Toscanini's Meistersinger
Matthew B. Tepper
pondered what I'm pondering as follows:
>
>I noticed that someone mentioned Toscanini's Meistersinger from '37.
>What are people's thoughts on this recording? Is it complete? I
>thought I remember someone complaining that the sound was terribly
>doctored.
There is a "close shave" at the very beginning of Act II, but apart
from maybe a measure and a half the recording is complete. The sound
is pretty poor, though this may be somewhat helped when some company
does the right thing and issues the newly-remastered version. One
thing which *can't* be helped, however, is the balance, which is
frankly awful.
The performance? Stellar!
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
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I noticed that someone mentioned Toscanini's Meistersinger from '37. What are
people's thoughts on this recording? Is it complete? I thought I remember
someone complaining that the sound was terribly doctored.
Thanks,
Fr
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AFT
wrote:
>>I noticed that someone mentioned Toscanini's Meistersinger from '37.
>does the right thing and issues the newly-remastered version.
The original selenophon recording was transferred properly by Seth
Winner in recent years, I presume (once I had a copy of a NY Times
article that DT cut out for me, including a picture of Seth in front
of a selenophon at the R&H Museum archives...the story detailed the
gadget, and how many opera broadcasts were recorded upon it during the
thirties.)
I was informed here on the ng (probably by Don Drewecki) that the
selenophon recordings of the Toscanini live operas were transferred by
NBC radio engineers to 78 rpm lacquer disks in 1942, which explains
much about the inconsistencies in sound quality.
According to Marsh, the selenophon was an "alternative" to the
magnetic tape recorder, which was then under development by both the
BBC and the German radio. The selenophon made a mechanical engraving
on a long tape of some kind of plastic material, as I understand it.
The BBC's early magnetic recorder used thin steel tape (if it broke,
some poor technician could have been sliced to bits since the machine
ran at an extraordinarily high rate of speed, so the huge monstrosity
was enclosed in a steel mesh cage.)
The German tape machine was essentially a modernization of Danish
inventor Valdemar Poulsen's telephone recorder of about 1906, which
magnetized a wire but had no amplification (the sound was noisy, weak,
and almost unintelligible.) The BASF factory provided a plastic tape
material coated with rust, and that replaced the wire. The tape was
biased by passing it over a permanent magnet to align the magnetic
domains; the recording head then operated in the narrow region of
linearity available to this primitive system, but there was
excruciating distortion outside the linear range. Soon the engineers
replaced the permanent magnet with another head that supplied a high
frequency current, to obtain a much wider linear magnetic flux region
for higher amplitude sounds: ergo, they obtained a dynamic range that
could record music. In 1937, Beecham took his LPO on a tour of Nazi
Germany, and gave a concert at the BASF plant, which was recorded on
tape. That is often cited as the "first" practical professional
musical tape recording (if indeed it is true, which one cannot
corroborate) and it was commercially issued, first by BASF on cassette
form, and then by World Record Club on LP (I had both copies.)
The sound of THAT was slightly inferior to the Toscanini selenophon
operas.
Here's how I would characterize the fidelity details of the Toscaninis
that are generally available NOW from the old re-dubs of 1942 (issued
first on private LP labels, then on Clyde Key's ATS or Melodram long
play vinyl sets, and now on a variety of CD transfers all stemming
from the same original sources):
1. Dynamic range is about 20 - 25 dB; not much wider than the
acoustical La Scala shellacs by Toscanini.
2. Tonality and spectral content is vastly inferior to commercial 78s
of the same years as the broadcasts of the live performances ('35-37.)
3. Mike placements were minimal, and picked up odd balances (the
tympani in the Magic Flute just overwhelms everything else!)
4. Loud parts above, say, mf or forte are very distorted, with both IM
and harmonic components. Some have evidence of both manual "gain
riding" by a technician, and an early, crude form of peak limiter that
"squashes" things (I DO hope that the latter was introduced by NBC in
the '42 transfers to 78 disk and is NOT on the original selenophon
masters, but no one has been explicit about this.)
5. If you have heard, say, the live broadcasts from the Met or Covent
Garden from the late thirties, you will find the Toscanini material
far inferior in quality.
6. Avoid any transfer that adds FAKE STEREO to these old things: why,
in God's name, would a bunch of echo and phase shifts and altered EQ
boosting improve such a deficient, old recording? Yet, some of the CD
producers seem to think that it will. If you are in doubt (and I
cannot advise, because I haven't bought any of the
Minervas/Grammofono/Iron Needle re-releases) be sure you get an iron
clad policy by your retailer permitting you to return them if you are
NOT satisfied: some stores now have warning signs about old historical
recording quality, and believe that by doing so they have obviated
their responsibilities to satisfy the customer.
I do hope that Don D. or someone familiar with the state of the art
sound of these at the R&H collection will continue where I left off
here, to correct any errors or amplify my incomplete descriptions.
AFT
Don Drewecki
If the NBC engineers transferred the Selenophone material in 1942
I didn't know about it. But I do know that Seth Winner and former
CBS engineer John Taddei rebuilt the sole existing Selenophone
(which I have seen), using new car fan belts and modern motors,
and electronics coupled to a new photocell that opened out the
frequency response considerably. The improvement in sound over
all the pirated editions is dramatic. The balance problems
remain, but for some of the operas alternate mike setups for
different broadcasts and companies exist, and they could be issued
too. It would be great if some Maecenas would come along and fund
a legitimate release of this material.
--
Don Drewecki
<dre...@rpi.edu>
Matthew B. Tepper
[lots of stuff that I agree with]
But I wanted to elucidate on one point here:
> 6. Avoid any transfer that adds FAKE STEREO to these old things: why,
> in God's name, would a bunch of echo and phase shifts and altered EQ
> boosting improve such a deficient, old recording? Yet, some of the CD
> producers seem to think that it will.
And, apparently, the head honchos and honchettes of, er, well, a certain
record company based in Wales whose name denotes a kind of cloud, think
exactly this sort of thing will make acoustic (and electrical) vocal
recordings sound "new."
AFT
added ambience appears in its own region, rather than simply being
folded into the 2-channel stereo platform: in "ordinary" stereo the
sound DOES indeed bear a passing resemblance to the rumbles of a
thunderstorm caused by those colliding nimbi!
AFT
John Wilson
There is a extensive excerpt from Act 3 of the Aug. 8, 1936
Meistersinger (with Lotte Lehmann) on the Eklipse set of the complete
'37 Meistersinger.
This 1936 excerpt has much better sound and mike balances than the '37
selenophone recordings. I have also heard a tape of a large chunk
from Act 1 of the same '36 performance. I'm not sure what the source
is or if a complete original exist. Perhaps Don knows more about
these.
John