by Edward Tatnall Canby
Piano Schubert
Schubert: The Complete Piano Sonatas, Vols. 1-4 (20 Sonatas). Paul Badura-Skoda. RCA Victrola VICS 6128, 29, 30, 31, (3 discs ea.), $8.94 ea.
There are times when a reviewer musician just wishes all the other records would go away. One performance, one set of performances, is so moving, so immense, the composer himself so awesomely present in the recreation that to play any other records at all means sacrilege. That's the reaction I had on several evenings, as these volumes came in from RCA. So this topmost kind of music comes to us half price! So much the better. Oddly enough, a minority of listeners here gets a real break over the majority who want show tunes, popular concerti, opera specials and piano celebrities--and must pay high. We get Schubert cheap thanks to the inexorable law of supply and demand in reverse. Sometimes it's nice to be a minority.
The world of Schubert is both very special and curiously universal, because the most difficult thing about his music is its total modesty and simplicity in outward appearance. The most haunting, incredible Schubert moments come in the easiest, most elementary tunes and harmonies, even from a single note--like the marvelous off-scale note in the A Major Sonata's little final tune, that converts a gentle melody into a soul-piercing bit of wistfulness. (Schubert knew it was good; he brings it back time after time.) Anybody with a reasonably able Western ear for our conventional scale, chords, tunes, can fall for the Schubert effects. Once fallen, you will not recover, and your life will be the deeper in perspective.
Can a man really do these things? Then man as a whole can't be quite as bad as he often seems these days. That's the message.
Paul Badura-Skoda will be remembered by older record buyers as one of Westminster's original Viennese finds, back in the first months of LP. He and Georg Demus (also now on Victrola) played fabulous Schubert on two pianos or one piano four hands.
Badura-Skoda, as I remember, didn't impress our toughened local music critics when he toured over here. He is one of those new pianists who are temperamentally better suited to recording than to the high voltage international concert-tour circuit. Anathema to the resident music critic (to some of them, anyhow), but Glenn Gould, another one, has survived handily with no concerts at all. So will B-S, and RCA has been wise to pick up this option on such a large scale--all the piano sonatas of Schubert.
It's not only the listeners who react, or don't react, to the Schubert language.
Many top rank pianists, perfectly able to play the Schubert notes, nevertheless seem not really to understand what they are playing. Their ears simply do not tune to the Schubert harmonic language. Big names. Rudolf Serkin, Artur Rubinstein, for instance-as I hear them, anyhow. They miss what thousands of non-musicians can hear with ease, when somebody like Badura-Skoda spells it out in notes.
He hears it all and, moreover, comes from Vienna where Schubert is indigenous. Enough said. If indirect proof were needed, there are the pathetically numerous unfinished Sonata movements-Schubert had a bad habit of leaving works incomplete at the point where (a) either he got stuck or (b), much more often, the rest seemed obvious enough and he'd come back later to do the copying-out. He never did. Badura-Skoda has completed a number of these movements, and if you can tell where he begins and Schubert ends, you are a genius yourself. It is possible, you see. If you know the idiom, know Schubert and his working methods, his circumstances at the time, other works of similar import, you can deduce 95 percent of what he inevitably would have done, given a bit better organization of his work schedule! Haven't we all left our own unfinished projects in the same fashion? Half-done circuit sketches (you audio engineers), bread-board mock-ups that never quite made it to the nearest wall plug, and so on. Will somebody finish up your projects for you as beautifully (assuming you are a genius) as Badura-Skoda has done up Schubert's?
Performances: A, Sound: B+
Franz Schubert. (Impromptus Nos. 1-4; Moments Musicau Nos. 1-6.) Andor Foldes. EMI Electrola C 063 29037, stereo (Eur. edition). These little Schubert works are not on the scale of the Sonatas, and a less dynamic approach to them in the playing is to be taken for granted. Yet there is a difference in substance, even so, between the Foldes Schubert and that of Badura-Skoda in the Sonatas.
Foldes is a pianistic genius of top rank, not a specialist in Schubert though, a Hungarian and central European, Schubert is a normal part of his repertoire. This disc, sent to me from Europe, says just that in wonderfully clear musical terms. There is no possible fault to be found in the performance--the finger work, the tempi, the phrasing and dynamics, are all perfection. Even the piano sound is steadier and better in the audio than the very convincing sound of the Badura-Skoda piano. And yet, there is an objectivity, a kind of involvement which says, quite in all truth-I can play this music, too, this utterly simple music, along with the fiendish complexities of my fellow-Hungarian Bartók, the biggest Beethovens ... and so on.
It is but the truth! Nor is there any lack of force. Where these works should be loud and muscular, they are that and more. Everything is right. Everything is there, except the sense of involvement in Schubert himself. Rather, I feel, this is involvement in Schubert piano music and the will to create a perfect performance in piano terms.
I enjoyed every piano note of it, you may be sure. But Badura-Skoda carried me away. For Schubert is his life, and the piano the transmission medium.
Performance: A, Sound: A
Boulez conducts Stravinsky Petrouchka. New York Philharmonic. Columbia MQ 31076, (SQ4), $6.98.
You have a tentative four-channel set-up and an SQ decoder? Not sure really whether it makes enough difference? Well, here's your test.
First, play a whole batch of standard stereo discs through the SQ decoder.
Do it for days on end. You'll get some superb effects, in all sorts of variations. So different, from one disc to the next, that you'll think, surely, an SQ disc isn't going to be that different, among all these regular stereo discs via SQ decoder.
Then play this one. You'll see. It is different. Not necessarily because you can hear the piccolo in the right rear and the double bassoon left front. Not even because of greater separation in any specific way at all. What you do hear is simply a more vivid, alive sense of space and immediacy than anything you have heard via SQ decoder (or any other) and those two-channel stereo discs. That's the story. An increase of information for the ears.
Musically, this version is interesting because it is the opulently scored 1911 original; most recordings are of the revised version done in the 1940s. Hard to pin down details minus a score, but you will, somehow, hear many odd and vaguely new instrumental effects you hadn't noticed before, though the notes are the same.
The Boulez performance is unusual, parts of it surprisingly slow, though always alive. Occasionally the Philharmonic musicians are surprised too--they get minutely out of time quite frequently. Nothing to bother you. All in all, an absorbingly interesting Petrouchka.
Performance: B+, Sound: B+
Glazunov: Raymonda Suite. Bolshoi Theater Orch., Svetlanov. Melodiya-Angel SR-40172, stereo, $ 5.98.
Adam: Giselle (complete ballet). Bolshoi Theater Orch., Zuraitis. Melodiya-Angel SRB-4118 (2 discs), stereo, $11.96.
No reissue is involved here—brand-new stuff, and the Russian sound is well up to the higher pricing, as is the remarkably authoritative Russian-style performing. Curious how the Soviet musicians somehow manage to avoid the tired and/or blasé feeling that creeps into so much Western recording of such standard and/or old fashioned works! The sound here is as though the performers had but this one chance-in-a-lifetime to get down their art on discs, which just might be the actual answer. We have long since reached the stage of over-production in our recording, notably in the popular and semi pop areas of "classical" music.
The Russian ballet sound matches the Russian ballet. Hefty, strong, muscular, yet of an extraordinary perfection, too, like the dancing of the Russian men, whose legs seem somehow a bit too thick, or the ladies, who are for the most part less than ethereal in shape! In terms of audio, the graininess in the louder volume levels that still lingered on in most Soviet recordings until recently (un-compliant cutting heads?) is just about gone and the whopping big, fat sound is better than ever. One curious anachronism: solo and solo ensemble passages within the orchestral music-solo fiddle, or solo cello and harp, for instance-are recorded close-up and loud, as of c. 1940 in the West. Probably there is no actual compression of signal, but the close-up effect does tend to throw dynamic balance out of whack. We here tend to put the solos off in orchestral space, for a "natural" dynamic balance, even at the risk of quite low levels, once thought dangerous. Quiet tape (and disc) now makes them acceptable.
Performances: A, Sound: B+
High School Third Annual L.M.E.A. District VI Senior Honor Band 1971-72. Dr. Charles A. Wiley, conductor. RPC (custom pressed), stereo. (Recorded Publications Co., Camden, N.J. 08105.)
Interesting. This professionally got up record of a champ high school band in Louisiana was taped by an AUDIO reader on a TEAC 7030 after some correspondence with me concerning my article of awhile back on the usefulness of that type of "intermediate" tape deck. I am happy to report that he got helpful response from the TEAC factory service depot in the New York region-hopefully without mentioning AUDIO magazine. (A similar good report on KLH response has recently come in to me. A strictly anonymous request for info.) Always nice to know that our audio products are backed by this kind of aid and comfort.
Big band here, in a remarkably dead acoustic-but is it the mic set-up? Convenient picture shows all. Two E-V 1711 electret omnis for left and right, set up at either end of the big semicircle of players, only a few feet out from the nearest performers, and quite widely separated. To fill in the center, they used an E-V cardioid 1751 in front of the conductor and low down-it is below the level of his head. Advent's Dolby noise reduction unit received channels one and two and the center mic went through a Shure M68FC mixer into both LINE inputs on the Advent. "We miked close, hoping for good definition," the man says. A competitor apparently had different ideas, using two AKGs in the air above the conductor and behind, with only a yard-plus separation. "His tapes are very vague, with little or no separation and presence," says our friend.
Well, my reaction is that if I were there, I would set up halfway between these two gents. Separation and definition are just fine, but you need over-all ensemble feeling and, even more, an enveloping room sound, if your music is to sound alive and well as played back in the living room. Also, close-up mic setting tends to exaggerate all sorts of faults that do not ever reach the live audience. Even the Philharmonic's strings won't blend at a distance of a few feet. Evidently the other man thought our friend's mic placement "made the band sound bad"--if so, it was this proximity exaggeration he was talking about. It is always a danger.
On the other hand, three or four feet separation for a large band, spread out widely on a stage, is not enough, in any sort of acoustics. Like stereo speakers mounted in a single cabinet at the center of a wall. Divide your semicircle width into quarters, try the miss at the quarter and three-quarter points. That's a good rule to begin with. Wider apart if you can get away with it, with or without center channel and/or accent. (This assumes the semipro norm of two stereo tape channels, not three or more as in pro recording on wide tape.) And back far enough for a balance between separation/ clarity and room sound-there's always a place where the two jump into a kind of focus, if you have the ear to spot it.
This Band plays very competently (even with close miss!) but the sound, definitely separated and with good middle, is nevertheless too lifeless for my taste. Maybe the hall itself wouldn't allow anything better. How about some professional reverb, then, in the processing? The music? Mostly ugh.
Band competition music is not for the general listener, let me tell you. I liked the Holst "A Moorside Suite," a rather lush Impressionism. P.S. They don't even mention the music anywhere on the jacket, front or back! Only on the label. That shows.
Performance: Prizewinning, Sound: B
Julian & John. (Julian Bream, John Williams, Guitars.) RCA LSC 3257, stereo, $5.98.
Two famed guitar stars get together here for a two-guitar "classical" recital of some interest, ranging from an olde Englishe suite (Lawes) through, on side 1, works by two other guitarists of the early 19th century who also played together, Sor and Carulli, and on side 2 a brace of the inevitable Spanish works--Albeniz, Granados, Falla and Ravel. All but the Sor and Carulli are transcriptions for the two instruments.
It's a nice sound, one player on each side and the two guitars clearly differentiated (Williams' is more wiry in tone); the extraneous twangs and squeaks of the instruments, incidental to the playing, are so real that you jump. But on the whole it is less than fiery, most of the music relatively on the sedate side-considering what finger talent is available here. I really didn't think the Spanish playing anywhere near sultry enough. Rather too AngloSaxon. But these are relative words, judging on a very high level. Any old guitar player, even a rock player, will find the sounds very interesting.
Performances: B, Sound: B +
Spohr: Three Sonates Concertantes for Harp and Violin. Susann McDonald, harp, Louis Kaufman, violin. Orion ORS 7262, stereo, $ 5.98.
Spohr was a famed violin genius and composer in Beethoven's time, the early 19th century, universally known then (ten symphonies, 34 quartets, eleven operas ...) but later totally put aside. Our present ears have changed--he was no Beethoven but, on the other hand, he was a solid and fluent craftsman of beautifully styled music in the middle-Beethoven manner. It goes down most pleasantly today as, shall we say, foreword background music.
These three concerto-like sonatas were composed for Spohr's wife, a harpist, and himself. The harp has the main burden-husband Spohr played along relatively unobtrusively most of the time. Susann McDonald makes an excellent Mrs. Spohr here--she is a forthright, solid harpist with a fine sense of rhythm and harmony, never blurring her chords where they must be unblurred; my only mild criticism is that she doesn't really allow her "husband," the veteran violinist Louis Kaufman, to have his own say when he has the tune and she is plunking accompaniment chords. She stays loud. As for him, his technique is a bit worn at the edges today and the notes sometimes slur, but his musicianship and understanding are so fine that in two minutes you forget, and the sense comes alive. I found this music, all for the same two instruments, anything but monotonous--instead, it grows on you, as the sound of the two becomes familiar. A good record, and a lovely background.
Performances: B+, Sound: B
(Audio magazine, Jun. 1972; Edward Tatnall Canby)
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