The Delos CD's engineered by John Eargle

As those who used to read this column in the old days will probably remember, our reviews of recorded music are basically audio-oriented, but that does not mean we have nothing to say about the compositions and the performances. Our taste runs to classical music primarily, jazz secondarily, rock/pop-folk strictly for laughs. Your Editor is writing this comeback installment of the column under his own by-line, mainly as a temporary escape from the tyranny of the editorial "we." We occasionally yearn to be I.

At the Leading Edge of the Symphonic Recording Art: the Delos CD's

Engineered by John Eargle

By Peter Aczel Editor and Publisher

When digital recording was still new and confusing, the man who gave me the most levelheaded advice and straightened out my somewhat befuddled thinking on the subject was John Eargle. He did not tell me that the digital technology meant "perfect sound forever" (Philips) nor that it was "musically disastrous" (Doug Sax). He calmly and patiently explained the pros and the cons, the theoretical potential and the real-world practice, the probable progress and the possible setbacks. He seemed to be the only serious practitioner in the industry who was not totally shrill on the subject, one way or the other. Much more recently, in a short article titled "Do CDs Sound Different?" (Audio, Nov. 1987), he elucidated the ongoing controversy about digital versus analog sound with better documentation and more convincing logic than I have seen or heard from any other source in all these years.

You seldom, if ever, see the name of John Eargle dropped by the flakier underground audio journalists; he is a professional's professional whose credentials are widely known in circles where audio is a discipline rather than a cult. He has written three highly acclaimed textbooks on the hardware and technique of sound recording, in addition to a large body of technical articles and engineering papers; he is a leading authority on microphones; his credits as a recording engineer go back to the golden years of Mercury and RCA; he has been president of the Audio Engineering Society; he has done extensive loudspeaker development work for JBL; he is also a teacher, organist and pianist. Currently he is Director of Recording for Delos International, the mostly-classical label founded by Amelia Haygood and one of the earliest to go all-digital and then all-CD.

It is John's most recent efforts at Delos to reproduce the authentic sound of the symphony orchestra on compact discs that prompt me to write this column. I have always felt that the stereo experience in the living room was infinitely more satisfactory when restricted to soloists, trios and string quartets, intimate jazz combos and similarly small-scale sound sources than when a huge orchestra or an entire opera company was being shoehorned between the two speakers. John's latest Delos CD's are beginning to change my mind, at least to some degree. When played through the best electronics and loudspeakers, these recordings come very close to transporting me to a tenth- or twelfth-row center seat in the concert hall. The dimensional signature of the recording venue, the timing cues of the sound field and the dynamic nuances of the orchestral playing are so well captured by John's microphones and trans mitted through his digital recording channels that the basic limitations of the living-room medium are to a considerable extent overcome. There is depth here and width and natural space between the instruments; the pianissimi are always audible and the fortissimi have lifelike impact without strain. My older son, who has a good ear and has been exposed for many years to some very good recordings and reproduction, was so carried away after our first Delos CD audition that he said, "You know, this is not only the best I've heard, but the second best isn't even close." I more or less concurred, but not without muttering something to the effect that in all faimess I would have to listen again to some other good ones. (The Audio Critic is expected to think like an elder statesman, even en famille.) John's recording technique can be described as eclectic, pragmatic and opportunistic-he is not interested in proving one particular method superior to any other, since he is comfortable with them all, and he will use any available means to end up with the sound he wants, improvising around local conditions if necessary. His basic aim is to open up the apparent space behind the stereo speakers so that the orchestral image is truly panoramic, un-constricted and concert-hall-like. The main microphone in his standard symphonic setup is the unique Sanken CU-41, a Japanese cardioid design incorporating two condenser capsules, one large and one small, for totally flat (+1 dB maximum) response from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. A pair of CU-41's in a quasi-coincident array is placed in the center approximately one meter from the front row of strings and three meters above the floor of the orchestra. A pair of Scheeps omni directional condenser microphones flanks the center array two meters to the left and right in a more or less straight line. These are mixed in at a level 6 dB below that of the Sankens. Accent microphones, 8 to 12 dB below reference level, may or may not be placed in proximity to some of the softer instruments, depending on their audibility. Still another pair of microphones may or may not be necessary, about eight to ten meters further out in the hall, to capture elusive reverberant detail. Once these balances are set, the controls on the console (lately a Soundcraft 200B) are never touched again; digital dynamics take care of the rest. The digital recording and editing equipment is mostly Sony, with frequent updates, but recently John has begun to phase in the remarkable new Colossus digital processor.

Here are some of his most recent Delos orchestral CD's that made an impression on me.

Delos Sampler

"The Symphonic Sound Stage: a Listener's Guide to the Art and Science of Recording the Orchestra" (eleven selections by R. Strauss, Respighi, Falla, etc., from the recent Delos catalog). Delos DICD 3502 (made in 1987).

This is a good quick introduction to the best of Delos and, in nine out of the eleven selections, to John Eargle. The two beautiful Haydn excerpts are from recordings made by Marc Aubort, no slouch himself in the pecking order of orchestral recordists. John provides some interesting how and-why-we-did-it notes for each track of the sampler, but since seven of his own nine tracks are from the CD's reviewed below, I might as well proceed to those directly.

Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss: Thus Spake Zarathustra, Dance of the Seven Veils (Salome), Four Symphonic Interludes from Intermezzo. Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz, conductor. Delos DICD 3052 (made in 1987).

Also sprach Zarathustra was my private property as a very young man; most of my contemporaries had only heard the name but not the music, so seldom was it performed. It was just perfect for a Wagnerian punk-pretentious, decadently romantic/heroic, incredibly brilliant and quite clearly beyond the bounds of good taste. I remember playing the ancient Koussevitzky/Boston version on scratchy 78's in a booth of the Columbia University music library and later making a special point of attending a Dimitri Mitropoulos performance of the piece with the New York Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall. At the beginning of the stereo era, two different Reiner/Chicago versions on RCA were the gold standard, and I played them a lot. You can imagine my out raged indignation when, in 1968, Stanley Kubrick turned the opening "sunrise" passage into a Top 40 jukebox banality through the huge success of his 2001: A Space Odyssey, even though I had to admit that he had used the music with stunning effect.

With that as a background, I lay claim to the right of having strong opinions on new recordings of Zarathustra and do not hesitate to endorse the Gerard Schwarz performance on this CD. It is very, very different from the 1962 Reiner recording I compared it with; that one is a much more deliberate and solemn interpretation, almost liturgical in its gravity, perhaps a little old-fashioned (after all, Fritz Reiner was my long-deceased fathers schoolmate, one grade ahead of him, in Budapest). Schwarz takes a lighter, less reverential view of the music, which I happen to agree with (this is not Beethoven's Missa Solemnis); he presents a more episodic, less monolithic account of the work, but with unfailingly musical phrasing and many felicities of detail. The Seattle Symphony plays beautifully for him, maybe with a little less virtuosity than the Chicago Sym phony but also without the latter's disturbingly vehement string attack of recent years. In fact, the spread, weight and sheen of the Seattle strings in their big moments must be singled out for special praise; Gerard Schwarz deploys the first violins, violas, cellos and second violins in that order from left to right, with the basses behind the first violins on the left, and the resulting stereo effect argues powerfully for his seating preference. As for the "2001" opening, it is one up on just about all other versions; the organ pedal point has immense authority, and the declamatory strokes of the timpani project with amazing impact from the back of the orchestra. According to John Eargle, five sets of timpani sticks were auditioned before the recording session through the microphones and the recording equipment to find the ones that would sound just right without accent miking.

When it comes to Salome's dance, I am about as indifferent to it as a piece of music as I am partial to the composer's Nietzschean whoopee. It is unquestionably the world's best-orchestrated striptease accompaniment but not much more than that. Here it comes through with superb clarity of texture and highly impressive dynamics. The seldom-heard Intermezzo pieces are scored for a much smaller orchestra, but they are quite lovely and allow the Seattle forces to show their stuff in a more chamber-like vein that is the other side of the Straussian coin. All told, 71 minutes of music, good to the last drop.

Oregon Debut

"Bravura." Ottorino Respighi: Roman Festivals; Richard Strauss: Don Juan; Witold Lutoslawski: Concerto for Orchestra. The Oregon Symphony, James DePreist, conductor. Delos DICD 3070 (made in 1987).

The Oregon Symphony? You can scarcely expect the name to be meaningful to a Euro-Northeasterner like me. It turns out they have been around since 1895, but this 1987 album is their first one ever. Surprise, surprise-they are great! James DePreist, a Bernstein and Dorati disciple who happens to be the nephew of the immortal Marian Ander son, deliberately structured the program to be as demanding as possible for the orchestra's recording debut. He makes his point; the playing is definitely major league on this CD and perfect grist for John Eargle's mill.

The Oregon Symphony appears to have a somewhat smaller string choir than our largest orchestras, and the Arlene Schnitzer hall in Portland is not very large, but the recorded sound is nevertheless big, warm and full-bodied, at the same time preserving the intimacy of the acoustics. The opening Respighi work is not really my cup of cappuccino, more surface than substance, although I like the melodious third movement ("Ottobrata"), which would fit right into The Godfather. On the other hand, Toscanini used to per form all of these Respighi tone poems con amore, as if they were towering masterpieces, and who am I to contradict the Old Man? Suffice it to say that DePriest does full justice to the piece, which is studded with awesome sonorities tailor made for audio testing. Speaking of Toscanini, it is his 1951 mono recording of Don Juan, one of his finest efforts at the end of his career, that I used as the foil for DePriest's interpretation of the music. Astonishingly, the 84-year old maestro sounds younger than the fiftyish American in this unmistakably youthful work, possibly the most brilliant composition by a 24-year-old since Mozart, Schubert and Mendelssohn. Toscanini's drive, tautness of inflection and sheer exuberance are the essence of "bravura," next to which DePriest sounds a little careful and fussy, although in some passages his phrasing is almost identical. Overall, the Oregon performance is surpassed but not blown away (to use the favorite audio-freak expression) in this severest of avail able comparisons-not a bad result at all.

The Lutoslawski recording is the only version in print of this borderline commissar music, which won a government prize in Poland in 1955, a year after its completion and just before the beginning of de-stalinization. It is based on folk themes, assumes the name but not quite the quality of Bartok's great "Concerto for Orchestra," displays a Shostakovich-like skill in orchestration, sounds "contemporary" without making excessive demands on the listener, and generally provides light but intelligent entertainment while letting the orchestra romp with abandon. A couple of years later the composer was writing 12-tone music-you get the picture. DePriest apparently loves this piece and gives it the performance of a lifetime-simply stupendous.

This is the perfect audiophile album for three reasons:

(1) the music is good without being as spellbinding as, say, a Beethoven slow movement, so that one's attention does not stray from the fabulous sound, (2) the selections are complete opuses, rather than frustrating sampler-type chunks and (3) the orchestration is so varied from piece to piece that the audio equipment is exercised in every possible way. All that (a full 70 minutes of it) and John Eargle's very latest techniques, too-what are you waiting for?

Manuel de Falla

Manuel de Falla: Nights in the Gardens of Spain, The Three Cornered Hat (complete ballet). London Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz, conductor; Carol Rosenberger, piano; Della Jones, mezzo-soprano. Delos DICD 3060 (made in 1987).

I have no strong opinions about this music; I never paid too much attention to it, never bought a recording of it but always liked it, sort of, in the sense that I would turn up the volume of the car radio when it was playing. The concluding jota of the ballet score is, of course, a pop classical war-horse.

I have several reasons for including this CD here, not the least of which is the outstanding playing of the London Symphony Orchestra, showing what Gerard Schwarz can do as a guest conductor, away from his home team. Another reason is the unique recorded sound achieved by John Eargle in the stone-floored, church-like acoustics of St. John's Hall in London, a sound combining amazing clarity with just the right amount of reverberation. Still another is the special texture of Falla's orchestration, which is ideal for testing the transparency and transient response of audio equipment.

Having auditioned this album last among the four reviewed here, I came to the inevitable conclusion that my favorite John Eargle recording is the one I happen to be listening to.

As for the interpretation, it is satisfactorily idiomatic to someone whose understanding of things Iberian does not extend much beyond Don Quixote, Luis Bufiuel, paella and Rioja wine. Carol Rosenberger plays her concertante piano part beautifully; Della Jones is also excellent in her minor role; the playing time is 64 minutes, a little short for Delos but long for most other labels. Good show.

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[adapted from TAC, Issue No. 11 Winter/Spring 1988]

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Also see:

Box 392: Letters to the Editor

Cartridge, Arm and Turntable vs. the Groove: Who's Winning? [1977]