Prejudice, Mozart, and inheritance

My ongoing task to rip my LP records to the music server has been going in fits and starts, but the past weekend I lighted on a boxed set of discs I inherited from my Dad : 11 or so Mozart symphonies (between no.25 and no.41 if you were wondering), 6 Overtures and other music played by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Otto Klemperer, and recorded by Columbia in the early to mid 1960s.

I have to admit I had neither a prediliction for either Mozart, in any great way, nor for the Germanic/Romantic school of conductors. Ever since David Munrow started bringing historical scholarship to musical performances of Medieval music, and the movement spread forward in time to the Baroque and Classical periods, I've really liked the lean, lithe and spritely performances of outfits such as Trevor Pinnock's English Concert, and Christopher Hogwood's Academy of Ancient Music. This was the true path to Enlightement, as it were.

So I approached Klemperer's "big band" Mozart with a cool detachment, and a let's get these "ripped" quickly for completeness' sake. After all, how enjoyble could such stodgy performances sound, of music that's never really done a lot for me? (As an ex-clarinettist I'd listened to, and tried to play, the Clarinet concerto, and I liked the G minor Symphony (no.40)). 

Unlike ripping a CD, ripping an LP can only be done in real time: you have to actually play the thing. You have to listen out for stuck grooves, and major ticks, after all, though I had washed and vacuumed the discs before playing so they were probably as good or better than new. Well, the whole 6-disc set was a real eye-opener, or should that be mind-opener. Not only were the Philharmonia playing with verve, charm, delicacy, emotion, and force, Herr Klemperer (by then about 80, I think) didn't conduct with the leaden-footed, stern approach I was expecting. Thin out the strings, change the timbre of the woodwind, and you could easily have one of the original instrument bands playing.

So what started out as a task became a really enjoyable time, discovering what I'd dismissed for decades! Aside from the performances, the recordings - made in the much lamented acoustic of the Kingsway Hall in London - were full-bodied and clear. Indeed a Philips CD issue I have of Symphony no.40 sounds dull and lifeless in comparison. If you add Klemperer's left-right division of 1st and 2nd violins (which should be mandatory in every single orchestral recording), the recordings can be considered almost state of the art.

Cover

Trawling the web I found the original LP sleeves to display on the server when playing the ripped files to complete the picture.

Another one of Dad's LP sets is of Dvorak symphonies. I'll approach this one with a mind already open.

Revive 45!

0boult-wagner-hmv10

Those of us over a certain age will remember the days of 7 inch vinyl 45rpm singles, and the radio shows that played them – at the time the only way to hear new music apart from going to gigs. When tracks became over certain age they became “revived 45s” . . .

In the heyday of the vinyl single (1950s – 1970s, I suppose), they all played at 45rpm, 33rpm being reserved for 12 inch LP (Long Play) albums. However, as time progressed, the more enlightened record labels realised that putting out a single on a 12 inch disc playing at 45rpm could have sonic benefits as the groove could be cut hotter giving a better dynamic range; and there might even be some space left on the disc for an extra track or two. There had been 4 track 7 inch EP discs (Extended Play) but these needed to be played at 33rpm and aside from giving more music than a single, had no other benefits.

12 inch singles were the sole preserve of pop groups until the prospect of digital recording became a possibility, and classical labels realised the potential of putting  out material on 45rpm discs. All LPs had to have the music signal compressed to some extent, as the medium couldn’t handle the large dynamic range of the recordings; otherwise, very quiet passages could get lost in the groove noise of the disc, and if you had the volume set to hear the quiet bits, the loud bits would be far too loud  (assuming the stylus didn’t jump out of groove in fright). However if you cut a record groove at 45rpm the increased velocity of the groove under the stylus gave it a slightly easier time when trying to cope with loud material, and recordings didn’t need to be compressed so much. Another benefit was that the groove could be kept further away from the centre of the record – where the tighter radius introduced distortion.

Nimbus Records were a company who pioneered 45rpm LPs (often with a playing time not that much shorter than the LP average), and soon EMI dipped their toe in the water with releases in their HMV 45 Dynamic Sound Series. These were reissues of some of their best orchestral recordings of popular classics. Trawling through my LP collection recently I found some of these revive 45s and have “ripped” them to files for playing from my music server – a happy amalgam of old and new technology.

Sir Adrian Boult was a conductor renowned for his recordings of English composers such as Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Parry, so his Wagner recordings of the mid 1970s were unexpected, and greeted with much praise. For the 1980 HMV 45 reissue of four Wagner “warhorses”, EMI decided to tie the marketing in with the film Apocalypse Now! which used Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries in the music score. Aside from this, pieces from Tannhauser, Lohengrin and The Mastersingers made up the release.

For my rip I chose to record the disc at 24bit resolution and 96Khz sampling frequency to make the most of the sound from the disc. At more than twice the settings that CD uses, this is perhaps overkill, but at least I know I’m getting all the music from the disc in the best possible quality. I’ve a clever computer program that eliminates clicks and scratches from vinyl recordings, but aside from that no processing is done.

For the equipment geeks out there, I use a Michell Gyrodec SE turntable with a Michell TecnoArm and Goldring G1042 cartridge feeding into a Graham Slee Era V Gold phono stage. The analogue signal goes into an M-Audio Transit analogue to digital converter, and thence into a Mac Mini running the Twisted Wave sound editor and Click Repair software. Files are saved as lossless FLAC files to save (a bit) on storage space over uncompressed WAV files whilst retaining all the data.

You can hear the conclusion of the Grand March from Tannhauser in this mp3 file (2.9Mb.) or for the full quality try the larger FLAC file (59Mb.)

Enjoy the revived 45!

 

Corruption in high places?

Now, I'm not one to give a monkey's about how football is run, really, but the recent crowning of Sepp Blatter as head of FIFA smacks of one-party state corrpution at it's most blatant. With a fifedom (should that be fifadom?) in control of billions of euros, the influence of such a dubious organisation spreads far beyond the football pitch. 

Nine of the 24 FIFA members who decided on the venues for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments have been accused of corruption. 2018 is going to that most democratic and transparent of countries, Russia, and 2022 to the footballing super-power of Qatar. Do they have grass in Qatar, let alone any football pitches of international standard? I suspect the Qatari national team would struggle in the Sunday league down at the local park, so the only way they'd ever get into the World Cup was to host it - and FIFA's greedy hand was outstretched ready for the petroleum generated dollars to be slapped into it.

Not that FIFA is the only sport mesmerised by Gulf oil. It seems the Bahrain Formula 1 Grand Prix - postponed because of the Arab-spring civil unrest putting a spanner in where it wasn't wanted - is now back on, causing great problems for the teams, their staff (because the season will be extended), and not least their insurance companies weighing up the likely bottom line if civil unrest has it's way with millions of dollars of racing cars, their kit, and their personnel. The reason it's back on? Well, Bahrain want the £40milion they paid Bernie Ecclestone to show some return. It's looking likely the Indian GP (their first, and at a track still not finished) will be pushed into December, and the Bahrain GP slotted in in its place. The right thing to do would be Bernie to give the Bahrainis back their money and walk away from them for a couple of years. But of course that'll never happen.

 

Pre-Posterous!

Here I am, having another go at a blog. You may, or may not (more likely) find something of vague interest, especially if you know me. Feel free to comment if you have something civil, or interesting, or amusing to say (preferably all three). 

How often there'll be anything new here is anyone's guess. Facebook friends of mine might find I autopost to my FB page as well - you have been warned.