Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet (Cantelli)
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- Опубліковано 4 вер 2024
- Guido Cantelli: Philharmonia Orchestra
Date: 13 October 1951
Location: No. 1 Studio, Abbey Road, London
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture (1880)
Restored from His Masters Voice (HMV) ALP 1086
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Musicweb's Marc Bridle called this recording "the greatest performance of the work ever committed to disc." It's never sounded better to my ears than in this excellent restoration. Thanks so much, Glen!
The two LP “Plum Dog” “Romeo and Juliet” contains this Cantelli performance. Unfortunately it had quite a bit of pitch instability and like most Plums, it has a fairly sharp cutoff above 12kHz. It is normally my goal to find the earliest and closest to the master to work from. Since the CD reissues do not have pitch problems, I knew that it wasn’t a problem with the master tape or whatever EMI / Warner were working from, but the copy of the tape HMV sent to RCA.
I found a copy of the original HMV pressing and what a difference. The HMV pressing is far superior to the best Plums and for that matter Shaded Dogs with a quieter surface and actual frequencies above 20kHz. I didn’t know that tape recorders in 1951 could actually do that!
I heartily agree that this is the best R&J although I must admit to a fondness for Stokowski’s Phase Four performance also. I guess there can be room for two bests.
Thank you so much for this! It sounds miles better than the horrible EMI reissue on CD. The excitement is so immediate and palpable. Please remaster more Cantelli.
Thanks! I think the trick is to find original HMV pressings in excellent condition. Most of my Cantelli LPs are from later reprints and don't really sound any better than the EMI and Warner sets.
Sounds great. Thanks, Glen. Like many of your subscribers, I spend plenty of time listening to the great recordings of the past, as well as the more current. I have to laugh at all the babble I hear about how the musicians and orchestras of today are supposedly so much better. What a bunch of baloney.
A lot of performances are played slower today which of course makes things a lot easier. That, and even if you are listening to a recording that was made "live" with an audience, it is still a total "splice" job editing out every little flub and patching from a different nights performance. That's not to say that any of these early tapes weren't spliced together from different takes. I think I noticed a couple on this recording. It just that today with digital workstations, you can splice to the individual note level.
@@GlensAudioRestoration Maybe so, but I notice articulation mistakes in every live performance recording I've ever heard.
@@leestamm3187Over on my Oldies channel, I have spent a full day cleaning up and trying to EQ a 3 minute song. Before I retired I was a just a tech drone. If you considered my hourly rate then, NO ONE pay for what I do, let alone minimum wage for my work.
How much labor do you think goes into turning the raw recording to the final product? I'm guessing not much. Hey, the moment you release the CD, someone is going to rip it and put it up on the 'Tube and you will sell 100 copies if you are lucky.
I have a thing about rumble and power line hum. I have a friend that was totally tuned into splices. We would listen to music together and on some recordings he would go "splice" "splice" "splice". I wouldn't hear most of them, but when I pulled them into my software and looked at the spectrogram you could see it.
I am a lot less picky about the occasional sloppy note or entrance than some because I look more for the overall interpretation.
@@GlensAudioRestoration I never worked in the industry, but I know there's plenty of work involved. My listening criteria has long been that I would rather hear mistakes and be moved by a performance than hear a perfectly articulated one that fails to do so. Anyhow, I appreciate and enjoy the work you do on your channels.
@@leestamm3187Reminds me of a famous pianist when they heard someone complaining about Schnabel making mistakes in his Beethoven and the famous pianist replied that he wished he could make mistakes like Schnabel did.
Oh, if only Cantelli hadn’t perished in that plane crash. That was the REAL day the music died…..along with Argenta’s “auto incident”, Schippers’ cancer, and Kertesz’ fall.
True. Vigor displayed here in abundance. I thought Kertész was caught in a rip tide and drowned?
@@johns.4708 I've heard varying stories on Kertesz. I'd heard he was walking to a pool on a wet stone path, slipped and hit his head. I've also heard the drowning story.
Please lets not forget William Kapell who died three years earlier in a plane crash.
You can also add Dennis Brain, Dinu Lipatti and Jacqueline DuPre to the list of musicians who died too young. And even though Gilels was 60, he was still in his prime. Killed by his physician's negligence, I'm told.@@GlensAudioRestoration
@@steveluciani Julius Katchen comes to mind as well.