down.

The result as you can see (at http://www.bearacreissues.com) is rather good. There are still some minor problems Alex and I are addressing now and which should very soon be solved. One is the ID of random comments on the welcome page. I asked him to find a way to show which number it corresponds to so that visitors may click on it – if they find the praises intriguing – and go see what it’s all about.

The contents are now arranged by BRC-*number* order rather than chronologically (as till now, following the availability of a new number in the catalog). Although few new items were produced these last months, I trust the almost 400 strong catalog still has some fine surprises for the serious and knowledgeable collector. Witness our being happily kept very busy all this while.

Still here is an opportunity to announce some interesting additions soon to grace our catalog.

One is William Steinberg’s Rachmaninoff Symphony No.2 in Pittsburgh – a stereo 1961 recording from a Command Classics LP. Collectors will know his mono recording of the 1950s that went on an EMI/Capitol CD. This one hasn’t been transferred on the medium and I found the recording quite like his older one but with airier sound captured at the Syria Mosque, Pittsburgh by the engineers. The EMI/Capitol housed a rendition considered to be a classic, along with Sanderling/Leningrad PO mono recording for DG. I found the later one equally worthy.

Another set will be of violin works played by Louis Kaufman. Milhaud concertos, Honneger and Poulenc Violin & Piano Sonatas (with Artur Balsam), all taken from very early Capitol LPs of the late 1940s and early 1950s. I think they will fill handsomely an 80 minute CDR – and if they don’t there will be a twofer which will be offered for the price of one CD. As Kaufman was a legendary fiddler and a staunch supporter of “moderns” and Milhaud himself conducts the orchestra, this will be a pioneering set well worth resurrection and a place in the catalog.

Keep an eye : I will be announcing new numbers here, so you can get more information about those – although the feature of a scrolling marquee with the newbies has been very successfully incorporated in our welcome page.

P.S. (23.11.09) Both new CDs are now available. The Steinberg Rach 2 was coupled with a very rare 1952 recording of Borodin Symphony 2 by Issay Dobrowen and the French National Radio Orchestra and the Kaufman two LPs went easily into a 70 minute CD remastered lovingly. Go to http://www.bearacreissues.com to read about them.

The younger the better?

The thought came when mentally jotting down some introductory phrases for Corboz' 1972 Hohe Messe appearing this week as BRC-2309. I had the LPs and when CD came along I bought the conductor's newer effort, with the same choral and orchestral forces but different singers and (perhaps) a DDD recording. I was never thrilled by this as I was with the older one and later gave it to a friend for his birthday. I did and still do prefer the 1972 recording: it is warmer, better sung and totally convincing, a marvelous performance that was left out of the CD catalog because a newer one was available. The basic interpretation is not that different; but the earlier recording had an elan rather missing from the later one and the voices were much fresher and involved in the proceedings. Maybe not much, but that small margin that makes a world of difference.

So why is it that so often older recordings are musically more satisfying? Examples there are myriad. From Rubinstein's earlier mono Chopin cycles, to Serkin's earlier Mozart and Beethoven concertos and sonatas, to any Klemperer's earlier mono recording (e.g. his 1957 Beethoven 7 instead of the 1962 remake), to Bruno Walter's Mozart with the NYPO (SONY mono - who knows if it can still be found) against his 1962 Columbia SO remakes, to Callas/De Sabata 1953 Tosca against her stereo version with Pretre, to Karajan's Philharmonia era against his Berlin reign - and so on and so forth.

Is there some conclusion to be drawn from this? Can it just be nostalgia that sends music loving collectors to the older recordings - perhaps their first loves with the music played/sung? Or is it that we should after all logically reverse the saying that the older one gets the wiser he becomes, as regards performers? Because there is no doubt that creative artists do become wiser, deeper and better as they age. No need to bring forth examples. There are some exceptions of course in all art: the younger the better as far as Walton or Rossini are concerned; some others who didn't have time to grow old because they left early this world. Also (mysteriously more often the case with writers) a number of creators remembered for their very first effort and condescended upon by both critics and their public for what came after.

So where is the difference between performing and creative artist? Performers need bodily and mental agility, a quickness of grasp for the text to be rendered, also a sense of enjoyment in what they do and a whiff of self consciousness in the display of their prowess. What as they grow older? Apart from losing their sveltezza they become self conscious (adulation plays a part) in a different way: they pride themselves for "knowing better" than the composer; they will shed light on "hidden" meanings, aspects, facets of the work; they will invariably try to cover their loss of "schutzpah" or "duente" lingering, catching their breath here and there, trying to pass it as an interpretational point/notion. Yeah? Certainly no.

Interpreters must be fit. Old guys (and girls) can't be. Creators don't need fitness, they don't perform - theirs is another class of work. They thrive as they grow older; and like a good wine they mature while interpreters disintegrate.

Critics too: they need age. Just don't read any review by anyone who's not well past his 50th birthday. They are dogmatic, absolute and dismissive of anything they haven't yet encountered in their way... and they have a long way to go and lots of things to encounter.

That perhaps explains why record buyers will prefer older recordings - not to mention performers of an older era. Because the performer's age is one thing. The relevance of the time of a recording with the world to which most music listened to today belongs is another. And that's another subject we might take up sometime later.

Thinning down my collection

Appraising one’s records over the years brings a bulimic collector to the point where he has to restrain his diet to the essential or burst. Essential being something else for me and something else for you. Of course. Then let me see: which are mine. Look at the batches of repeated items on your shelves: how many Eroicas, how many Middle and Last quartets, how many Bruckner 7ths are there. Pick the best of them all! No? Refuse to?

Then pick the worse.

In a bunch of bests there is at least one that’s worst. It’ s a law of nature. Thrice happy harem owners must face the same dilema. Which for now – which for never again. Say you have to select at gunpoint. Your life or your worse Eroica ever. Don’t start chanting «all have something to say in such a work». So pick one, the oldest, the scratchiest, noisest, impossible to hear again. Vocally dated, orchestrally shallow, uninvolving, chorally compromised by a small body of singers who try too hard and never ever take off with the music, blah blah blah... who’s to blame. But pick that one bedeviling your nights with economical reappraisals of what you might have gotten in its place for the amount you paid for it.

Now. Which Rosenkavalier you could do without. Which Verdi Requiem? Which Eroicas? Think on them once equals listen briefly through your mind’s ear and give the verdict.

I remember gnashing my teeth when I read (surprised - so innocent was I then…) Gramophone’s dismissal of Verdi Requiem with Reiner/VPO – my best. “A non starter I am afraid” wrote the sage; and my heart stopped. A non starter?

Yes, boy. There was the glorious EMI Giulini with the Philharmonia, with Schwartzkopf, Gedda, Ludwig, Giaourov and the Philharmonia Chorus directed by Wilhelm Pitz. How to resist? A pure English bred recording that stood for everything the English public (or Gramophone’s reviewers) stood for – always. I swallowed my shattered pride as a listener. I almost swallowed it completely so went out and got the EMI. And even thought I liked it. For some time. Proud owner of a perennial classic if there was one. Who wouldn’t be?

Then after years I listened again to my fallen from grace non-starter. But years had passed, I had given Gramophone up for many reasons (explained earlier below) and I was a free man – a free listener.

What a recording!

Point by point it stands head over shoulders above the Giulini. It is better conducted, it is better played, it is better sung AND it is better recorded.

A non-starter indeed. How deaf can you be?

Schwarzkopf totally out of her depth – the less Italian sounding soprano that ever sang the Requiem (she even DID Liu in a hapless – Legge produced! – Turandot otherwise graced by Maria Callas and Eugenio Fernandi!). Totally unconvincing. AND unpleasant. Scratch.

Then, Christa Ludwig – an alto alter ego to Mme Schwarzkopf: cold and uninvolving, as always singinging vowels only.

Then Gedda – well, a Swede against Decca’s other Swede… Bjoerling! Who would have thought? Next he should tackle Radames, poor Nicolai. Scratch.

And then the Bulgarian Giaourov, insensitive and imposing. The reviewer likedhimalot.

Then measure the Philharmonia with the VPO. Smile.

Then measure Giulini with Reiner. Oh my!

Are all Italians Toscaninis, De Sabatas, Serafins? I don’t think so. Guilini is one of the most overrated conductors of last century. A man with very good posts and contracts, replaced Klemperer for a Don Giovanni that remains a classic and was Our Man in Italy for the Requiem when Legge decided he had to get one for EMI.

Then listen to the EMI recording. Messy, congested. Go to the DECCA. Sofiensaal or Grosses Musikvereinsaal – whichever. And the orchestra, the sections, the instrumentalists, their sound – brass, percussion, strings, woodwind, the works. Crystal clear. Tender, sensitive, shrieking in terror or pounding thunderbolts on the head of the damned. And then…. Leontyne Price, a dream, Rosalind Elias, a stunner, Jussi Bjoerling, a legendary voice giving the most heart-rending Ingemisco ever recorded. And Tozzi – a true Italian basso who can also SING.

A non starter my foot. For, how would EMI sell, and how would Gramophone get their adds and survive? And how would the public be aware that Britain still ruled the waives?

Analogue or digital?

Mind boggling, isn’it. I mean all that fuss in the specialized press about digital versus analogue and vice versa. I’ve been an ardent digitalian myself, having replaced the bulk of my LPs collection with their CD reissues. And yet… and yet. For one thing there is a proposition I’ve never happened to see aired by the specialists: sound is analogue, right? In a modern recording today (digital of course) voices are analogue, musical instruments are analogue, ambient sound in the recording venue is analogue; even mikes feeding the digital monster are analogue. So where does digital enter in real life? In storing. Not reproduction. Reproduction reverts to analogue through your amp and loudspeakers. Right? And your ears are analogously transmitting sound into your head. So analogue is the word, analogue is the real situation here. As it usually happens with technical people (who are seldom musical too) admiration and hype of a new medium (or method) is lopsided. The two work together. Because analogue – as a means of sound storage – proved disastrous. Here digital wins hand down. Yes, LPs were dearer things to hold in your hand, to look and to read on their backside. And the LP itself, all alive with its grooves giving a visual idea of what was on it, was nicer to look at too. But then, to think of all these old LPs, getting worse year after year, no matter how much attention you paid to their handling and storing… sad indeed. Let’s recapitulate. Analogue for recording and listening – will you or won’t you. And digital for the safe storage. Yep. That’s it. All else is gaslight, as that horrible man said. (And then, no matter how high tech decks, amps & speakers you listen with, reproduction - digital or analogue - is reproduction, i.e. a substitute for the real thing.)