GOLDEN-EAR RING

So you did it--went out and bought that little cardboard box full of Richard Wagner double-length CDs, some 14+ hours of high-class audio, as discussed here last month? Well, maybe. It was indeed a giant package in terms of sheer elapsed time--four enormous operas, the entire "Ring" cycle, with more actual unbroken continuity (fewer breaks) than in the original live performances at the Bayreuth Festival in 1953. Astonishing! But if this was too much for you, there will be plenty more of the same, less flamboyantly. Another little box, an inch or so deep, contains all nine Beethoven symphonies, for example. Is this the start of a new audio listening age? You bet it is.

To remind you, that Wagner box contains seven rather special CDs to encompass the four operas of the "Ring," better known by their first names: Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Gdtterdammerung. The recording was made in mono on state-of-the-art tape equipment of that day and represents the sophisticated high point of mono technology, before stereo and dozens of other ancillary improvements--Dolby NR was a decade in the future. The clever idea behind this new album was to spread the mono sound on one CD track at a time, so that each CD is played twice through-first track A, then track B, each fed into both of your stereo speakers. Most equipment does this simple switching with no problems, and surely we will have more of the same, at the lower cost. Another later recording of the same four operas in full stereo needs 15 CDs, with many more breaks, to cover the music that these seven mono discs encompass.

Continuity is the very soul of Wagner.

I noted last month that the sound of the 1953 recording was "terrific." Some of our younger readers may find that a startling thought: Real audio out of those quaint, nostalgic times? But I do not intend to back down on the superlative. Definitely, there was high-quality audio then, as we are increasingly discovering in our quest for new CD reissue material.

The reasoning behind the present spate of audio oldies-but-goodies is simple enough. The stuff was there, on master tapes--but for all this time, the general public and even many technicians have had no direct means of access to these sounds from the audio summit. Now, and really for the first time, thanks to digital, we can all hear them virtually in the original, as CD copies with the added useful subtleties of digital processing.

Two interesting further circumstances affect that superlative, "terrific," as applied to the 1953 Wagner audio.

First, though magnetic tape was still Quite new to us here in 1953, it was old stuff to the Germans, who had been using it--all unbeknownst to us-since the mid-'30s. (How Sir Thomas Beecham managed to record his symphonic music on tape around 1936--was it?--without our knowing it, is a mystery to me! Old Tommy was not the modest type.) Thus, there is no reason why a 1953 master tape (as opposed to any sort of derived analog copy) shouldn't now rate as "terrific" in the audio essentials, even from 35 years ago, and as transferred to digital.

Reminds me of the big flap among the record companies over DAT. It's the same: A master tape (DAT) made out of a master (CD) and brought straight to the public. Piracy in every living room? It's possible technically, but not really very likely.

The second interesting factor in 1953 sound quality is a matter of ear training. During these many years of continued audio progress, there has been the inevitable diminishing return.

The closer we get to the perfect, the more micro are the improvements. Not that they aren't worthwhile. As the changes become more subtle, our ears grow more discriminating. It's fun, it's useful--perceptive and practical, too. Good audio sells. It takes good ears to hear good things.

But the ever-smaller increments have one disadvantage. We find it more and more difficult to adjust backwards, so to speak, to reset our ears for an appreciation of past audio accomplishments as they were understood in former times. Our hepped-up sensibilities exaggerate. I have run into this phenomenon numerous times among those who disagree with me as to the sound quality of this or that earlier recording. We are judging from different bases, mine being generally on a longer time scale.

The Wagner in 1953 is surely an example. That monumental job must have rated as remarkable and state of the art for recording in Germany at the time, which means good. The auspices were the highest--Bayreuth Wagner attracts prestige and always has. And for my ears, the sound is indeed remarkable, minus so much that we have now, including, beyond Dolby NR, the whole range of newer tape formulations, recording heads, and so on.

Those audio men were sophisticated.

They could, so to speak, compensate for the future in numerous ingenious ways. Maybe, for instance, high-speed taping? Anyhow, what came forth was splendid, increments or no increments.

And the sheer length! Remember that the LP was only a few years into production, still a miracle of unbroken continuity for those of us who were brought up on the old four-minute 78 system-wax, shellac, lacquer, and all.

On those tapes, undoubtedly produced on two machines--overlapping reel by reel--the unbroken sound continuity was still a brand-new thing and almost unbelievable. It is still hard to believe today, in the CD form. But what a load this puts on home listening! I've taken up the 1953 audio itself first, because that is only part of what you will hear. There is the "hi-fi" mike technique of 1953, unmistakable for older ears, quite startling to younger ears that do not remember. It was a vital time of transition in the art of microphone use, part old and from the recent past, part pioneering and new.

This quite aside from the objective audio quality.

No, I do not mean the mono. True, for a short time, listening with both your speakers, the mono sound will seem compressed and squeezed close to the center area, lacking in stereo's expansiveness. But in a very few minutes, you will adapt. As I say, the mono technique was at its highest point around 1953, a very polished art even though a single audio channel, after some 30 years of microphone usage.

They knew very well how to compensate for the "lack" of our present stereo spread.

No, not the mono sound itself, but the spatial balance, as between large opera voices and the large orchestra playing with them--that is what will immediately strike you. These singers are recorded quite close and relatively very loud, only a few feet from your listening spot, or so it seems. You can hear their breaths, the teeth sounds, the twang of the vocal cords, the powerful diction, all with startling reality.

This is the old-fashioned aspect of the recording technique, oddly enough! Nowadays, we tend to record opera with the singers at stage distance, back in the orchestra--in part, thanks to stereo's more detailed spatial pinpointing. But before 1953 and on back to the acoustic era, voices were recorded even closer-tonsil-close, I used to call it. A necessity in the acoustic period. A novelty in early electric recording where, suddenly, the microphone could do all sorts of tricky highlighting-to choice.

In 1953, the voices were still close and loud in the older manner, but the orchestra was beautifully handled to surround the singers and make its own vital statements on its own. That was new, following the astonishing close-up vocal recordings of the '30s and '40s, where the big voices were about 2 feet from your ears against a faint and distant orchestral background.

That kind of electrical recording, of course, had to do with the first realization of the selective powers of the microphone, not only in amplification but in selective distance. It was a heady idea, and we went nuts over it until the novelty wore thin. The very birth of multi-mike! But oddly enough, the early electrics sounded very much like the previous acoustics, if with much more body and top and bottom: Still that same closeness for the solos and distant faintness for the accompaniment.

It was a style listeners found familiar.

The difference was that the acoustic close-up was not subject to control: No amplification, just the impact of the sound on the cutting stylus. Beyond the recording horn's mouth, your volume dropped exponentially, even with much clever fixing--hoked-up loud violins and blasting brass. The solo with almost inaudible accompaniment was all we could do. The mike suddenly gave us immense control, but things didn't change. The balance was now quite arbitrary. Until we learned better.

If you have heard the early U.S. Wagner recordings of Flagstad and Melchior, the two large singers I mentioned last month, you will know what I mean. (Actually, they were relatively late, though "early" in technique.) Flagstad sings--her very best--with an appalling nearness, almost on top of you (tonsil-close). Her orchestral "accompaniment" (it is not an accompaniment but a major part of the music) is far away in the background--the San Francisco Symphony, if I am right.

It might as well be a beat-up hotel piano, as in early Caruso. Same with Melchior, and the two of them sing together in Tristan, all loud voice, faint orchestra. A grotesque sound, a highly misguided recording technique.

These records and others did serve to bring out the celebrity impact on shellac records and the dull-sounding machines we all used. No excuse! The music was poorly served. Flagstad's later recordings are better, but she could no longer sing as well.

Meanwhile, and in parallel (there were many different centers for recording music), many engineers and producers began to understand that a more natural balance was needed for recordings with orchestra and solos, both vocal and instrumental: More orchestra, closer; less solo, a bit more distant. There are plenty of 1930s recordings with a better compromise in this respect-particularly when the solo performer was not so famous! He or she or they could be moved back a bit without political repercussions. The big names, as always, wanted all the glory and usually got it-close up and loud. They still do, often enough.

In 1953 Bayreuth, there was indeed a star-studded collection of Wagnerian soloists, and yet somehow, the producers were able, not to record them at a distance--far from it--but instead to wrap the orchestra around them on equal terms, even in mono. That is what is so astonishing in this relatively ancient recording. The producers were aware that almost 15 hours of close-up solo voices with the gorgeous Wagner orchestra far off in the distance was simply unthinkable. Stars or no stars, they had to keep the orchestral balance where it belonged, so that the frequent long orchestral passages (minus any singing) would come through as convincingly as the parts with voices. At the time, it was a tricky thing, to manage the politics of it and still come out with a worthy, not to say superb, representation of the whole of Wagner, not just the big loud stars.

That is why I was able to say "terrific," both for the audio itself and for the recording technique. Happily, the same goes for the performances, as I said last month. Tremendous intensity, made more so but not unduly exaggerated by the close presence of each singer.

Otherwise, I would not be writing here. The 1953 Bayreuth Festival, recorded, would be no more than an historical archive tape, good for study but not for any sort of home listening.

I think that if Wagner knew all this, he would be chortling in his grave --what's left of him. He died 106 years ago last month.

(by: EDWARD TATNALL CANBY; adapted from Audio magazine, Mar. 1989)

= = = =