Comparison Recordings:
Kempe, Staatskapelle Dresden [ADD] EMI
CMS 7 64346 2
Op 40, Zubin Mehta, LAPO, Decca LP CS6608
There are a half dozen
or so recordings which sit upon the
landscape like magnificent mountain
peaks, landmarks it is said; works of
art where the skill in the recording
technique artistically speaking is equally
as remarkable as the music and the performance
they present. Some of them are now out
of copyright and should be entrusted
to great museums to be preserved along
with the Picassos and the Rembrandts.
But, now that this is possible, why
not publish them as well so everyone
can have a copy? And, really, what better
way to preserve them?
The story I heard about
this recording session is that after
the Heldenleben recording was
completed RCA had been rehearsing, adjusting
microphones, and recording all morning
on the 8th of March and no one was satisfied
with the results on Zarathustra
so far. The engineers left for lunch,
intending to begin recording again when
they returned. Reiner and the orchestra
were tired and wanted to call it a day,
so Reiner said, let’s just do it, the
concertmaster walked over and pushed
the start button on the recorder and
they played the work straight through.
When the engineers returned from lunch,
the musicians had gone home, and this
astonishing recording was "in the
can."
The work was not well
known so when it was released on monophonic
hi-fi LP it didn’t make much impact
(this was years before 2001).
But when it was released as a 7½"-per-second
two channel stereo tape every hi-fi
demonstration set-up of the time included
it. It came out on stereo disk and again
gained a legendary popularity. But RCA
decided it was primitive and hissy and
lacking in the deep bass range and had
Reiner re-record the work in its then
state-of-the-art stereo sound. This
performance was released on LP and was
pretty good but not outstanding, but
was for a long time the only one of
the two you could buy. Relatively recently,
RCA realised that the older tape was
better and utilising digital tape hiss
reduction methods, cleaned it up released
it on CD. Now here it is in a new, virtually
perfect digital version of the restored
original master on SACD!
The Kempe Zarathustra
boasts a broader undistorted frequency
range and is close competition for the
Reiner, but by comparison lacks a little
of the drama, sweep, concentration,
and realistic orchestral perspective
of the Chicago version. Some orchestral
balances in the Kempe version are a
bit odd, suggesting perhaps one too
many microphones. The violin solo is
superbly played, however. Kempe’s newer
analogue sound is an advantage; in fact
this was a four channel master and could
be issued some day as a surround sound
DVD-Audio. The Karajan version is good,
too; it’s the one used in the sound
track to 2001.
Zarathustra
is at times almost Stravinskian in the
transparency and starkness of is orchestration,
whereas Heldenleben is more often
lush and heavy by contrast, and this
may be why Reiner’s Heldenleben
is less notable, showing up, more than
at any time in Zarathustra, that
this is a 50 year old recording. Reiner
is at its best in sections 1, 4, and
5, but is a little too dignified to
build on the satire of the "critics"
section. My preferred version has always
been with Zubin Mehta and the LAPO on
Decca, part of a series with this conductor
and orchestra which in my mind ranks
comparable to the series with Reiner
and the CSO in terms of the number of
great recordings which issued from it,
including a superlative Alpine Symphony
and Holst Planets; but unfortunately
not many of these Decca recordings ever
made it to CD and I don’t think any
are currently available. Mehta’s later
digital remakes with other orchestras
have been uniformly disappointing. I
also enjoyed the Antal Dorati/Minnesota
Orchestra version of Heldenleben.
But my current favourite Heldenleben
is, again, from the complete Strauss
orchestral collection by Kempe and the
Staatskapelle Dresden. Reiner conducted
at Dresden where a number of Strauss
premiers were held. The Kempe recordings
are somewhat reserved and balanced,
recorded with rich detail — the violin
solo is, again, the best I’ve ever heard
— differing from these "high energy"
American versions which can tend at
times to be overly monumental.
Some recording engineers
of my acquaintance have reservations
about DSD, while others I don’t know
praise it to the skies. Sony is able
to collect a large licensing fee for
its use, so it must have some virtues.
I suspect like many new things there
are some bugs in the system to be worked
out and one’s enthusiasm depends on
his experiences with it. This series
of RCA Living Stereo restorations on
SACD is the finest use of DSD I’ve encountered.
In every case where I’ve been able to
compare, the CD tracks on these Living
Stereo hybrid SACD are very noticeably
superior to the previous CD-only releases,
so even if you already own the CD and
don’t own an SACD player, you may still
want to buy this disk. But keep in mind
that none of the tracks on this disk
will play on a Sony DDU 1621 DVD ROM
computer player.
Paul Shoemaker
Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Fritz Reiner 
RCA/BMG
- LIVING STEREO - 82876-61389-2 [75.40] 
