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Ludwig van
BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Piano Concerto No.5 in E flat major Op. 73 Emperor (1810)[36:14]
Artur Schnabel
(piano)
London Symphony Orchestra/Malcolm Sargent
rec. 24 March 1932, Abbey Road Studio No. 1 PRISTINE
AUDIO PASC001 [36:14]
A few by now usual preliminaries regarding Pristine
Audio’s new
XR technology for those who’ve not previously encountered my
reviews. XR is a claimed miracle of the transfer engineer’s
art: go to their website for
specifics. They claim that pre-1945 78s now have their audible
upper frequency range increased from between 5-6 kHz to somewhere
between 11-13 kHz actually going further, boldly announcing
that these transfers render “all previous transfers and restorations … entirely
obsolete.” Since the firm has been embarking on a wide programme
of XR restorations this is a powerful claim. A modern recording
of the work in question is taken and utilised as a reference
file – as was the case in the bass-stiffening and percussion-enhancing
in the famous Heward recording of the Moeran Symphony released
on Divine Art. I’ve reviewed his XR work on Kathleen Long’s
post-war, 78-based, Fauré Deccas (see review)
which I liked, was disappointed by the Thibaud-Cortot Kreutzer sonata
(see review),
remained solidly ambivalent about the Weingartner Eroica (see review)
and noted the interventionist implications of the piano work
in Hüsch’s Schubert – though here the sonic improvements
in immediacy were certainly apparent. I noted the famous
VW conducted Sixth Symphony as another way of doing things
transfer-wise (see review).
This is a famous recording and the most
recent incarnation is on Naxos (see
review).
There are other transfers, prominently
the Pearl set of all the Schnabel-Sargent
concerto recordings on GEMM CDS9063
– allied to the fascinating Izler Solomon-conducted
1947 recording of the Fourth. As before
what’s most important is the nature
of the transfer philosophies involved.
Pearl retains the most surface noise
but has a laudable clarity; Naxos is
fine, with less surface but retained
upper partials; one could go either
way, dependent on one’s priorities.
The XR offers a rigorously interventionist
stance. Bass reinforcement has clearly
been graphed onto the performance. The
endemic wiriness captured in the original
HMV has become tamed and solidified
by the XR process. The piano spectrum
has also been brought forward and more
“clarified.” The process has smoothed
out the orchestral attacks, some of
which sounded brittle in the 78; the
degree of warmth seems to equalise things
downwards and to give the LPO greater
solidity and warmth. Is it my imagination
or do the horns sound more rustic on
Naxos and Pearl, more cosmopolitan in
the XR? Schnabel’s monumentally coarse
introduction to the finale also sounds
smoothed over in the XR.
Once again XR is engaging in a war with the original recording, putting
things to rights, changing perspectives, adjusting balances,
and so on. If you can accommodate such an approach this transfer
offers a quite radical solution. A more central recommendation
however has to remain the Naxos; the Pearl offers discographic
prizes of its own.
Jonathan Woolf
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