E. Power Biggs-Bach Organ Favorites, Vol. 5. Flentrop organ,
Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard. Columbia MQ 31424, SQ, $ 6.98.
I played this quadraphonic disc late last summer on the latest "3-chip" SQ logic decoder, especially installed in my system at the time. The results were, I must admit, impressive. The new decoder is a clear improvement in the continuing sophistication of the matrixing system.
The biggest fault of any matrix arrangement, with or without logic, is a variable overlap of signal in the room sound aspect of the recording which tends to create a curious standing-wave "hump" of sound overhead, in the middle, a four-way mono component that does not belong there and, for a careful ear, is a real distraction and distortion. In the earliest matrix decoding this effect was unpleasantly noticeable. With increasing sophistication, first in straight matrix circuitry, then with the extra aid of logic, that central hump of sound has, so to speak, been gradually reduced, flattened and spread out, and the overall quadraphonic effect has been correspondingly improved.
I still can hear some of it via this latest decoding from CBS, though its presence depends in part on which recording you play. But it has definitely been reduced to a new "low" and the sound in four channels is correspondingly much better. Even in older SQ-type records. No logic "pumping," audible jumps from back to front and the like, either. In this big organ recording, the sound is dramatically good, perhaps because of the nature of organ sound in a reverberant space, already so gloriously mixed-up that a sonic "hump" would have trouble maintaining itself! Without any question, the RCA-type Quadradisc ("discrete") can do a still better job, sound for sound, in this particular facet of quadraphonic reproduction. There simply is no argument on that score. There is no hump. The reverb is reproduced naturally as a real space. That superiority is at a multiple price which we are still all of us evaluating-secondary problems of expense, equipment availability, broadcasting, disc cutting at slow speed, and the direct problems of lowered levels, necessary tonal adjustments, the residue of distortion and so on. But so long as the "discrete" disc can give us humpless four-way sound, and so long as the matrix disc decoders continue to improve in their subtlety, the matrix-discrete arguments will go happily forward.
More power to them.
(Biggs? He is always at his best when he has a really good organ to play. This modern instrument is his own, at home base; he plays it with gusto and appreciation. Good Bach, well registered and beautifully recorded.)
Performance: B, Sound: B
Beethoven's Greatest Hits. (Ode to Joy, parts of Fifth Symphony, Moonlight Sonata, etc, etc.) Assorted CBS orchestras, soloists ... Columbia MQ 32056, SQ, $6.95.
The point to be made concerning this potpourri of reissues in SQ is that quadraphonic recordings-any system-can be constructed very nicely out of older catalogue items going back a good many years. Columbia, if I am right, has been doing all its classical in 8 track for umpteen years and presumably other majors have too, at least on this side of the Atlantic ditch. A four-way mix-down, brand new in effect, can be made just as readily as the conventional two-way mix-down. That is what we have here, from the Philharmonic, the Philadelphia (pre-RCA), Philippe Entremont, the Morman Tabernacle Choir. It's not a Beethoven disc for dedicated Beethoven listeners but it is an excellent example, which happens to be in the SQ matrix format, of the kind of new-type recording which can be made from thousands and thousands of older tapes which were not specifically intended for quadraphonic sound.
The only question, I think, is--do these constitute "reprocessed" quadraphonic? Not to my opinion. The "reprocessed" stereo disc is a mono original, one channel, which has been made into two, a mix-UP. No pun intended; some of them are excellent. This SQ disc is simply a new mix-DOWN. There are dozens of them and soon will he hundreds.
Brahms: The Complete String Quartets (Op. 51, Nos. 1, 2; Op. 67). The Cleveland Quartet. RCA VCS 7102, 2 discs, stereo, $11.96.
It had been a long time since I had heard these three quartets--they have not been very stylish in recent years.
But now, with the supposed "Romantic revival," they are back and, of course, high time if we are to have any music at all for plain old string quartet, unamplified! But I find them, for my somewhat ancient ear, very strange performances of familiar music. Definitely, of a new generation with a new point of view.
The Brahms chamber music is tough stuff, extremely strong minded, rigorous, compact, dedicated, and nowhere more than in the quartets. They were far more modern, at the time, than was then conceded-especially by the Wagnerian school of German music, which disapproved of virtually any music that made use of traditional formats and structures. As Brahms had it, the great shadow of Beethoven, looming ominously, spurred him to ever greater intensity. The great performances of the early 20th century maintained this tradition as a matter of course. I very well remember these quartets as the scratchiest, hardest-worked pieces in the repertory-the strings seemed almost hoarse with the sheer effort of projection and I always felt that Brahms had outdone the medium itself-these were symphonies, concerti, at least in their intensity, trying to get through the small voices of the quartet.
Now what? The Cleveland Quartet is young, long haired, bearded, and like many younger people, honest in their convictions; they have worked out their own feelings about this music and to heck with traditional ways of play.
That guarantees interest. Instead of that rigorous, almost hard intensity I remember, here we find what I can best call a gentle approach. Gentle--for Brahms! Crazy. The man was possessed of a demon, a puritan conscience, to drive him forward; his marvelous sense for melody was the foil that kept drama alive. And yet these people play him gently. No better word for it.
Not really good for Brahms. There is no long line, no sustained shape; all is expressive, pulsating, emotional non-drive. It is a Baroque sound in Romantic guise, the melodies almost lost in their accompaniments, the counterpoints unemphasized when two melodies play at once-which is often and should be emphatic in any 19th century music. And the rigorous climaxes, the returns of major ideas, are treated in pleasantly casual fashion, rather than as great fulfillments of high-level formal construction. Nope--this isn't the old Brahms. It's a sort of flower-child version.
A criticism? Only in that some aspects of the music are unrealized. The solo melodies are very seldom given the prominence they need. The first violin, always the leader, is almost apologetically modest. The super-intense moments, not set off by the melodic parts, aren't really intense, and so on. My feeling is that the very honesty of these interpretations is both their best quality and their main fault. Most young quartet players slavishly imitate the Budapest Quartet (or the local conservatory faculty quartet-which usually has done the same) and so acquire a technically correct interpretation that sounds right and is pure fake-until they grow into it for themselves. I think this is the better way, by far.
The fact is, though, that these young people haven't really found Brahms yet. When they do, they'll be terrific. In their next recording.
Performance: B, Sound: B
Liszt: Mountain Symphony; Malediction for Piano and Orch.; La Lugbre Gondola. Alfred Brendel, piano; Vienna Symphony, Gielen; Music for Westchester Symphony Orch., Landau. Vox Turnabout TV-S 34518, stereo, $12.98.
Vox's Turnabout series, the low-priced offering, is an intelligently produced series combining relevant recordings that are both old and new. The piano solo about the lugubrious gondola here, for instance, is simulated stereo, the rest "real" stereo--I wouldn't have noticed the difference. The excellent Austrian pianist Alfred Brendel is the musical binding force along with old man Liszt himself, represented here in early, middle and late music.
The big symphonic poem subtitled Ce qu'on entend sur la Montagne (What one hears on the mountain) remains a sprawling mood work of a sort still too corny sounding for our sophisticated ears, though it was-for the revolutionary ears of 1848--undoubtedly quite sensational. I'd say that the Westchester-based orchestra under Landau does a remarkably good job with it, all things considered. The Malediction, very rarely heard music, is another of those lugubrious Liszt pieces that are often his best-it isn't exactly easy listening, either, but makes its dismal points in the gloomiest fashion. The funereal gondola is a late Liszt piano piece, one of those that now appears as advanced experiment in atonality. Extraordinary for its day and once again it marks Liszt as the first of the German modernists, far ahead of the much later Richard Strauss in harmonic terms.
Performances: A, Sound: B
Liszt: Piano Concertos (No. 1 in E Flat; No. 2 in A). Ivan Davis; Royal Philharmonic, Edward Downes. London SPC 21081, stereo, $5.98.
London's Phase Four recording--no connection with quadraphonic--is well known for liberal microphoning for advanced effects. Here, the projection of the piano solo is very liberal, at the expense of the orchestra. OK; so Liszt was a pianist and so is our star, Ivan Davis. Even so, the music is not well served by being treated as solo piano music, close-up. Even though, admittedly, you can also hear the orchestra.
Davis is a fantastic technician and a solid musician. Thus his Lisztian pyrotechnics are just that, tossed off as though they were no problem at all, which indeed they aren't. But the whole thing is a bit on the cool side (in an old fashioned sense). An excellent and workmanlike set of performances, impeccable, but never magical. Somehow, Liszt himself must have thought they were magical. Otherwise he could not have composed such floridly Romantic stuff! Some performers can still make the stuff sound like magic, but it isn't easy these days.
The first of the concerti is the familiar Triangle, played to death a generation ago and recently given a healthy amount of rest. The second, like the "other" Tchaikovsky concerto (and part of a third), is less familiar because less immediate in appeal. This one is built on an often-repeated series of chords that tend to drive you nuts after awhile. Davis does commendable things in postponing that particular happening.
He doesn't try to say-see, listen, there's that set of chords again! Too many pianists do.
Mr. Downes and the orchestra do a good job but the focus is on the piano, especially in the second of the two works.
Performances: B, Sound: B
William Mayer: Brass Quintet; Miniatures; Two News Items; Khartoum.
Dominick Argento: Letters from Composers. Catherine Rowe, sop., Vern Sutton, ten., Jeffrey Van, guitar; Iowa Brass Quintet et al. CRI CD 291, stereo, $5.95.
CRI (Composers Recordings, Inc.) continues to pour out its LPs of contemporary music, far beyond any quantity we can review short of dropping Bach, Beethoven and Brahms for ever.
So I sample one every so often--it's always interesting. But I end up hearing double, mostly. Never know what's coming next, nor what sort of musical bedfellows will be plunged together on the one LP. CRI runs a prepaid operation, so to speak, managed largely by composers and musicians themselves, financed by major foundations, and thus nobody has to be "commercial" if he doesn't want to. Sometimes this is good. Sometimes it means you can ignore your audience. Is that good? A question.
This disc, like many, is both difficult and interesting. For one thing, it's funny. William Mayer is a (relatively) conservative composer who has a real quirk for offbeat humor, even if its inspiration can be traced, say, to Stravinsky's Histoire du Soldat way back in 1918. The Brass Quintet is a very spunky piece that spits in your face the instant you put it on. Rather nice.
The six Miniatures are for spunky soprano, who squeaks, sings, sputters and talks her way through satirical little texts à la Dorothy Parker. One of the News Items is entitled "Hastily Formed Contemporary Music Ensemble Reveals Origins." That's Mayer for you. Not exactly of the new neo Romantic generation.
Is it the name which makes me sense an Italianate intensity in Dominick Argento's settings of actual letters by such diverse composers as Chopin, Mozart, Debussy, Puccini? Very lyric, for the tenor, and passionate too. Excellent guitar accompaniment. But I was somehow confused to hear Chopin, Mozart, then Debussy all "speaking the same language"; it didn't seem quite convincing. Not even for Puccini. I kept hearing Mr. Argento, even when he quoted a bit of actual Schubert in Schubert's letter. The seven letters take up the whole of side 2, with Mayer occupying side 1.
Performances: B, Sound: B
Handel's Overtures. English Chamber Orch., Leppard. Philips 6599 053, stereo, $6.98.
Imagine it-all these weird Handel names. You've heard the Overture to "Messiah" no doubt and maybe " Israel in Egypt"; you might know a few Handel opera names too--"Alcina," perhaps. But here we have a raft of total unknowns, and I'll omit the quotes just to get them down more easily: Lotario, Admeto, Orlando, Poro, Partenope, Ottone! Every overture is the take-off point for an evening-long opera and there are plenty of others available, in case they want to make a Volume 2, or 3.
Superb music. Needless to say. The trouble with Handel has always been that he wrote too much, and people wanted to hear "Messiah" or the Water Musick. So, like some bumper wheat crop, the rest of Handel has been stored away unused. These overtures are mostly what we later on have called Baroque suites, a splendid, stately introduction with the well-known dotted rhythm, ta-dum, ta-dum, followed by fast music and very often several additional dances, slow and fast, no doubt to get the people seated and ready for serious matters on the stage. The English Chamber Orchestra has achieved 95 percent spontaneity in playing the dotted rhythm the way it must be played-short, snappy-instead of as it is written down. Double dotting, we often call it. They really do the job as though it were taken for granted, where most orchestras still sound surprised and annoyed, not really believing their conductors who tell them, don't play it the way you see it on the page, play it this way.
Better play one side at a time. It wasn't Handel's intention to line these overtures up in a row, one after the other, after all.
Performances: B+, Sound: B+
(Audio magazine, Nov. 1973; Edward Tatnall Canby)
More music articles and reviews from AUDIO magazine.
Also see:
Classical Record Reviews (Jan. 1974)
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