Columbia's "Great Performances" Series
In this unfortunate age of rising manufacturing and recording costs, it is gratifying to see a major label reach into its vaults and reissue significant recordings from the '60s and '70s, giving them the benefit of up-to-date transfer technology. The original multitrack masters have been remixed down to two-track, via Dolby-A processing, thus cutting out a layer of noise present in the original two-track mix-downs. These new tapes have received the benefit of current cutting technology, with its greater headroom and more effective variable pitch and depth control. While not equal to the best of imported pressings, these discs are certainly competent enough and probably represent the best of what can be expected from a major domestic company. Packaging has been kept simple, with a single generic theme on uncoated stock. The inner jackets are plastic-lined, and, best of all, the prices have been kept low. A recent flyer from Publishers Central Bureau offers the line at less than $6.00 per record.
For those interested in developing a basic library of classical music, this series is worth the investment. In addition to the regular catalog numbers, each entry has a simple number, starting at one and enabling the beginning collector to keep track of the entire series.
Most of the discs date from a period when three or possibly four tracks represented the available channel capacity in classical recording practice.
Partly as a result, there is less dependence on multi-miking and in general a more natural and warmer sound than we are accustomed to hearing from the major labels today. Here are some capsule reviews:
--Haydn: Symphonies No. 93 and 94. George Szell, conducting the Cleveland Orchestra. MY 37761. A quiet retransfer with a nice sheen to the strings. Flawless playing. Produced by Paul Myers.
--Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring. Pierre Boulez, conducting the Cleveland Orchestra. MY 37764. This one was done multi-track, and highlighting of inner details is often overdone. This complex score can take that kind of treatment in stride, however. Probably a Dolby-A original with very low tape noise. An electrifying performance. Produced by Thomas Shepard.
--Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 (Pathetique). Eugene Ormandy, conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra. MY 37768. This one is a little hissy by comparison with many of the others, and the overall sound seems to have been boosted for more "presence" than needed. This music is, of course, something that Ormandy and the Philadelphians do very well. Produced by Thomas Frost.
--Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4. Leonard Bernstein, conducting the New York Philharmonic. MY 37766. A recording of recent (quiet) vintage, and expansive in the usual Bernstein fashion. To my ears, there is a little too much reverberation. The third movement is taken at a breath-taking clip, and the fourth explodes in fury. Produced by John McClure.
--Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4. Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 25. Leon Fleischer, Piano; George Szell conducting the Cleveland Orchestra. MY 37762. Masterful performances by a virtuoso pianist no longer playing in public. The recordings are quite old and often show their age. However, in matters of balance and interpretation, they may be hard to beat. (When did you last hear a concerto recording with the piano in proper balance with the orchestra?) Produced by Howard Scott.
-John Eargle
--The Digital Fox, Volume One: Virgil Fox, organ; Ultragroove UG-9001, $14.98; dbx encoded No. PS-1020, $18.00.
--The Digital Fielder: Arthur Fiedler and The Boston Pops; Ultragroove UG-7003, $14.98; dbx encoded No. PS-1021, $18.00.
The Digital Fox represents the coming together of several musical and technical ingredients, and the results are absolutely stunning. For once, the particular Fox brand of organ playing is given the important ingredient so often missing, dynamic range. I raved about this disc, and its companion Volume Two, when they were released by Crystal Clear as direct discs in 1977.
At those sessions, a Soundstream digital recorder was running as backup, and this disc was encoded from it. Interestingly, the liner notes tell us the digital sampling rate at that time was 37.5 kHz, yielding an upper cutoff frequency of 15 kHz. The notes also state that the performances and frequency balances in this disc are not the same as in the direct-to-disc original. Those who are familiar with the originals will note that a bit of artificial reverberation has been added to the naturally dry ambience of the old Garden Grove Community Church (now supplanted by the Crystal Cathedral). In general, this extra signal processing is, welcome; however, the reverberant decay of final tutti chords reveals a bit too much midrange overhang, at least for my tastes. Handled a little more deftly, the effect would have been perfectly natural.
The awesome low-frequency response of the originals has been preserved intact, and, if you have a good set of subwoofers, you will be amazed by the 32-foot contrabordone stop in Fox's unorthodox treatment of the transition between the adagio and fugue in Bach's Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C-major. This stop is electronic, that is to say, there are loudspeakers producing the sound in the church. But there are enough of them, and they are adequately powered, so that the resulting air volume velocities are equivalent to a large set of 32-foot Bourdon pipes.
One of the secondary virtues of the dbx process is the reduction of required modulation space on the disc.
This comes about because of low-frequency attenuation in the encoding process, and the happy result is that the ending modulation diameter is somewhat larger than on a standard stereo disc. This will always result in cleaner sound.
Bach's Toccata and Fugue in d-minor and Jongen's finale to the Symphonie Concertante complete the disc, a fine tribute to the late Virgil Fox. One hopes that a dbx-encoded Volume Two is not far behind.
Arthur Fiedler
The Digital Fiedler is another Crystal Clear direct-to-disc original with Soundstream digital backup. It was made some three months after the Fox sessions, and during the short interval the sampling rate had jumped up to 42.5 kHz, with frequency response out to 18 kHz. The originals were sonically warm, but they lacked sheen in the upper strings. This has been "corrected" in the present release by adding a high-frequency boost roughly equivalent to the difference between the random incidence response and the on-axis response of the B & K instrumentation microphones used at these sessions. The result of this equalization adjustment is better overall balance and delineation of inner voices.
Of course, a similar correction is possible in playing the direct-to-disc originals simply by adding an appropriate high-frequency boost, but this would surely cause an increase of surface noise. Doubtless, some listeners will perceive the spectral difference between the two issues as some kind of proof that direct is better than digital--or is it the other way around? As in the case with the Fox album, the low end has been preserved, and overall balances are quite musical.
Thanks to dbx and to Crystal Clear for making these classic recordings available in this format. Not only do they provide something of a chronicle of the development of Soundstream's technology (now up to the 48 to 50 kHz sampling rate with response in excess of 20 kHz), but they show us the skilled hand of the master himself, Bert Whyte, as recording engineer. Now, if we can just have the Crystal Clear London Symphony Orchestra recordings made by Whyte, issued in this format!
-John Eargle
Also see:
Remasters of Living Stereo (Aug. 1993)
Re-climbing Everest (remastering recordings of the old Everest label) (Jan. 1990)
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(source: Audio magazine, Sept. 1982)