Post by fafnir August 2, 2007 (1 of 18)
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My experience with this recording predates its recording sessions by over a year. Since this statement, on the surface, makes no sense whatsoever, I must offer an explanation.
In the late 1950s, the radio station WBAI in New York was offering a series of delayed broadcasts of the CSO. In 1958, the CSO had played Das Lied with soloists Crista Ludwig and Richard Lewis with Reiner conducting. This concert was scheduled to be broadcast on WBAI, and I was prepared to record it with my trusty Concert Tone reel-to-reel machine at 15 ips. As soon as the performers' entry on the stage was announced, I started the tape recorder and ... the tape broke.
My howls were probably heard half way across Queens. Not to be deterred, I ripped out the broken tape and started taping again, capturing the remainder of the performance from the middle of the first song to the conclusion. Later I spliced in part of the first song of the Bruno Walter/Ferrier/Patzak recording to make the taping more or less complete. Needless to say, the transition between recordings in the first song was somewhat abrupt. This performance, which achieved legendary status, was one of my initial and most important introductions to the world of Mahler.
I was delighted when, over a year later, RCA announced that Reiner's recording of the work, coupled with Haydn's Symphony No. 88 was being released. However, Ludwig was replaced with Forrester. Apparently, if the dates given by RCA and by various Reiner discographies are correct, the recording occurred about a year later than the concert. This performance has never left my shelf - going from vinyl to CD to SACD - in almost 50 years.
Beyond any doubt, at least IMHO, it is a great performance, passionate and intense, not the least cold as it is sometimes accused of being. But perhaps I am prejudiced! Obviously, I should not and will not review it.
Concerning the sound: this is one of Living Stereo's more successful efforts. A wealth of detail is revealed that was previously hidden in the typically hideous RCA prior processing. No one will confuse it with current state of the art, but it is really not at all bad. Doubtless others will comment further.
There are times, very rare, when a recording is more than merely the documentation of a performance - it is a glimpse into the past. For me this is just such an instance.
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Post by Julien August 2, 2007 (2 of 18)
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Thank you for sharing this. I put it in my basket right away.
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Post by robstl August 2, 2007 (3 of 18)
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fafnir said:
*Lots of interesting things*
I've been looking forward to this, too, and I'm glad to hear it cleans up nicely. I had it on RBCD a long time ago, and thought the performance was excellent, the sound just ok. Hopefully it's in my mailbox in the next couple of days!
-Rob
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Post by Tootsie August 2, 2007 (4 of 18)
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I ordered it one month ago, and am still waiting for it. Amazon send me daily emails telling that the shipping is delayed till next day...
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Post by Beagle August 2, 2007 (5 of 18)
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Tootsie said: Amazon send me daily emails...
Likewise CD Universe. I ordered in early May, and received a weekly 'backordered' notice, and a despairing note begging for patience on Thursday -- but they shipped it on Sunday. One wonders what obstacles could fall in the path of such a classic re-issue, yes?
NOTE to Fafnir: I have Christa Ludwig on the 1975 von Karajan DG disc... still interested in splicing?
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Post by seth August 2, 2007 (6 of 18)
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Beagle said:
Likewise CD Universe. I ordered in early May, and received a weekly 'backordered' notice, and a despairing note begging for patience on Thursday -- but they shipped it on Sunday. One wonders what obstacles could fall in the path of such a classic re-issue, yes?
From:
From Mark Donahue at SoundMirror:
In the process of mastering the Living Stereo title Mahler: Das Lied von
der Erde, DSD engineer Dirk Sobotka and I noticed that there was a
change in the sound of the orchestra between the movements featuring
contralto Maureen Forrester and those featuring tenor Richard Lewis. We
discovered that, at the original recording session, one channel of the
three-track master tape was recorded out of phase. The problem was
discovered after the first day of recording and corrected for the second
day.
What made this problem so difficult to identify was that it appeared and
disappeared throughout the program. The symptom was that the imaging of
the orchestra behind the voice (which was firmly anchored in the center
of the stereo image, due to the use of a microphone just for the
soloist) would change in perspective. The solution to the problem was
simple: we needed to invert the phase on the channel in question. The
difficulty, however, was that the material from the first and second
days of recording were liberally edited together, thus distributing the
problem throughout the master.
Once this problem was discovered, we went through the master, edit by
edit, and determined which session each bit of tape was sourced from. We
then went through the three-track master and flipped the channel back to
its correct polarity. Once the repaired three-track master was complete, we created a new stereo mixdown of the restored master for the SACD
and D layers.
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Post by stvnharr August 2, 2007 (7 of 18)
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seth said:
From:
From Mark Donahue at SoundMirror:
In the process of mastering the Living Stereo title Mahler: Das Lied von
der Erde, DSD engineer Dirk Sobotka and I noticed that there was a
change in the sound of the orchestra between the movements featuring
contralto Maureen Forrester and those featuring tenor Richard Lewis. We
discovered that, at the original recording session, one channel of the
three-track master tape was recorded out of phase. The problem was
discovered after the first day of recording and corrected for the second
day.
What made this problem so difficult to identify was that it appeared and
disappeared throughout the program. The symptom was that the imaging of
the orchestra behind the voice (which was firmly anchored in the center
of the stereo image, due to the use of a microphone just for the
soloist) would change in perspective. The solution to the problem was
simple: we needed to invert the phase on the channel in question. The
difficulty, however, was that the material from the first and second
days of recording were liberally edited together, thus distributing the
problem throughout the master.
Once this problem was discovered, we went through the master, edit by
edit, and determined which session each bit of tape was sourced from. We
then went through the three-track master and flipped the channel back to
its correct polarity. Once the repaired three-track master was complete, we created a new stereo mixdown of the restored master for the SACD
and D layers.
It's nice to know that they have gone to all this trouble to make things correct. Nice to know that people still care!
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Post by seth August 2, 2007 (8 of 18)
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stvnharr said:
It's nice to know that they have gone to all this trouble to make things correct. Nice to know that people still care!
Sorta strange, though, that it took all these decades for RCA to finally give a damn and fix it.
And it's also illuminating that even in the "golden age" of classical recordings, labels would not eat the cost and redo the recording session, but instead knowingly release a defective product.
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Post by fafnir August 2, 2007 (9 of 18)
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Beagle said:
NOTE to Fafnir: I have Christa Ludwig on the 1975 von Karajan DG disc... still interested in splicing?
NOTE to Beagle: Thanks for the offer but -
Sadly, I no longer have the tape in question or other tapes that I made such as Starker/Reiner instead of Janigro/Reiner in Don Quixote.
The first song (the one that was ruined) is for tenor and orchestra. Having Ludwig wouldn't help.
Actually, the splice I made at the time was probably the worst in the history of recorded music.
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Post by fafnir August 2, 2007 (10 of 18)
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seth said:
From:
From Mark Donahue at SoundMirror:
In the process of mastering the Living Stereo title Mahler: Das Lied von
der Erde, DSD engineer Dirk Sobotka and I noticed that there was a
change in the sound of the orchestra between the movements featuring
contralto Maureen Forrester and those featuring tenor Richard Lewis. We
discovered that, at the original recording session, one channel of the
three-track master tape was recorded out of phase. The problem was
discovered after the first day of recording and corrected for the second
day.
What made this problem so difficult to identify was that it appeared and
disappeared throughout the program. The symptom was that the imaging of
the orchestra behind the voice (which was firmly anchored in the center
of the stereo image, due to the use of a microphone just for the
soloist) would change in perspective. The solution to the problem was
simple: we needed to invert the phase on the channel in question. The
difficulty, however, was that the material from the first and second
days of recording were liberally edited together, thus distributing the
problem throughout the master.
Once this problem was discovered, we went through the master, edit by
edit, and determined which session each bit of tape was sourced from. We
then went through the three-track master and flipped the channel back to
its correct polarity. Once the repaired three-track master was complete, we created a new stereo mixdown of the restored master for the SACD
and D layers.
This goes a long way to explaining the poor sound of all previous editions of this recording. I am thankful that the problem was finally identified and fixed to provide a satisfactory SACD.
I also wonder the since the error affects only one of the soloists, perhaps this offers a clue to explain the apparent inconsistencies in the dates of the original concert and recording. Was Lewis recorded after the concerts in 1958 and Forrester brought in to complete the recording session in November 1959? Most probably we will never know.
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