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Koussevitzky's Sibelius
Posted by Evan Blackmore on April 23, 2021, 2:54 am
I suppose whenever anyone calls something a “first release” or “first recording,” some bilious Beckmesser somewhere writes to dispute it. On this occasion I’m sorry to be the pestilent nuisance in question.
On the Friday April 23rd 2021 review index page, the live Koussevitzky Sibelius recordings recently issued by Pristine Audio are described as “previously unavailable.” However, William Kreindler’s excellent review makes no such assertion.
In fact, all the symphony recordings are already available from St Laurent Studio. YSL 78-843 has the 1945-10-13 Symphony No 1 (coupled with a 1946-04-20 No 7). YSL 78-844 has the 1945-10-27 No 2 (coupled with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio espagnol). YSL 78-845 has the 1946-01-05 No 5 and the 1946-03-09 No 6. Unfortunately all the St Laurents are, like the Pristines, only CD-Rs. However, they are beautifully clear, crisp, incisive transfers, clearly taken from high-quality source material. I’m sure it’s good to have these performances available from two reputable companies with such radically different policies (St Laurent does a lot less acoustic manipulation than Pristine, a question on which I take no side whatsoever!).
I suspect the recordings of the three short works have also been issued before, but the alleged recording dates vary so much that only direct comparison could settle the question.
True pressed CDs of some of these recordings were issued by AS Disc in 1989, although in cracklier sound. AS 558 has the 1945-10-13 No 1 (coupled with Swan of Tuonela). AS 562 has the 1946-03-09 No 6 (coupled with Finlandia and a 1943-12-25 No 5 [definitely not the 1946-01-05 recording]). I think AS also issued others, which I didn’t obtain.
What a shame there seems to be no surviving Koussevitzky performance of No 3 or No 4! He would have done both excitingly.
These days, small independent labels like St Laurent - which have no distribution - can only produce on CD-R and basically do so on-demand. Moreover, they also offer most of their catalogue as high-quality WAV downloads.
AS Disc who produced around 24 BSO discs, as you correctly say, did produce these as true pressed CDs. As did LYS, who also had a Koussevitzky edition (I can't remember how extensive that edition eventually was - I only have nine of them). The end result of this was twofold: they were issued at very low bitrates (today they would be unacceptable) and the CDs, notably AS Disc, have a very high bronzing rate making them unplayable.
What is also clearly different today, and St Laurent benefits from this, is the sources of their performances. Many Koussevitzky releases now come from sources much closer to the original broadcast; AS Disc (and LYS) were sometimes copies of copies of copies. But I do have a preference for the ysl Koussevitzky - Sibelius or otherwise; the lack of interference with the engineering makes it as authentic to the original concert as possible.
Times have changed, and with it the quality of what we now have.
Previous Message
I suppose whenever anyone calls something a “first release” or “first recording,” some bilious Beckmesser somewhere writes to dispute it. On this occasion I’m sorry to be the pestilent nuisance in question.
On the Friday April 23rd 2021 review index page, the live Koussevitzky Sibelius recordings recently issued by Pristine Audio are described as “previously unavailable.” However, William Kreindler’s excellent review makes no such assertion.
In fact, all the symphony recordings are already available from St Laurent Studio. YSL 78-843 has the 1945-10-13 Symphony No 1 (coupled with a 1946-04-20 No 7). YSL 78-844 has the 1945-10-27 No 2 (coupled with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio espagnol). YSL 78-845 has the 1946-01-05 No 5 and the 1946-03-09 No 6. Unfortunately all the St Laurents are, like the Pristines, only CD-Rs. However, they are beautifully clear, crisp, incisive transfers, clearly taken from high-quality source material. I’m sure it’s good to have these performances available from two reputable companies with such radically different policies (St Laurent does a lot less acoustic manipulation than Pristine, a question on which I take no side whatsoever!).
I suspect the recordings of the three short works have also been issued before, but the alleged recording dates vary so much that only direct comparison could settle the question.
True pressed CDs of some of these recordings were issued by AS Disc in 1989, although in cracklier sound. AS 558 has the 1945-10-13 No 1 (coupled with Swan of Tuonela). AS 562 has the 1946-03-09 No 6 (coupled with Finlandia and a 1943-12-25 No 5 [definitely not the 1946-01-05 recording]). I think AS also issued others, which I didn’t obtain.
What a shame there seems to be no surviving Koussevitzky performance of No 3 or No 4! He would have done both excitingly.
Yes, bronzing was certainly a problem with many smaller CD companies of the late 1980s and 1990s. I should specify that my copies of these particular AS Discs never bronzed and still play perfectly. I can't imagine that more than one batch of them was ever pressed, so I would think other copies of them would also remain playable.
I fear that our society is becoming less and less interested in long-term preservation of historical material. As long as I can enjoy it today, I don't care whether I (or anyone else) will be able to play it in 20 years' time. Vinyl (as long as it was never played!) was more stable than CD, CD than CD-R, and so on.
The publishing house Eisenbrauns once posted a superb April Fools' Day piece demonstrating that the ideal medium for long-term data storage was ancient Mesopotamian baked clay tablets. Durability 4000+ years, far exceeding paper, let alone computer files and other current media; preservation unimpaired by flood, and actually improved by fire; etc., etc. It added up to a remarkably strong case! Not, unfortunately, a medium that would be much help in the long-range preservation of Koussevitzky.
It's interesting you should mention vinyl. The one Koussevitzky performance I was always trying to find was the 1944 Hunter College Rachmaninoff Second. This has inexplicably never had any CD issue (and to my knowledge still hasn't), though was given a very good release on LP in Canada which I eventually tracked down in unplayed condition. I've only used the LP once - to have it transferred as a digital file; I don't expect to play the record again any time soon.
One thing I will generally say about the CDs issued by labels like AS Disc, LYS, Hunt, Arkadia - and there are many, many others - is they did very, very little filtering of the original source material that they had. You may indeed have had to tolerate some very poor sound, but personally this is much better than the very over-compensated search for a perfect sound model we get today - even on old recordings. There have been in recent years - and I won't name the labels - some bad examples of remastering, even of Koussevitzky performances, compared with efforts back in the late 1980s.
DG, incidentally, used to stuff a foam layer (to prevent the CDs scratching if they fell off the spool) in their double CD cases back in the 1980s/1990s. People are only in recent years starting to discover that these, too, are making discs unplayable.
I'm certainly no dinosaur, but there was a lot wrong with LPs, but it seems much less wrong with them than we would ever get to experience with CDs, let alone the digital revolution that was to follow that one.
Previous Message
Yes, bronzing was certainly a problem with many smaller CD companies of the late 1980s and 1990s. I should specify that my copies of these particular AS Discs never bronzed and still play perfectly. I can't imagine that more than one batch of them was ever pressed, so I would think other copies of them would also remain playable.
I fear that our society is becoming less and less interested in long-term preservation of historical material. As long as I can enjoy it today, I don't care whether I (or anyone else) will be able to play it in 20 years' time. Vinyl (as long as it was never played!) was more stable than CD, CD than CD-R, and so on.
The publishing house Eisenbrauns once posted a superb April Fools' Day piece demonstrating that the ideal medium for long-term data storage was ancient Mesopotamian baked clay tablets. Durability 4000+ years, far exceeding paper, let alone computer files and other current media; preservation unimpaired by flood, and actually improved by fire; etc., etc. It added up to a remarkably strong case! Not, unfortunately, a medium that would be much help in the long-range preservation of Koussevitzky.
Yes, recent efforts to improve old recordings remind me of recent efforts to improve old oil paintings. In some cases the results are indisputably excellent, but in other cases one wishes the "restorer" hadn't tried to fix what wasn't broken in the first place!