John Culshaw - Recording Producer

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

John Culshaw is best known as the Decca producer of Solti's pioneering studio recording of Wagner's Ring cycle. Listening to any Culshaw-produced recording suggests he may have been the finest ever. Comparing the Decca "Britten Conducts Britten Operas" has been an interesting pastime for the last few weeks. Culshaw presided over a selection of these, but these are the ones that seem to come alive; most were with engineer Kenneth Wilkinson, but when KW was working alongside other producers, there just wasn't the same vibrancy.
When John Culshaw moved to the BBC, the classical recording industry lost an inspirational figure. Somehow he was persuaded, by CBS, to make one final recording with his beloved Vienna Philharmonic for Bernstein's Der Rosenkavalier.

[Pianorak]

Overall a fair assessment, but one shouldn't forget Walter Legge. Also, John Culshaw didn't stay long at the BBC and it is generally thought that it wasn't quite the right job for him. He moved back into the music recording business, mainly as a freelance, spending quite some time in Australia.
He was also a prolific writer: The Sons of Brutus and A Place of Stone (his two novels), Sergei Rachmaninov; A Century of Music; Wagner, the Man and his Music; Ring Resounding, and Putting the Record Straight.
A Place of Stone was going to be filmed, however that project came to nothing because finance was withdrawn at the last minute.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I've read the fascinating "Ring Resounding", but regret not buying "Putting the Record Straight" when it was available. It fetches silly prices in the secondhand market.

[umslopogaas]

Post 2

Pianorak, arent you getting your companies mixed up? Legge was the machiavellian producer at EMI/Columbia. He was greatly loathed, but made superb recordings and could not be unseated because of his high technical reputation, and the fact that early on he signed up Maria Callas, their super-star who was totally loyal to him. He was eventually eased out, and was so widely disliked he never got another job.

Culshaw was with Decca, EMI's chief rival. He eventually left to work for the BBC, but regretted it, and left after a short period. He died soon after.

There's a lot about these people and the various conflicts within and between the recording companies in Norman Lebrecht's 'Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness' (2007, Penguin paperback edition 2008).

[Pianorak]

Post 2

Pianorak, arent you getting your companies mixed up? Legge was the machiavellian producer at EMI/Columbia. . .

I only wanted to point out that Legge was "the other" important producer - and well aware he worked for "the competition". I knew John Culshaw in the 1960s.

[Pianorak]

"Putting the Record Straight" . . . fetches silly prices in the secondhand market.

Indeed, you weren't joking - just checked. The only "bargain" to be had is the one book by him I haven't got: Reflections on Wagner's "Ring", Secker & Warburg. I might get that.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Yes, for all his faults, Legge was a legendary record producer. He and Culshaw were not exactly close friends.

[Ferretfancy]

Here's one Culshaw story that might amuse. Quite early in his BBC career the terrific director Barry Gavin made a studio music programme about Le Marteau sans Maitre, profusely illustrated with musical examples and complicated graphics on a blackboard.

Culshaw has recently arrived at the BBC, and summoned Barry to his office -" Nice programme" he said, " Could you manage an audience of more than thirty next time ?"

Luckily for BBC TV music, Barry went on to make some wonderful documentaries, vanished alas!

[gradus]

On Wikipedia I came across this recording of John Culshaw giving an interval talk about Act 2 of Die Walkure. If you haven't heard it and have the slightest interest in Wagner, do listen , it is simply magnificent.

http://www.operainfo.org/intermissions/intermissionClips.cgi?language=4&intermissionID=132&mediaID=16

[BBMmk2]

I can't remember his name, what was that Inaidan chap who was at EMI, later than the legendary Legge? But IMO, equally rises up to that status.

[rauschwerk]

You must be referring to Suvi Raj Grubb (1917-1999) who succeeded Legge at EMI and was, by all acounts, a much nicer bloke. According to Wikipedia, he produced Dennis Brain's recordings of the Mozart horn concerti.

[rauschwerk]

That Wikipedia article is very slipshod and has been written by someone who has half read this http://www.opusklassiek.nl/muziek_algemeen/grubb.htm which is cited by Wikepedia.

[Chris Newman]

Suvi Raj Grubb was brave enough to approach John Barbirolli about his infamous grunting which mostly occured at moments of great musical passion. At a recording playback:

“Sir John, what are we going to do about your, erm, singing?”
“Singing? Singing? What singing? Can’t hear a thing … nonsense! I can’t sing.”

In the light hearted banter someone suggested putting JB in a glass box.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I think JB's loudest grunting must be in the finale of his second recording of the Corelli-Barbirolli Oboe Concerto

[Roehre]

A record producer for (continental) Decca and Philips between 1947 and his untimely death in 1972 was Jaap van Ginneken. His recordings of nearly all Van Beinum records and Haitink's much lauded Debussy e.g., and under whose supervision all Philips Concertgebouw perfromances were recorded, including the Haitink Philips cycle, show a mastership similar to that of Culshaw, Legge and Grubb.

His idea to create the Concertgebouw-sound by recording the orchestra not seated at the platform, but from the centre of the Hall where the audience normally is seated, is straightforwardly genial. Nearly all successors as record producers of Concertgebouw recordings followed suit. At least one didn't: the CBS/Sony engineer who recorded Haitink/Perahia /CGO Beethoven concertos. Listen to these, and the orchestra is not really recognizable as the Concertgebouw orchestra.

A colleague who was trained by Van Ginneken was responsible for recordings made with western equipment and teams of East German orchestras, e.g. the Gewandhaus Beethoven cycle with Franz Konwitschny. In western Europe Philips issued these as Fontana recordings, in the East it was Eterna who produced and issued them.