More on Mercury Living Presence recordings

[Dave2002]

This article about Mercury Living Presence is interesting - http://www.stereophile.com/content/f...AdwZQY0F1Vz.97
Note the comment about the use of microphones with a peaky treble, to capture the high frequencies before they die away. Also, the later recordings only used one such microphone centrally, as the mics with the extended treble were effectively hand made, and became scarce.

There is also discussion about whether the recordings made to film or to three track recorders sound better.

I now have the three recently issued (last few years) boxed collections, and may have a few other individual CDs picked up at charity shops, plus also one or more SACDs. According to the article listed there were about 300 records made. Not all of these will be of interest to classical music collectors, but it would be quite interesting to have a complete list, and also to know which ones have been transferred/released to CD or SACD or other formats.

Currently I'm listening to Hi-Fi a la Española and Popovers 434 349-2 which I picked up in a charity shop. Not my everyday listening, but makes a change. I don't think that one's in any of the big boxes. Just got to Finlandia - the recordings do sound slightly dated, but it's hard to put a finger on exactly why. Perhaps it's the relatively close mic configuration which does that - the mics were apparently just above the conductor's head. The dynamic range doesn't sound anything like as wide as some more modern recordings, so was that done by controls, or were orchestras just told to play loud passages quietly?

[richardfinegold]

This article about Mercury Living Presence is interesting - http://www.stereophile.com/content/f...dXtKDbX2ME3.97 Note the comment about the use of microphones with a peaky treble, to capture the high frequencies before they die away. Also, the later recordings only used one such microphone centrally, as the mics with the extended treble were effectively hand made, and became scarce.

There is also discussion about whether the recordings made to film or to three track recorders sound better.

I now have the three recently issued (last few years) boxed collections, and may have a few other individual CDs picked up at charity shops, plus also one or more SACDs. According to the article listed there were about 300 records made. Not all of these will be of interest to classical music collectors, but it would be quite interesting to have a complete list, and also to know which ones have been transferred/released to CD or SACD or other formats.

Currently I'm listening to Hi-Fi a la Española and Popovers 434 349-2 which I picked up in a charity shop. Not my everyday listening, but makes a change. I don't think that one's in any of the big boxes. Just got to Finlandia - the recordings do sound slightly dated, but it's hard to put a finger on exactly why. Perhaps it's the relatively close mic configuration which does that - the mics were apparently just above the conductor's head. The dynamic range doesn't sound anything like as wide as some more modern recordings, so was that done by controls, or were orchestras just told to play loud passages quietly?

I read that Stereophile article a while back. It is a nice change from one of their regular Columnists, Art Dudley who routinely bashes MLP.
I bought the first two Mercury boxes but never shelled for the third. The only items in III that really appealed were the Paray; the rest of it seemed like barrel scraping.
The 35 mm film tape MLP are the real standouts for me sonically. I think Everest made better use of 35 mm than MLP, which probably added it to keep pace with their rival.

[Lordgeous]

I think the best of the MLP have a remarkable "realness" about them, a sense of really being 'in the hall'. Sadly not much of the repertoire appealed to me but as an ex-purist recording engineer I admired their philosophy and some of their better results. Everest too. I still have vinyl copies of some - must dig them out and have a listen. PS Link above doesnt seem to work.

[Richard Tarleton]

The techie bits are above my head, but the Janos Starker Bach Suites recordings (made in 1963 and 5, with the three mics) are superb - they were my intro to the Bach suites on LP, and still the most played of my several versions on CD.

[Dave2002]

I think the best of the MLP have a remarkable "realness" about them, a sense of really being 'in the hall'. Sadly not much of the repertoire appealed to me but as an ex-purist recording engineer I admired their philosophy and some of their better results. Everest too. I still have vinyl copies of some - must dig them out and have a listen. PS Link above doesnt seem to work.

I'm interested in the Everest issues. I have several, but most of them seem to be of UK orchestras (Halle, LSO, LPO) with British conductors - Boult, Barbirolli, and also Goossens. There are a few American orchestras - the Pittsburgh SO with Steinberg in Brahms, and the Stadium SO of NY with Stokowski. There is also one of Aaron Copliand but with the LSO. So, on balance were these mostly recorded in the UK with UK engineers, or were they recorded by American teams? Did Everest have similar philosophies of recording to Mercury perhaps?

I have found another article about Mercury which is also very interesting - I'll put up a link next time I visit this thread.
PS: the previous link was fixed in the original posting.

[makropulos]

I'm interested in the Everest issues. I have several, but most of them seem to be of UK orchestras (Halle, LSO, LPO) with British conductors - Boult, Barbirolli, and also Goossens. There are a few American orchestras - the Pittsburgh SO with Steinberg in Brahms, and the Stadium SO of NY with Stokowski. There is also one of Aaron Copliand but with the LSO. So, on balance were these mostly recorded in the UK with UK engineers, or were they recorded by American teams? Did Everest have similar philosophies of recording to Mercury perhaps?

I have found another article about Mercury which is also very interesting - I'll put up a link next time I visit this thread.
PS: the previous link was fixed in the original posting.

Everest was an American company founded in 1958. Here's some basic information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everest_Records

Though they had a similar philosophy (three mics, recording on film and so on), the results are - to my ears - radically different. Again, like Mercury, they recorded quite a lot in Europe, and there are some very interesting discs (the likes of Boult's Mahler 1 and Shostakovich 6, and the Copland 3rd Symphony you mention, conducted by the composer), but I find that the sound is often lacking in focus (Boult's Job recording made in the Albert Hall is by far the least satisfactory of his five versions), and I tend to cherish these records in spite of the sound quality rather than because of it. Mercury were altogether more successful.

[richardfinegold]

Everest was an American company founded in 1958. Here's some basic information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everest_Records

Though they had a similar philosophy (three mics, recording on film and so on), the results are - to my ears - radically different. Again, like Mercury, they recorded quite a lot in Europe, and there are some very interesting discs (the likes of Boult's Mahler 1 and Shostakovich 6, and the Copland 3rd Symphony you mention, conducted by the composer), but I find that the sound is often lacking in focus (Boult's Job recording made in the Albert Hall is by far the least satisfactory of his five versions), and I tend to cherish these records in spite of the sound quality rather than because of it. Mercury were altogether more successful.

The leading light behind Everest was Bert Whyte, who was a polymath of the music business but didn't have the depth of knowledge of Mercury's team of Fine and Cozart. Whyte did premiere recording on 35 mm ('movie') tape, and Mercury soon copied that. The Everest 35 mm recordings enjoyed a brief resurrection on DVD-A and really expensive 200 gram vinyl. I have some of the former and they are superb sounding, but the performances are usually second tier, imo.

I find the Mercury recordings a bit of a mixed bag. Some are stunningly natural with excellent ambience. Others can be dull, murky and decidedly inferior to contemporaneous recordings by Decca, RCA and other labels

[PJPJ]

I'm interested in the Everest issues. I have several, but most of them seem to be of UK orchestras (Halle, LSO, LPO) with British conductors - Boult, Barbirolli, [snip]

Checking with the Barbirolli Society, it seems the Everest release claiming recordings by Barbirolli has been mis-attributed. Barbirolli didn't record for Everest. Some of the pieces on the CD have been shown to be Theodore Bloomfield's with the Rochester Philharmonic. Coincidentally, the Rochester band included members of the Eastman who recorded so prolifically for Mercury.

[Dave2002]

Checking with the Barbirolli Society, it seems the Everest release claiming recordings by Barbirolli has been mis-attributed. Barbirolli didn't record for Everest. Some of the pieces on the CD have been shown to be Theodore Bloomfield's with the Rochester Philharmonic. Coincidentally, the Rochester band included members of the Eastman who recorded so prolifically for Mercury.

I wonder how that happened, and why it is still being perpetrated.

[cloughie]

I wonder how that happened, and why it is still being perpetrated.

Where I think there was a link, not with Everest but Mercury who were for a time in the 50s distributed by Pye/Nixa and some of the Barbirolli recordings were made by Mercury engineers. Also Everest recordings appeared on the Top Rank label, also distributed by Pye. Also this may account for masters getting in the wrong place and Halle Pye recordings such as the Ravel collection ending up on the latest badly edited Everest EVERCD releases - it is EVERCD004. Most of this CD previously appreared on the EMI Phoenixa CD after EMI acqired the Pye classical catalogue. The migration of rights and labels has an interesting history.

[PJPJ]

Where I think there was a link, not with Everest but Mercury who were for a time in the 50s distributed by Pye/Nixa and some of the Barbirolli recordings were made by Mercury engineers. Also Everest recordings appeared on the Top Rank label, also distributed by Pye. Also this may account for masters getting in the wrong place and Halle Pye recordings such as the Ravel collection ending up on the latest badly edited Everest EVERCD releases - it is EVERCD004. Most of this CD previously appreared on the EMI Phoenixa CD after EMI acqired the Pye classical catalogue. The migration of rights and labels has an interesting history.

I think you'll find when comparing the Phoenixa and Everest CDs that the performances of the common works are quite different. Two of them are by Bloomfield and the Rochester, and the other two, from memory, are actually mono.

[PJPJ]

I wonder how that happened, and why it is still being perpetrated.

Carelessness. There are rather more dubious recordings by Furtwangler which keep being re-issued even they were shown years ago to be the work of other conductors and orchestras. Melodiya, for example, produced a fine series of WF recordings, well-transferred to CD, which included several of these dubious recordings.

D'Albert's Tiefland Overture was never performed by WF (nor was Glauzonv's Stenka Razin for that matter), in the same way that the Everest so-called Barbirolli release has a work which Barbirolli never recorded (verified by the Barbirolli Society), Bolero. The so-called Barbirolli release first appeared after Everest had been sold, ie it was not in the original Everest catalogue. It seems likely that the Bloomfield tape (an original Everest recording) was mis-filed at some stage and continued to be until just before the most recent reissue of the complete original catalogue.

An article by David Patmore on Everest oddities appeared in Classic Record Quarterly.

http://evereststereo.com/

http://evereststereo.com/album/sdbr-3060/

[cloughie]

I think you'll find when comparing the Phoenixa and Everest CDs that the performances of the common works are quite different. Two of them are by Bloomfield and the Rochester, and the other two, from memory, are actually mono.

Interesting!

[Bryn]

I think you'll find when comparing the Phoenixa and Everest CDs that the performances of the common works are quite different. Two of them are by Bloomfield and the Rochester, and the other two, from memory, are actually mono.

Back in 1994 these so-called Hallé/Barbirolli recordings of Bolero, DeC Suite 2, La Valse and Rapsodie Espagnole were issued on the Fat Boy label. The copyright was ascribed to TKO Records Ltd, and yes, Bolero and DeC were in mono.

[Dave2002]

An article by David Patmore on Everest oddities appeared in Classic Record Quarterly.

http://evereststereo.com/

http://evereststereo.com/album/sdbr-3060/

Probably/perhaps this one, or maybe this is a similar/related article - Patmore, David and Lonn Henrichsen. 'The ascent and descent of Everest Records - part 1', Classic Record Collector 13/48 (Spring 2007), 42-8.

Is the text available on line?

What is "DeC Suite 2" mentioned by Bryn?