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| November 15, 2002
Do you remember the early days of CD, including the DDD (digital-digital-digital recording chain) fanatics it brought with it? I was working, to make ends meet, at a mail-order company at the time, and remember those customers who would have nothing to do with a disc unless it was all digital and had not one trace of hiss! Many analog recordings were issued in those days, simply because there were not many digital masters around. Gradually, people began to realize that the new medium could serve double duty, reproducing new all-digital material and preserving historic analog material in the digital realm, often with improved mastering. We are facing much the same situation as we go into the era of advanced-resolution DVD-Audio and SACD discs. Different philosophies are emerging among producers and consumers -- and between the new formats. DVD-Audio producers seem bent on making everything a multichannel affair, seeming to have little, if any, interest in preserving the original sound of older recordings in a medium that has more bits to reproduce them properly. Older classics are serving as the main DVD-A catalog, but in re-mastered multichannel versions. Warner and DTS do provide two-channel stereo tracks, but treat them as an afterthought. Silverline does not provide two-channel tracks at all. The company takes older titles like Donovan’s Fairytale and puts them into 5.1 DVD-A with backup 5.1 Dolby Digital tracks. SACD producers have, in general, displayed more reverence for past achievements. There are many SACD two-channel-only releases. Analogue Productions has produced advanced-resolution SACDs of titles by jazz greats Sonny Rollins, Chet Baker, and Bill Evans. Mark Levinson’s Red Rose recordings are all, so far, two-channel updates of two-channel originals. I frankly like this idea of preserving originals that combine the best qualities of vinyl and CD. So, I did not have to be coaxed into exploring the Cleveland Orchestra and Rolling Stones projects. For information on the Cleveland Orchestra SACDs, Sony put me in touch with Louise de la Fuente, producer of the new editions. She has proved an incredibly enthusiastic source; a person who really respects past musical achievement. She tells me that the Japanese originally requested the Cleveland recordings. The masters, except for the Beethoven Third Symphony, were in good shape, most of them three-track. She produced 20 Cleveland Orchestra SACDs, though only 15 have been released in the United States. None are hybrid; that is, they will play only on SACD-equipped players. The remastering of the Rolling Stones ABKCO catalog releases has received so much press that it seems redundant to say too much here. They are hybrid discs, and this means you can play them in a regular CD player, where they will deliver better sound than the original CDs, due to more careful mastering and, in most cases, owing to a trek leading back to the original master tapes. If you are able to play the SACD layer, the resolution will be even more astounding. So, then, I was happy as a pig in slop listening to the two-channel original masters reproduced in all their glory, until de la Fuente burst my bubble, by reminding me that different mediums cry out for different treatments. Most of the masters she had dealt with were three-track; the only reason they were done in two channels was that SACD, in its infancy, would only support that format. She is now working on older masters that are being transferred into 5.0 releases, with the original three-track master up front and very, very discreet surround in back. I will tell you about one such release, Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky, in my next column. But I will note now that in addition to this multichannel mix, Sony and de la Fuente also provide the two-channel mix, as you would have heard it on the stereo vinyl in the 1960s. That seems to be the best of all worlds: the original plus a new medium perspective. There is space on the disc for both. Anyone in the DVD-A camp interested? This month, these three made the quest for the fi worthwhile: Dvorak: Symphony No.7 in D Minor, Carnival
Overture. Smetana: The Moldau, Overture and Dances from The Bartered Bride.
Richard Strauss: Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel, Death
and Transfiguration
The Rolling Stones: Beggars Banquet
...Rad Bennett
Ultra Audio is part of the SoundStage! Network. |
Radical Sounds:
Preserving Legacies
George Szell turned the
Cleveland Orchestra into one of the world’s virtuoso ensembles. Nowhere is that in
more evidence than in this collection of Slavic music. The violin turns in the last Bartered
Bride Dance and Moldau are breathtaking. The woodwind players, both in solo and
section work, exhibit a fleetness that makes the hardest passage sound like water off a
duck’s back, and the brass instruments are always secure and thrilling. The extra
definition found on this SACD also lets us know that the string bass section was one of
the most precise in existence. Together, and under Szell’s exacting and spirited
guidance, the orchestra members produce music that is singularly buoyant and full of joy.
The sound is exemplary throughout. Listen to the solo timpani strokes at the beginning of
the second Bartered Bride Dance, or the delicate interweaving of strings, woodwind,
and harp in the "moonlight" section of The Moldau. In the same piece,
there are some awesome, very realistic bass-drum shudders as the fabled river runs through
the rapids. Everywhere, but especially in the third movement of the symphony and the last Bartered
Bride Dance, not only can one hear the resultant tone of the massed string orchestra,
but also sense the bow strokes. What a meeting of minds! Current processing using new
technology serves to realize the full engineering expertise of the past. 
These three popular tone poems
often end up on the same disc, no doubt a holdover from the vinyl days when Don Juan
and Till would fit comfortably on one side of an LP, with Death and
Transfiguration on the other. Szell’s collection was first issued in 1959 on
vinyl, as Epic BC 1011. It was one of the company’s first stereo releases and carried
the Epic Stereorama banner. Epic was a Columbia subsidiary and the Cleveland Orchestra
recordings were relegated to that label until 1964. Szell and the orchestra’s
management had been quite unhappy with Columbia, feeling that it did not properly promote
the orchestra, and lobbying that it should be on the CBS label alongside the New York
Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestra. Szell was particularly irritated at the
second-rate art used to create the jacket covers. When the orchestra’s management
threatened a move to RCA, Columbia relented. Beethoven’s Second Symphony, recorded in
October 1964, was the orchestra’s last recording to appear on the Epic label. No
matter what the label, this recording has been treasured throughout the years. It was one
of the first that Columbia, not yet Sony, trotted out for the launch of CD. Now it is
again at the forefront of another new technology, SACD. I have treasured it in all
formats, feeling that Szell is the only conductor who perfectly captures the sardonic wit
of Till, the ardent, romantic Don Juan, and the spiritual catharsis of Death
and Transfiguration. The various CD transfers were not bad at all, so the SACD
advantages are not startling and subtler than one might expect. Still, listen for the
realistic decay on the big cymbal crash near the beginning of Till, the delicate
nuance in the woodwind solos near the beginning of Death and Transfiguration, or
the magnificent metal burr in the sound of the French horns playing the big theme in Don
Juan, and you will catch the improvement. Though the recording is still a little
brighter than ideal, it is wonderfully transparent, with a very well defined soundstage.
It is now a listening pleasure, with no digital angst to dampen the experience.
I could never make it through all three pieces on CD -- now I do that and yearn for more. 
Originally recorded on tape machines that
ran a bit slow, the master has here been bumped back to the correct speed. This is a
change so small that no one would notice it outside an A/B comparison. The rest of the
differences are bigger. Both instruments and voices have a presence in SACD that is
lacking in all the CD releases, including the CD layer on this release. In
"Sympathy for the Devil," the composition documented by Jean-Luc Godard in his
feature movie, it is worth noting the all-important piano in the right channel. On CD, the
result sounds like a good recording of a piano. On SACD, with all the overtones unleashed,
it actually sounds like a piano. Mick Jagger’s voice fares exceptionally well on the
SACD tracks, where the microphone seems to disappear. Nothing between you and Mick, now
there’s a thought! Bass is more tightly focused in the SACD version. Do not get me
wrong, the CD tracks sound splendid, but the SACD cuts are even better. Since the disc is
hybrid, you can enjoy this title on your CD player until you upgrade. Then, you will be
ready with software that is forward and backward compatible. The original artwork is
reproduced on the otherwise undesirable Digipak that houses the disc. 