Recording Dates

[Gordon]

I don't have a score with bar numbering to hand. The IMSLP online versions have no bar numbering either. Can anyone give a guide to the time-point during the recording that the errant obbligato horn entry should be? I have the 1988 transfer on disc but can also access the mp3 stream of the GROC remastering via QOBUZ.

In your IMSLP score looks like bar 541 is 9 bars before Fig 20 on the bottom of page 153. That is the Peters score presumably used by Barbirolli.

The question remains how did those few bars 541-544 get lost and when was it first noticed? There must have been a take without the horn solo [why?- It sounds as if Nicholas Busch did not play his part for some reason and surely that would have been noticed if an error] that was unwittingly edited into the final LP master - or perhaps done knowingly in the absence of the correct bars. If noticed at the time of LP mastering it could have been fixed then. The fact that they did it again many years later suggests that there was no original take available in the EMI tape library and that's down to the producer.

Keener states that the missing horn notes were recorded without orchestra present [LPO not New Philharmonia] using "the master tape" so did the solo horn get mixed with a bare 4 bars of original orchestra? If not where did the orchestral bars come from?

We need someone with both LP and CD [or CD with and without] to compare.

[Bryn]

Thanks Gordon, it appears that little horn obbligato section is indeed missing from the GROC remastering. Later I will try and edit a couple of short extracts from both the GROC and 1988 remasterings and make them available for a few days via WeTransfer.com. By the way, 9 bars before Fig. 20 is top right of page 150 in the Revised Peters edition I was accessing via IMSLP, but that and the bars that follow are indeed those from which the horn obbligato is missing in the GROC. I might just try a bit of jiggery-pokery and drop the relevant section from the 1988 into the GROC.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

IIRC, the horn player just missed his cue - the rest of the orchestra played on ... and nobody noticed!!! For the original white cover reissue, Nicholas Busch went into the recording studio and played the missing bars, which were then dubbed onto the extant "music minus one" bars.

The GROC "restored" the missing part so that buyers would get the original version "as was".

[Bryn]

Well, I suppose you could call Watford Town Hall a recording studio. I forgot I had the GROC version in the "Sir John Barbirolli - The Great EMI Recordings" box". Just ripped that and am currently ripping the Scherzo from the 1988 remastering (HMV Classics).

Now there's a thing. The 1998 remastering in the "Sir John Barbirolli - The Great EMI Recordings" box" has the timings and improved dynamics of the GROC but includes the horn obbligato for the relevant section, so no need to pursue the jiggery-pokery further.

[Bryn]

For a few days, here is a link to short samples of the relevant section of the Mahler 5 Scherzo, from the GROC, SJBTGEMIR (i.e. "Sir John Barbirolli - The Great EMI Recordings) and the 1988 HMV CLassics transfers:

http://we.tl/7TBzB6X1Vj

[Gordon]

Thanks Bryn, now you hear it now you don't!! To be honest it is rather fleeting and the tempo is moving along nicely so easy enough to miss. Odd that the GROC used a master without and the JBS box with. What's a few bars among so many!!

Makes you wonder what "Remastered from original tapes" actually means!! Those 1960s analogue tapes will be quite old now and will not take kindly to too many replays that wipe the top surface off that contains all the high frequencies, one of the several risks of archived magnetic tape recordings.

One hopes they have the old machines to play them too - if one is being authentic that is. I think that EMI still used BTR3s at Kingsway in the late 60s but probably at Watford a mobile unit was used that may have used TR90s - familiar to engineers Stagg and Eltham who did a lot of location work [organ music eg] - or something else, perhaps an early Studer at EMI? By the time of the recording of the missing notes in 1987 surely a digital machine would be used.

[Petrushka]

For a few days, here is a link to short samples of the relevant section of the Mahler 5 Scherzo, from the GROC, SJBTGEMIR (i.e. "Sir John Barbirolli - The Great EMI Recordings) and the 1988 HMV CLassics transfers:

http://we.tl/7TBzB6X1Vj

Thanks for this, Bryn. I've often wondered just where the missing horn bit occurred. I have the 1988 HMV Classics transfer only.

[Parry1912]

Thanks, Bryn. I've only ever had the 1988 and the SJBTGEMIR issues so this was all new to me. Very interesting.