Our Summer BAL 16: Berlioz Harold in Italy

[richardfinegold]

This one rather died a death but I am a firm fan of the old Menuhin/Davis from 1962 although I enjoyed his LSO Live version too .

I do not have the Primrose /Toscanini but his recording with Koussevitsky is pretty special .

Then I guess it wasn't Trampler.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

That was my first into to the piece, but not for 40 years or so. Koussevitsky and Boston is my favorite historical recording.
I am forgetting the violist at present, but I think it was Trampler

Primrose was the soloist with Koussevitsky (as he was with Toscanini and Munch).

[HighlandDougie]

I am a firm fan of the old Menuhin/Davis from 1962

One of the highlights of the EMI Icon Colin Davis box.

[richardfinegold]

Primrose was the soloist with Koussevitsky (as he was with Toscanini and Munch).

I listened to this recording again yesterday after participating in this thread. My CD is a reissue on Dutton, probably from the late 1990s. The sonics are astonishing for a 1945 recording. I have a few modern versions but none can capture the elan of this one. Primrose is recorded to close up so that his sound dominates. In the liver performances that I've heard sometimes the Viola can be buried by the Orchestra. Paganini no doubt would have approved of the spotlighting of the soloist, but what would the composer have thought?
I first heard the piece in concert when I was at University. Barenboim was touring with the Orchestre de Paris and Zuckerman was the violist. I still have the lp that was issued about the same time. That performance is very dull, a pale reflection of the concert.

[BBMmk2]

I have Sir Colin Davis's recording on LSO Live, as part of that Berlioz box set they did. Do anyother boarders here have this recording and if so, what do they think of it?

[LeMartinPecheur]

I stuck with Lincer/NYPO/Bernstein for 40-odd yrs since I was a student but was recently quite taken with a charity-shop bargain, Causse/ORR/Gardiner though I've only played it in the car. Any other views on these??

[cloughie]

Zukerman/OP/Barenboim was a CBS LP - as with a number of Barenboims recordings at the time on that label have not been issued on CD.r

[Dave2002]

Zukerman/OP/Barenboim was a CBS LP - as with a number of Barenboims recordings at the time on that label have not been issued on CD.r

That's a shame, if true. It seems likely to me that many will not think the sound quality of some of those Barenboim recordings from CBS is/was particularly high, but I heard some tapes apparently taken from masters in the 1970s of some Barenboim recordings - though probably recorded in the UK with a British orchestra (LPO?), and the recordings sounded excellent on good equipment. Of course I may have "rose tinted" aural memory, but I doubt that I've heard much better SQ since. Partly that could be due to the equipment used, but at least it showed that at the time the recordings were OK - and my ears were younger too.

Some of the recordings are listed in the first post here - http://www.gramophone.co.uk/forum/ge...970s-cbs-elgar

[cloughie]

That's a shame, if true. It seems likely to me that many will not think the sound quality of some of those Barenboim recordings from CBS is/was particularly high, but I heard some tapes apparently taken from masters in the 1970s of some Barenboim recordings - though probably recorded in the UK with a British orchestra (LPO?), and the recordings sounded excellent on good equipment. Of course I may have "rose tinted" aural memory, but I doubt that I've heard much better SQ since. Partly that could be due to the equipment used, but at least it showed that at the time the recordings were OK - and my ears were younger too.

Some of the recordings are listed in the first post here - http://www.gramophone.co.uk/forum/ge...970s-cbs-elgar

Others I recall are Berlioz Romeo & Juliet (hlts) OP, Tchaikovsky 4 NYPO, French Music - L'apres-midi/Escales/DC2/Espana OP and agreat Mozart K364 with Zukerman and Stern, with a Stamitz Sinf Conc.
OP

[Dave2002]

It is sadly possible for the original tapes to have deteriorated, making it hard to recover the audio quality of some of the originals. I hope that Sony have taken appropriate steps to preserve some of this material, such as digitising (high quality?) it decades ago, and also trying to keep the tapes in as good a condition as possible.

Running a recording company, particularly one specialising in classical music, might be hard. If run purely for profit, then companies with archive material can very legitimately just decide to dispose of it, or donate it to those with a copyright interest. There's perhaps not, however, much profit to be made out of classical music, which raises the issues of whether companies ought also to be responsible for preserving recordings for posterity, which could increase their costs still further.

It may also be the case that lengthening the time period for copyright might pretty much ensure that by the time recordings come out of copyright, there is no usable original material left with which to make acceptable new copies.

The motivations of those running recording companies are really quite odd, and the financial operations could be difficult.