Letters (High Fidelity, Nov. 1977)

Queler vs. Harris

It is somewhat poor taste, in my judgment, for a conductor and a music critic to engage in such a vicious verbal battle as that in your "Letters" section [August] between Eve Queler and Dale Harris about the former's recording of Massenet's Le Cid.

Although there are probably merits on each side. I believe that it is a disservice to exhibit such feelings in print. Goodness knows that there is enough strife in this world without artists and critics slugging it out so in your enjoyable publication.

-Richard Sight; Shawnee Mission. Kan.

The exchange of views between Queler and Harris illustrates the problem in recording operas: How does a company produce a recording of an opera that is complete and "alive" as well? Record companies should note prominently on the cover of an opera recording what cuts, if any, have been made and what version has been used. This is only fair and just. But achieving an "alive" performance is more difficult, as Kenneth Furie points out in his review of James Levine's La Forzu del destino and Andrea Chenier recordings in the same is sue. Most integral recordings seem pervaded with dullness. At least Queler's performance of Le Cid is not dull, even if it is not complete.

I hope there is a solution, though I doubt it. Must the public always be forced to supplement a dull, complete studio recording with an "alive," incomplete pirated recording?

-Jerome A. Margula; New Springfield, Ohio

Dale Harris' reply to Eve Queler's letter about his review of Le Cid was simply galling. To claim that the fact that the tenor sings along with the chorus and soprano means that the conductor has rewritten the score is simply mad-and it is maddening as well. Doesn't everyone know about tenors and their ways? Doesn't Harris know that Domingo is one of the world's leading ten ors and that Queler is not quite as important in the opera world? I imagine Masse net, with all of his experience in the theater, would hardly have been surprised or of fended by such a minor display of egotism from a splendid tenor. Indeed. I imagine he would not have minded the cut of 637 bars (to think that Harris sat there with his piano-vocal score counting them!) since, as Queler notes, it adds up to ten minutes or less of questionable music.

Queler seems to have a genuine under standing of and feeling for Massenet's music, and I look forward to hearing more of his music under her direction. I hope, as well, to never hear of Dale Harris again.

-Roger Horn; Clarion, Pa.

Let me register a vote of confidence for Eve Queler and her efforts to make available, both in the concert hall and on records, some of the neglected masterpieces of op era! I am disturbed by reviews like Dale Harris' of the recent recording by Columbia (thank you, Columbia!) of Le Cid, because in his zealous efforts to identify what he considers to be imperfections he overlooks the far more important fact that we are at least able to hear this interesting and very enjoyable music.

-Robert W. Upshuw; Simsbury, Conn.

Furie vs. Solti Kenneth

Furie is to be congratulated for his very perceptive reviews of recent operatic releases. Of particular note were his views concerning the recent Flying Dutchman conducted by Georg Solti [August], which reinforced his "suspicion that the success of [Solti's] other recorded Wagner interpretations owes more to the orchestra ...than to him." Along with a growing number of other listeners with musical training, 1 have long felt that Solti is an inferior conductor vaulted to stardom not only by his superior orchestra, but also by the expert sound technicians and publicity organization of London Records. It is most gratifying to see that views consistent with my own position are beginning to appear in print.

- Lawrence S. King New York, N.Y.

The hatchet job on Solti's Flying Dutchman recording is your most unaccountable re view since H. C. Robbins Landon did one on Eugen Jochum's Missa Solemnis back in 1973. (And that recording metamorphosed into one of HF's "Record Riches of a Quarter-Century" [April 1976]!) The unaccountable part is Furie's unrelievedly nasty tone. He seems to have developed an intensely personal animosity for the Chicago Symphony and everyone associated with it. Just why is not clear though there may be a hint in his sweet re marks about the Boston Symphony. What ever his reasons, bile is not criticism.

-Sundor Gurruty Louisville. Ky.

I am both amazed and outraged by Kenneth Furie's vicious attack on Solti's magnificent new Dutchman. Although he can find "nothing to recommend it," I certainly can:

The huge presence of the orchestra is thrilling; Norman Bailey's soliloquy is one of the most moving I have ever heard on disc; in Senta's Ballad Janis Martin is touchingly beautiful: and the Sailors' Chorus is pure delight! Indeed. Solti's is the most sonorous and exciting recording of this opera I have ever heard.

Jose Olivarez; Wichita, Kan.

Mr. Furie replies:

I've had my soy on the Dutchman recording, so let me just set the record straight un one count. Mr. Comity's assumption of some animosity toward "the Chicago Symphony and everyone associated with it" is bused on nothing I hove ever written or said. (Indeed in the Dutchman review I referred to "the splendid Chicago Symphony Chorus.") My comments were confined to this performance, which I found unsatisfactory for the specific reasons stated.

More Audio Courses

I found Stephen Traiman's article "Careers in Audio: Choosing a Course.” [July] to be quite informative. You may be interested in knowing that the Ohio State University has a similar comprehensive audio curriculum leading to a baccalaureate degree. This pro gram is interdisciplinary between the School of Music and the Department of Electrical Engineering and emphasizes the theoretical as well as practical aspects of recording.

-Robert Y. Hare Director. School of Musk: Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210

We at Western Washington State College have developed courses on “The Physical Foundations of Music" and "The Science of High Fidelity." We attract a wide variety of students who otherwise would probably not take a physics course.

Beginning with simple discussion of mechanics, acoustics, and electronics, the course on high fidelity dwells mainly on, the basic design and operation of many types of components. We have a laboratory equipped with amplifiers, turntables, cassette decks, loudspeakers, headphones, oscilloscopes, and audio oscillators. Students perform experiments to gain an under standing of the specifications and performance of the components. These experiments include frequency response and directionality of a loudspeaker, frequency response of an amplifier (effects of tune controls, filters, etc.), record-playback response of a cassette deck, and evaluation of a turn table/amplifier/headphone system using a commercial test record.

-Mux R. Knittel, Western Washington State College, Bellingham, Wash. 98225.

I should like to draw your attention to the electroacoustics option we have within our electrical engineering program here at Michigan Technological.

We have two regularly offered courses in this program. The first is a survey course that covers the entire range of electro acoustics starting from the principles of sound and extending through loudspeakers, microphones, and sound recording to electronic music synthesis. The second course is much more technical and deals mostly with transducer analysis and design. Considerable laboratory facilities are available.

Additional course offerings are contemplated. More detailed information can be obtained through my office.

Richard F. Schwartz, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Mich. 49931

Our Department of Educational Media offers the following courses during the regular term and often, in shorter form, in the summer session:

Audio Systems Techniques--Introduction to the use of sound systems. Provides experience with sound recording, tape duplication, public-address systems, tuners, cassette and reel-to-reel recorders, equalizers, and synthesizers.

Principles of Audio Systems--Study of audio devices that are in general use. Includes examination of the function of various sound components, development of specifications for selecting quality equipment, and operation of equipment.

Technological Equipment Maintenance Hands-on study of preventive procedures and minor maintenance of record players, tape recorders, projectors, and other audio visual equipment.

-Dr. Dwan T. Wick University of Wisconsin La Crosse. Wis. 54601

Copyright and Home Recording

After we went to press with our September issue, in which we published a letter from Don E. Ballard asserting that the authors of the new copyright law intended "no restriction of the traditional freedom of the hobbyist," we received the following letter from Leonard Feist, who wrote the article that elicited Mr. Ballard's comment.

Mr. Ballard is mistaken in his belief that the authors of the new copyright law intended that it not general public. The thrust of copyright remains as it has always been: applicable to all who use protected works whether commercially for profit or privately for pleasure. The public is subject to all its provisions unless specifically exempted. I had hoped that my article had made that clear.

Apparently some have seized upon one section in the report of the House judiciary Committee on the antipiracy law of 1971 as a basis for their belief that "hobbyists" can make copies of recordings for their own use without violating the law. That section says, in part, "it is not the intention of the Committee to restrain the home recording, from broadcasts or from tapes or records, of recorded performances, where the home recording is for private use and with no purpose of reproducing or otherwise capitalizing commercially on it." There have been no "judicial interpretations" of the antipiracy law, itself an amendment of the Copyright Act of 1909, as it relates to home.

recording or of what effect is to be accorded the House report in view of the other provisions regarding the exclusive rights of copyright owners.

In any case, in October 1976 a completely revised copyright law that supersedes the 1909 law was signed by President Ford. The antipiracy amendment has been picked up in the new law but-and this is the crux of the situation-there is nothing in the text of the law or in any of the accompanying re ports that makes mention of an exemption for home recording. There is no section relative to home recording in any report on the 1976 General Revision, and thus that commentary is obsolete. In the absence of a specific provision, there can be no support whatsoever for a contention that home recording is legal.

The law lists the exclusive rights, including the right of reproduction, and then exemptions are detailed. In the entire list of exceptions there are only two relating to recordings. The first, Section 115, is the compulsory license for making and distributing phono records. The only one that is relevant to this discussion is Section 114(b), which concerns the right of reproduction in connection with recordings included in educational television and radio programs distributed by or through public broadcasting entities.

Nor can those who might share Mr. Ballard's opinion take comfort from the "fair use" provisions of the 1976 law. The four criteria for determining if reproduction of phono records is an infringement include the "effect of the use upon the potential market or value of the copyrighted work" as well as "the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copy righted work as a whole." Thus, "fair use" provisions give nut even a vague sanction to home recording and, in fact, would seem to prohibit it, both as to the copyrighted music on the recording and to recordings themselves if made after February 15, 1972.

Leonard Feist, President National Music Publishers Assn. New York, N.Y.

Ax to Grind?

In his critique of a recording of the Beethoven Waldstein Piano Sonata [June], Harris Goldsmith accuses Emanuel Ax of "a care less misreading in the left hand at bar 104 of the first movement." The Ricordi edition of the Beethoven sonatas discusses this chord at great length and notes that Czerny suggested that possibly Beethoven himself considered changing it after sonata's publication in 1805. It is hard to believe that a pianist of Ax's stature would "carelessly mis read" this chord: surely he would play it--this way only after careful consideration. I think Mr. Goldsmith owes him an apology.

Mrs. Marvin Taxman, Omaha, Neb.

Mr. Goldsmith replies:

The variant in question is unmentioned in the Henle urtext, the original Schenker (reprinted by Dover), the revised Schenker-hatz (Wiener Urtext. Universal), and the Schnubel (Simon and Schuster)--beyond all doubt the most re liable and respected texts available of the Beethoven piano sondlus. My curiosity was aroused, however, and I decided to check the point. The editor of the Ricordi text, Alfredo Casella, dues indeed give the cited (mis)reading-without explanation as a marginal note, along with myriad suggestions on how to simplify or fake other details. Krebs says in his footnote to the Kulmus urtext thut, while there was no sanction to print the A flat in the text, some players might won’t to opt for it on Czerny's soy-so. However, Von Bulow, editor of the old Schirmer edition, calls the variant "wholly unauthorized" and adds that "this chord of the sixth would sound very weak and flat." That Beethoven sometimes made changes in his compositions is well known.

The change in dynamics at bars 321 et seq. in the Waldstein's third movement is a case in point. So is the change from F flat (in the manuscript) to F natural (in the first printed edition) in the first movement's bar 100-the very next measure, incidentally, to the one under discussion. In such cases performers may accept whichever version they prefer.

Not so in this instance. Czerny's alleged conjecture that Beethoven may have wanted to make the change doesn't hold water. He could have made the change and didn't. Nor should the fact that Czerny was Beethoven's contemporary be allowed to lend authority to his transgressions. Another contemporary saw fit to publish the first edition of the G major Sonata, Op. 31.

No. 1, with two spurious, meretricious measures that the composer later repudiated. There has never been a shortage of small minds who arrogantly seek to "improve" the work of a genius.

No apology is in order. A careless mis reading of a single note is an unwitting oversight, far more forgivable than an apparently intentional attempt to revive and perpetuate a long-discredited editorial gaffe.

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"The Big Bands": Sorting It Out

Gremlins went to work on Gene Lees's column about "The Big Bands" in our September issue, and the result was some inchoate scrambling of his quite coherent argument.

We apologize to him and to any reader who encountered the virtual roadblock imposed by the jumble.

To straighten things out, we take up what Lees wrote at the opening of the third paragraph. which should have read: "But by the Twenties, bands were sitting down. Benny Carter, one of the most gifted soloists, com posers, and arrangers of the period, recalled recently that when he played in the Charlie Johnston band it comprised three trumpets, two trombones, three saxophones (two altos and a tenor), and four rhythm instruments, including the tuba functioning as bass. Not until the bands forgot their ambulatory origins did the string bass, a more flexible and pulsating instrument, become the rhythmic and harmonic footing on which all bands since have built their walls of sound." And in the following paragraph, the fourth sentence should have read: "The qualification of 'explicit rhythm' (Henry Pleasants' term) will not suffice, since it is present in many other forms of music, including the Brazilian samba, which is not jazz even though it shares its ancestry and interacts with jazz readily."

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Ciani on Records

After reading the letter on pianist Dino Ciani from Henry Schultz [July], I am moved to write to request more of his recordings in this country. Several Deutsche Grammophon discs, including some fine Debussy, are readily available in Europe.

I was overwhelmed by Ciani's artistry. In 1973, I heard his recital at the Maggio Musicale in Florence and his technique and depth of feeling were unforgettable.

-William Knorp Sausalito, Calif.

Sibelius' Legends In his perceptive review of Sibelius' Four Legends, Op. 22 [July], Abram Chipman re marks that Okko Kamu "seems to be the first conductor to record the Legends in the order of publication." At least one previous recording does so: Melodiya D 04726/7.

Dating from the early 1950s, this account is conducted by Tauno Hannikainen, whose Karelia Suite is given enthusiastic mention in Mr. Chipman's review.

For my money, the Hannikainen recording of the Legends is the best (despite the tubby sound) and worth scouring the import shops for.

-Dean H. Streit New York, N.Y.

Matrix H

Not everyone shares American apathy regarding quad sound: It seems our British friends are fighting to keep the medium alive. This is evident in the recent tests run by the BBC of its new Matrix H quad-en coding system. I'm fortunate to have heard some of them.

Essentially, Matrix H is similar to QS in concept. The difference is a 60-degree phase shift in the right channels. A simple converter device is available in the U.K. to pro vide this shift and thus decode Matrix H correctly when using QS equipment. The difference, however, is minimal.

The tests featured programs of classical, jazz, and pop music, as well as spoken drama. The sound was consistently clean, with excellent separation. The BBC's engineers did a fine job of mixing and encoding.

Records in Matrix H are in the offing as well. The BBC's own record division plans some quad releases in this system, and other British record companies are likely to follow suit. Perhaps some American com panies will also. Time will tell.

-Jay L. Rudko Elmendorf AFB, Alaska Vittorio Weinberg.

I enjoyed Andrew Porter's review of Madama Butterfly with Margaret Sheridan [May]. I may be able to contribute some in formation on Vittorio Weinberg, who sings Sharpless, that Mr. Porter is not aware of.

Weinberg must have had a varied career prior to the time that I knew the gentleman, but his career in the U.S. was limited, so far as I know, to the San Francisco Bay area. I met him in the late '40s and early '50s performing with the Pacific Grand Opera Company under the aegis of Arturo Casiglia, an impresario who toured the northern counties of California. Occasionally Casiglia gave a season at the San Francisco Opera House, where I recall Weinberg singing Marcello in La Boheme. He no doubt did some other roles with whatever company was operating at the time--the Pacific Grand, Dollar Opera, or Cosmopolitan Op era, all companies formed, managed, or conducted by Casiglia. Weinberg also was the cantor and director of music for one of the large synagogues in San Francisco for a number of years and taught voice at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for a while. He had a very beautiful baritone voice and was a good, if rather provincial, operatic actor.

-Edward R. Schembs New York, N.Y.

Portamento

I was delighted to read Andrew Porter's in trepid defense of string portamento in his review of the reissued Sabajno Madama Butterfly [May]. String players and conductors have learned to avoid this technique, just as most critics (those arbiters of public aesthetic opinion) have learned to scorn it as both anachronistic and symptomatic of tasteless sentimentality.

As Mr. Porter intimates, however, use of portamento, which did not die out until after World War II, can be heard in recorded performances in increasing amounts as one goes back in time and the date of the recording approaches the turn of the century. It is used in abundance not only in prewar recordings made by those players whose technique was rooted in and reflective of late nineteenth-century performing traditions (e.g., Kreisler, Thibaud, Marie Hall, Casals) and those conductors whose early careers were closely associated with composers of that period (e.g., Nikisch, Walter, Toscanini, Mengelberg, Kajanus, Beecham), but also in recordings made by those composers whose periods of creativity began in the nineteenth century but who lived long enough to commit performances of their own music to disc well into the electrical era (e.g., Richard Strauss, Mascagni, Elgar, Rachmaninoff). From all of this, it would seem apparent that the late Roman tic composers conceived of their music as being performed and interpreted with portamento interpolated into the string parts.

To rob such music of this device in present day performances is to deprive the score of an important stylistic element.

-George A. Locke San Francisco, Calif.

Welcome Changes

I just wanted to let you know that BACK-BEAT is a welcome addition to HIGH FIDELITY. I enjoy the "business" articles and the equipment reviews especially.

I also appreciate your return to the present binding method. This puts the MUSICAL AMERICA section into one compact place; the old divided format was a bit of a nuisance.

-Glenn W. Harris Falls Church, Va.

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(High Fidelity, Nov. 1977)

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