by BERT WHYTE
WHIRLED PREMIERES
When I attend the annual Summer and Winter Consumer Electronics Shows and the convention of the Audio Engineering Society, I quite naturally get caught up in the excitement of new audio products and technologies. I also get involved with a lot of other matters among the most pleasurable being the inevitable bull sessions with engineers and manufacturers. People who know my background invariably ask me about the recording business, especially with respect to classical music.
They want to know how to become a recording engineer, how to break into the business. They very often ask technical questions about a specific re cording I have made, such as what mikes I used. Others are more interested in the musical aspects of a recording. They want to know what it's like to work with certain conductors and orchestras, and are eager to hear my anecdotes about the trials and tribulations of record making. I've promised a lot of nice folks that from time to time I would write about the often frustrating, always fatiguing, but endlessly fascinating business of record making. This month I'll keep that promise.
In some major record companies, the production of classical recordings can involve a lot of people. There is the recording producer, the director of artists & repertoire, the recording engineer, and the music director. I've worn all of these hats. I was music director at RCA, and I was director of A&R and recording engineer at Crystal Clear. At Everest, I chose the music that was to be recorded, the conductor and orchestra who would perform it, and the hall or locale in which the recording would take place; I also engineered the recording, and even negotiated artists' contracts and handled other pertinent business matters. Additionally, I have been an independent engineer/producer, like Marc Aubort of Elite Recordings and Jerry Bruck of Posthorn Recordings.
Needless to say, all of these jobs are highly demanding, and the major record companies usually maintain sever al teams of highly qualified people to handle them. It is a far greater burden on an individual who wishes to establish a record catalog from scratch. It is he who must choose the right combi nations of music and artists, making certain they are recorded with such superior engineering that success is assured in the marketplace. If fortune smiles, and the recordings are critically acclaimed, a good reputation is established. With this reputation comes respect, and a certain degree of power. Power enough, in fact, to be a factor in the highly competitive record world. Thus, when The New York Times praised my first Everest recordings with such remarks as "unhackneyed repertoire" and "superb stereo sound," it gave me extra leverage in dealing with the movers and shakers in the world of music. This included the music publishers. It was very gratifying when such giants as Boosey & Hawkes, G. Schirmer, and the Oxford University Press became very cooperative and offered me some choice musical plums. Thereby hangs a tale.
As you might expect, a recording engineer feels very paternalistic about his recordings. They are indeed his creations, his children. He may even be forgiven for thinking of them as a noble legacy that can bring joy and pleasure to thousands of people for many years, even after he has shuffled off this mortal coil. Naturally, every re cording engineer has works he is particularly proud of. In my case, I feel very pleased that I was able to make six world premiere recordings of important new music.
Probably the world premiere recording I am most proud of is the Ninth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams, generally recognized (along with Benjamin Britten) by musicologists to be one of the most important English com posers of the 20th century. Although Vaughan Williams wrote music in many forms, his major works were his symphonies. These distinctively styled symphonies were widely acclaimed, and had been well represented with many fine recordings, notably from Decca and EMI. I use the term "distinctive" because his music is as instantly recognizable as, for example, the music of Copland or Mahler. It was also generally acknowledged that conductor Sir Adrian Boult was the definitive interpreter of Vaughan Williams' music. The people of Oxford University Press knew I was coming to England for a series of recordings with Sir Adrian and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. After considerable discussion about various choices, I was fortunate enough to arrange for the first recording of their newly published Vaughan Williams Ninth Symphony.
The recording was to be made in Walthamstow Town Hall, my favorite recording location in all of England The day before the recording, the Green Room in Walthamstow was set up with specially modified, three-channel, half-inch Ampex tape recorders and a custom-built Westrex mixing console. Gilbert Briggs, the "grand old man" of Wharfedale, had loaned us three of the big monitor speakers he had used in his famous "live versus recorded" demonstration at Carnegie Hall. These were powered by special McIntosh amplifiers. I also used a three-channel spaced array of omnidirectional Telefunken U-47 micro phones. Three discrete audio channels were recorded on the Ampex units, and we employed direct three-channel monitoring.
With all technical matters under control, I was very pleased and honored to learn that Ralph Vaughan Williams would be at the recording sessions. On the morning of the recording day, I was met at the back door of the Green Room by Sir Adrian, a tall, spare, rather austere man with an imposing cavalry mustache. A gentle man with a rather formal manner, he greeted me by exclaiming, "Oh, Mr. Whyte, a terrible thing has happened!" Well, there are certainly plenty of things that can go wrong in any recording session. however, Sir Adrian informed me that Ralph Vaughan Williams had died just seven hours before. This was indeed distressing news, and I hoped it would not prove to be a bad omen. Now, you must understand that the London Phil harmonic Orchestra was very familiar with the music of Vaughan Williams, and had not only performed his works many times but had also made recordings of his symphonies. The members of the orchestra knew that Vaughan Williams was supposed to be present during our sessions. Thus it was a very stunned group that heard Sir Adrian announce the composer's passing.
If you happen to have heard my Everest recording of Vaughan Williams' Ninth Symphony, you will know that Sir Adrian made a rather unusual tribute to the composer. Before the music be gins, you can hear Sir Adrian saying that "We had hoped that our beloved friend, Ralph Vaughan Williams, would have been with us in the studio while we were recording this symphony, but his death took place seven hours be fore we began our work on it. It's a wonderful thought that many musical friends in the United States will be enabled to hear his last symphony by means of this record." Contrary to my foreboding about the effect of this news on the orchestra, the musicians and Sir Adrian provided an impassioned, heartfelt, virtuoso performance. The recording was acclaimed in numerous reviews and very well received by classical music enthusiasts.
There have been several other recordings of this great symphony over the years, including a remake with Sir Adrian Boult and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. I greatly treasure the distinction of having made the first recording of it and will never forget the emotionally charged atmosphere of that 1958 recording session.
In subsequent sessions with Sir Adrian Boult and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, I recorded Vaughan Williams' "Job (masque for dancing)," a most powerful and evocative work. Sir Adrian's affinity for the music of Vaughan Williams is evidenced by the fact that the composer dedicated this score to him. I chose to record "Job" in London's Royal Albert Hall because I wanted to use its great pipe organ.
This hall is very large, seating nearly 8,000 people, and has notoriously difficult acoustics due to its reverberation period of more than 3 S. In the music, in the climactic scene where Job curses God, there is a tremendous fortissimo outburst from the full orchestra and organ. I wanted the massive weight and sonority of this organ rather than the electronic pipsqueak I would have had to use if I had recorded this piece in Walthamstow. It was necessary to use an array of old wooden doors behind the orchestra to serve as reflectors, and to position acoustic reflecting "clouds" (baffles) above the orchestra for better projection. Here again, the spaced array of three Telefunken U-47 microphones was used in an omini-directional pattern, and the signals fed into the three-channel Ampex tape recorders.
Using the Albert Hall involved a lot of extra work, but the spectacular sonics justified all the effort. I should add that, were I to record this work now, the ideal place to make it would be in the new Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, which has a wonderful Ruffatti organ and a reverberation time of slightly over 2 S.
Only one of my six world premiere recordings was uneventful. This was the Hindemith "Concerto for Violin and Orchestra" performed by violin virtuoso Joseph Fuchs with Sir Eugene Goossens conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. Fuchs, often referred to as the "violinist's violinist," has made this work his own, and his performance of it may safely be considered definitive. I coupled this work with his equally effective performance of Mozart's lovely "Third Concerto for Violin and Orchestra." As always, Sir Eugene had the London Symphony Orchestra playing at the top of its form in an appropriately sympathetic accompaniment. Fuchs' clean, smooth tone and the sound of the orchestra were greatly enhanced by the flattering acoustics of Walthamstow. The recording sessions went very smoothly, posing no problems either musically or sonically. The recording was well received by critics and public alike, and if you are a bit tired of the Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn and other concertos in the standard violin repertoire, you might want to try this interesting Hindemith concerto for a refreshing change.
At another time, I will provide "be hind the scenes" glimpses about the four other world premiere recordings I was privileged to make.
(adapted from Audio magazine, Bert Whyte)
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