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SOTA 1956 And it ws very very good
http://www.mediafire.com/?kz9mcygqoln
http://www.mediafire.com/?o2ltxgfnyyj Stereo Flacs Bartok Concerto For Orchestra Ernest Ansermet SRO Oct 1956 Victoria Hall recording session Produced by James Walker Engineered by Roy Wallace 3 Newuman mics on the Decca Tree Ampex tape deck Roy Wallace designed mixer Michel Schwalbe leader Andre Pepin Flute Roger Reversy Oboe Leon Hoagstaol Clarinet Henri Helaerts French Bassoon Edmond Leloir Horn Peerless Paolo Trumpet Pierre Aubapan Trombone Sourced from an open reel tape- 4 track 7 1/2 ips Revox A-77 Mark III This has appeared on CD in Japan and on the EMI Great Conductors 2 cd set in bad and worse sound caused by using an equalizer as a panning device to add more presence and bring the SRO out of Victoria Hall and into YOUR listening room Enjoy Jeffrey "Abbedd" Powell Design, Manufacturing, Acoustical Engineer and EDT* Designer of the mouthpiece played by the most important, modern and influential wind player of the last 40 years "Music not Audio" *Educated dial twiddler ________ In 1918 an Orchestra was needed to suit the purposes of the Orchestral and Opera fans of the French speaking part of Switzerland (Suisse Romande). Who better to create and build this Orchestra than the man who had proved himself so well as Music Director of Diagalev’s Ballet Russe since 1915? Who better than a man who played the Piano, Violin, Clarinet and Trumpet? And a man who had his own specific Orchestral sound in mind. There was no better man than Ernest Ansermet. To create an Orchestra that would be able to achieve the sound that Ansermet wanted, L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande(SRO) had strings that were hired from Belgium and Italy. The winds from France and the brass from Vienna. But it is too simplistic to say that the Ansermet sound had Belgian and Italian Strings, French winds and Viennese brass. This is what Ansermet used as the best way to start to achieve his sound. He altered each section to fit his vision. For example, the winds played in a modified French style. All the good qualities of the amazing way the French have with winds were retained without the bad qualities that Ansermet did not like. This modified method can only be called the Ansermet method. No other Orchestra’s winds played this method so that the wind section of the SRO is instantly recognizable. Vibrato was prohibited. Even the strings were denied this crutch: “He very often asked the strings section to play on the fingerboard, without too much vibrato and with long strokes of the bow. In this connection, he liked to quote Leopold Mozart (Father of Wolfgang Amadeus the Composer and the leading Violinist of his time) who recommended playing without too much vibrato so as to retain the expression of the Music. In using the strings in this particular way, Ansermet ran counter to the concept of present day conductors who hardly practice this technique any more but always call for an intense vibrato. It is for this reason that we have excellent orchestras practically everywhere nowadays but without any character of their own, orchestras which all sound alike, regardless of the country of origin” Paul Rudhardt, Viola Player OSR (translated from French) In regards to training an Orchestra, here are the words of Ansermet There are several kinds of orchestras. There are orchestras trained for being brilliant, technically brilliant, and others which are trained for giving more the truth of the music, the expression of the music. There are other orchestras, namely in Germany, which are trained for giving always-as in Vienna-sentimentality. Every phrase is senti- mental, is expressive in this sense. But I don't like sentimentality … … If, for instance, I have to play a work by -Debussy in Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic, which is a first-rate orchestra, I have great difficulty. I was never able to obtain a perfect performance of the Firebird Suite-the Suite of 1919-with the Vienna Philharmonic, because they had not the equality of sound and the exactitude of rhythm that is required for this music. So the style is different. The style of the Vienna orchestra is not the same as the Berlin Philharmonic, not the same as the Philharmonia in London, not the same as the Orchestre de Paris, and so on. I tried to give this style to my orchestra here, and this style was the right expression, the right phrasing, not the effect but the inner truth of the music. Of course, this applies to every composer. So we try to give Beethoven the right spirit of Beethoven, or give Haydn the right spirit, and so on. If you have another kind of conductor, you will hear a symphony by Haydn and all the notes will be perfectly well done, but Haydn will be absent. The question is to feel Haydn through the symphony, or to feel Beethoven or to feel Mozart or Debussy. I have often heard Nuages or Fetes of Debussy as if it would be The Ride of the Valkyries. But it is not the same! It is a unique experience to hear a recording of Ansermet conducting the OSR. In Ansermet’s words: I mean by orchestral style the way players approach the music. If a conductor comes to an orchestra as a guest conductor, he has no time to train the orchestra or to educate the orchestra. He has just to beat as he can and to obtain from the orchestra what he can obtain. But if somebody is a regular conductor, as I was with my orchestra in Geneva, he has to educate the orchestra. You can educate it in different ways. You can look for the external effect, for the technical perfection, for the brilliance of the sonority, and so on. Or you can look for the right phrasing, the right accentuation, the right tempo and the right sonorous value of every voice. That is style. The manner you approach the orchestra, so you approach the music. And this is Ansermet's philosphy of recording Do you feel with the mechanical advances made in recording that they are all to the good ? Not always. Because in the first years when we were making stereo the microphones were placed before the orchestra and they took the whole orchestra at once. Now they place several microphones in the orchestra and that may alter the balance established by the conductor. For instance, if I conduct I make the balance between my horns, trombones, strings and woodwinds. Now if they take it with a microphone placed in the brass, they will give more value to the brass than I have given myself. That is a danger I think in this progress, or so-called progress of the technique is a danger. I told our technician, 'You are trying now to make a photo- graph of the orchestra, because you place your microphones every- where. But no, you have not to take a photograph, you have to take a reproduction of the sound I produce myself with the whole orchestra.' SOMETIMES THE ORCHESTRA HAS TOO MUCH OF A CONCRETE PRESENCE, A SONOROUS PRESENCE, THAN A MUSICAL PRESENCE. At the beginning of our collaboration with Decca(1946), our records had very good success, and after two or three years I had the opportunity of going to London to visit the Decca factory where the records are made. One of the technicians in this factory asked me, 'Can you explain to me why your records are so clean sounding ?' I told him perhaps the reason: 'You have before you a nice lady. She is of very good appearance-nice clothes, and so on-but you don't know if, under the clothes, the underwears are clean. I can tell you my effort is to make clean the underwears !' |
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