LIVING IN THE PRESENCE

By the time I joined Mercury Recording Corp. in 1969, the "gold en era" of Living Presence recording had passed. The meticulous work of Wilma Cozart Fine, Robert Fine, and Harold Lawrence had ended in the mid-'60s, and Mercury, through its acquisition by North American Phil ips, was on its way to becoming essentially a distribution company for product generated by Philips in Europe.

During that golden era, Bob Fine was the engineer in charge, and his wife, Wilma Cozart Fine, was Mercury's recording director. Their approach to recording was both simple and demanding. Once the appropriate hall had been chosen, three omni-direction al microphones were very carefully deployed in a left/center/right array across the front of the musical ensemble. In the early years, the outputs from these mikes were fed, with no further signal processing or gain manipulation, to three tracks on half-inch tape.

Beginning in 1961, they were recorded to three magnetic tracks on 35-mm film. After subsequent editing of the master, all lacquer disc transfers for stereo LP production were cut directly from the three-track master sources, with the middle track split equally between left and right. This activity was carried out at Fine Recording Co. in New York, using the same equipment on which the recordings had originally been made.

When the Mercury studios took over the masters during the mid-'60s, two-track transfers were made and used for cutting disc masters. This was, of course, standard procedure in the industry at the time. During the early '70s, Dolby transfers were made to re move most of the noise generated in this extra step.

The Mercury masters were kept under archival storage conditions at the New York studios on West 57th Street until the studios were closed. All original and working masters were then sent to Holland. Prior to this, however, one last set of transfers from three to two tracks was made and sent to Phil ips for producing the Mercury Golden Import series, which came out in the mid-'70s. Although the pressing quality was excellent, this later series of records was not able to displace in the minds and hearts of aficionados the early U. S. releases that had been supervised by the original recording and production team.

========

As with the first CD reissues from Everest, the first batch from Mercury is cause for music lovers to rejoice.

========

It had been a while, then, since any one from the original team had been involved in transferring the originals. However, after an unsatisfactory CD release a few years ago taken from an earlier transfer, PolyGram, now the parent company of Mercury, decided that any further transfer activities should be entrusted to someone who truly knew what had to be done. That person was Wilma Cozart Fine, and she has been working on the project for about two years.

As with the Everest CD reissues I discussed in the January 1990 issue, the first batch of Mercury Living Presence CDs is cause for music lovers to rejoice. I am sure that many strategies were considered, including the digital removal of the very slight tape hiss in these recordings. The strategy chosen was straightforward and remarkably like the original method of disc transfer. Wilma Cozart Fine had kept the original Westrex mixer and film dubber in mothballs for years. These were re conditioned, tube amplifiers and all, and the original equalization curves were painstakingly determined. This array of '60s audio technology was connected to the latest analog-to-digital conversion technology, and digital transfers to the Sony 1630 format were made for Compact Disc mastering and production.

above: Dennis Lake, mastering engineer, and Wilma Cozart Fine

The first 10 CD releases are now available, with more to come on a regular basis. There were about 250 al bums in the original Living Presence series, so there is much to choose from. Highlights from the current set include:

Liszt: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2; solo piano works. Byron Janis, piano, with Kiril Kondrashin conducting the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra and Gennady Rozhdestvensky con ducting the Moscow Radio Symphony (Mercury 432 002-2).

Ibert: Escales; Ravel: Rapsodie Espagnole, Alborada del Gracioso, La Valse, Le Tombeau de Couperin, and Pavane. Paul Paray conducts the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (432 003-2).

Hanson: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2; Song of Democracy. Howard Hanson conducting the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra and the Eastman School of Music Chorale (432 008-2).

Respighi: The Birds, Brazilian Impressions, Pines of Rome, and Fountains of Rome. Antal Dorati conducting the London and Minneapolis Symphony Orchestras (432 007-2).

Dvorak: Cello Concerto in B Minor; Bruch: Kol Nidrei; Tchaikovsky: Rococo Variations. Janos Starker, cello, and Dorati conducting the London Sym phony Orchestra (432 001-2).

Other releases include works by Prokofiev, Mussorgsky, Kodaly, Bartok, Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg.

Those who know the originals will notice that these new releases are longer in playing time; most are more than one hour. Albums have been combined or augmented with extra program material, as appropriate, and the original cover art of the main source albums has been retained. The liner notes are likewise taken from the originals.

Having heard the original tape and film sources for many of these re leases, albeit many years ago, I am not the least surprised by the sound of the CDs. It is as accurate as I can imagine, and it reinforces my view of the Compact Disc as a medium of archival quality for the consumer. It is interesting to read in the September/October 1990 issue of The Absolute Sound that a group of reviewers from that publication was invited to the PolyGram tape studios in Edison, N.J., to audition the new CDs in an NB comparison with the analog sources. Most of the reviewers were unable to consistently tell which was which, although this does not necessarily rule out the possibility that, under more stringent monitoring conditions, differences might have been consistently audible.

I cannot begin to count the number of people who, over the last seven years since the introduction of CD technology, have stated their desires for a CD reissue of Howard Hanson with the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra performing American music in general and Frederick Fennell with the East man Wind Ensemble in particular. They can rest assured that if their favorite catalog items are released, at least it will be done right! A note on Bob Fine's recording technique might be in order. His back ground was in film mixing, an art that requires quick judgments, accurate reflexes, and an ear for clarity of detail.

He was known during the early years of multi-track recording as an engineer who didn't need multi-track! Many of the Enoch Light big band albums on Command Records of the late '50s and early '60s were mixed directly to two or three tracks, an art which is practiced today by too few engineers. When Fine turned his attentions to classical re cording, he eschewed any notions of mixing during the recording. He generally chose moderately live acoustical spaces and placed the three microphones fairly close to the source so that the music was never lost in the reverberant field of the room. There is always plenty of detail, yet there is ensemble, too.

(adapted from Audio magazine, Jan. 1991)

= = = =