Thank you to Ralph Moore for his perspicacious review of the new Tower Records Japan/Berlin Classics SACD of the splendid Franz Konwitschny Bruckner 5. This has been on Red Book CD from Berlin Classics, the successor to the East German Eterna label, for many years -- but unfortunately impaired by overuse of the Sonic Solutions NoNoise processing to eliminate tape hiss. The hiss went away, as did the life and sparkle of the original analogue master tape.
In 2017 Berlin Classics in partnership with Tower Japan undertook a remastering project for many of the label's classic recordings, now branded for European CD release as "Established 1947". The remastering was the essence of simplicity: analogue master tape signal fed directly into the DSD converter, with no "signal processing" whatsoever, to produce a high-resolution digital file for direct SACD manufacturing. For CD production, a downsampled PCM file was made.
I have the Bruckner 5 SACD, as well as the Konwitschny Beethoven Symphony SACD set, and both reveal sonic glories hitherto only hinted at...along with an x-ray exposure of all of the (minor) faults of the original master: some tape hiss, tape pre-echo, and more easily noticed edits. For me, these are small prices to pay for having these extraordinary recordings in extraordinary master-tape sound.
The Konwitschny Bruckner 5 and Beethoven symphonies are treasures of the recorded legacy of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, captured in its "golden age" of the central European orchestral tradition.
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