| Home | Audio mag. | Stereo Review mag. | High Fidelity mag. | AE/AA mag. |
|
by WILLIAM ANDERSON, editor. CASSETTE PROGRESS NO ONE, in all likelihood, is born a skeptic, though life surely teaches us skepticism in a hurry. Thus, perhaps even before we find out about Santa Claus, we discover that small boxes do not always contain good things. But only a con firmed doubter, far gone in refined and practiced incredulity, will have made a more sophisticated discovery about boxes, that the fault may lie not with the con tents, but with the box itself, the packaging. The tape cassette would seem to offer some proof of this thesis: a marvel of electronic and mechanical ingenuity, it is both aurally and visually attractive--but it is, well, just too small. Now there are advantages to smallness, certainly, easy portability and spatial economy principal among them, but it seems to me that the cassette does suffer, as the aspirin box once did, because of its size. It is, for example, an apparently irresistible temptation to the light-fingered shopper, with the natural result that retailers have to keep their little boxes locked up in sales-limiting look-but-don't-touch cases--rather like penny candy. And they are only slightly easier to keep track of at home, even though you may have gone to the trouble and expense of building or buying tricky storage cabinets. Another problem, particularly with classical tapes, has been the difficulty of providing "jacket" notes, librettos, lyric sheets, translations, and the like in type that can be read without a magnifying glass and on paper that will still fit into the tiny boxes. This impasse has generally been avoided in practice, as tapesters know, by omitting the notes. The multiple set has also been a poser for cassette producers--you can get a lot of music on one tape, but not yet a full-size opera, Passion, or oratorio. The solution so far with the few multiples we have seen (issuing companies have mostly abstained, of course) has been to squeeze two, three, or four cassettes into one fat little box-and there's just no way you can keep it from mucking up your standard one-cassette storage system if you have one. What to do? Why, beef up that little box, of course, and that is just what Deutsche Grammophon has recently done with the first U.S. release (twenty-four titles, more to follow) in its "Prestige Box" series. They aren't really boxes at all, but rather books which open to reveal libretto (and/or notes) in a pocket on the left, the two (or three, as the case may be) cassettes affixed, in their usual crisp plastic containers, on the right. The "books" are a uniform 9 1/2 inches tall, 3 inches deep when they contain two cassettes, 4 1/2 when they contain three. Width varies slightly (around 1 inch) depending on the size of the booklet containing libretto or notes--that for Don Giovanni, in four languages, is 120 pages! The cover designs (book jackets?), specially done for the series, are attractive and the spines eminently readable. Inside covers (including the pocket for the booklet) are of brightly colored buckram to inhibit wear, and the only improvement I can think of is to chop a small diagonal off the lower right corner of the libretto to make it easier to slip it into its pocket. One can do that for oneself when the booklet is thin, but only a guillotine will work on, say, 120 pages of Don Giovanni. The music in the first release is a stunning collection of basic high seriousness. Bach first: two complete Brandenburgs (one includes the four Orchestral Suites), the B Minor Mass, and both the John and Matthew (twice!) Passions. Beethoven: the five piano concertos, plus the Ninth Symphony (with Egmont and Coriolan Overtures). Also, Brahms' four symphonies, Handel's Messiah, Haydn's Creation, Verdi's Requiem, and thirteen operas. I haven't heard them all, but every one of the half-dozen I did hear is superb, both technically (all are Dolby, of course) and musically. This to me spells cassette progress, and I urge producers of both blank and pre-recorded tapes to examine the ways in which this format can be adapted to their needs. The Cassette Era still beckons temptingly just over the horizon.
Also see: CHOOSING SIDES, IRVING KOLODIN Source: Stereo Review (USA magazine) |
Prev. | Next |