{"id":29322,"date":"2015-07-13T15:42:45","date_gmt":"2015-07-13T19:42:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=29322"},"modified":"2015-07-15T20:16:24","modified_gmt":"2015-07-16T00:16:24","slug":"cd-review-the-decca-sound-mono-years-1944-1956","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2015\/07\/13\/cd-review-the-decca-sound-mono-years-1944-1956\/","title":{"rendered":"CD REVIEW | The Decca Sound: Mono Years 1944\u20131956"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"91q2W9t-YjL._SL1500_\"<\/h3>\n

The Decca Sound: Mono Years 1944-1956. Limited Edition. Decca 478 7946 (53 CDs)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

What can the Decca people be thinking? Who on earth would buy a boxed set of 53 CDs? Who would want such a huge box of old recordings \u2013 in mono sound? At a time when sales of classical CDs are at an all-time low, the release of such a product would seem to be foolish, if not downright insane. Obviously, there will be a few collectors out there who will buy almost anything just to say they have it, but for music-lovers, does it make any sense?<\/p>\n

Perhaps, yes. In terms of cost, the set is remarkably inexpensive; one can buy it online for something like $3.00 (CAD) per CD. Another attractive feature is the first-time release on CD of many of these recordings. Then there is the nostalgia element. Many listeners like myself will have hung on to the LP versions of some of these recordings, finding that as the years went by, CDs started taking over the shelf space, and some of those beloved LPs just wore out after repeated playings and (possibly?) careless handling. Now we have these recordings back again, not as bulky LPs, but as CDs, in their original covers, much easier to store and sounding a lot better than they ever did before.<\/p>\n

CD1 in this box is Stravinsky\u2019s Petrouchka<\/em> conducted by Ansermet with his Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Released in 1950, it was Decca\u2019s very first LP. It was also one of my first LP acquisitions, and I treasured it for years. \u201cWhy,\u201d many asked at the time, \u201cdid Decca chose Ansermet and his second tier orchestra for many of the company\u2019s most important recordings when they could have used the Vienna Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw or the London Symphony?\u201d On the basis of Raymond McGill\u2019s notes for this box, the answer seems to be that, at the time, Decca was being financed by the Swiss businessman Maurice Rosengarten, and he wanted to support a \u2018local\u2019 band. On the whole, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande recordings are more than satisfactory, and Victoria Hall in Geneva proved to be an excellent recording venue.<\/p>\n

In such an enormous compilation, it is difficult to choose just a few highlights; nearly everything included \u2013 Decca\u2019s Raymond McGill was the mastermind \u2013 features world-class artists in top form.<\/p>\n

Among the orchestral recordings, those featuring Eduard van Beinum (1901-1959) with the Concertgebouw Orchestra are of special interest. Van Beinum, who died before receiving the international recognition that he deserved, was a worthy successor to Mengelberg and could galvanize an orchestra in a very wide repertoire. In this set, we have wonderful performances of works by Britten, Bart\u00f3k, Diepenbrock, Pijper \u2013 his superb Symphony No. 3 – and Brahms. The young Georg Solti is featured in high-energy performances of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Bart\u00f3k and Kod\u00e1ly. Erich Kleiber leads the Vienna Philharmonic in Beethoven\u2019s Symphonies 6 (London Philharmonic) and 9 (Vienna Philharmonic), and Knappertsbusch reminds us what a commanding conductor he could be in Bruckner\u2019s Symphony No. 3, also with the Vienna Philharmonic. Jean Martinon gets the London Philharmonic into high gear in Lalo\u2019s Namouna Suite No. 1.<\/p>\n

\"Boyd-Neel796\"
conductor Boyd Neel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For Canadian music-lovers, no fewer than three CDs are devoted to the Boyd Neel Orchestra playing Handel\u2019s Concerti Grossi Op. 6 and the Water Music. Boyd Neel (1905-1981) singlehandedly spearheaded a revival of interest in Baroque music for string orchestra in the 1930s and by the time of these recordings in the early 1950s, his orchestra featured some of London\u2019s finest string players. Just a few years later Neel came to Toronto to take up the post of Dean of the Royal Conservatory. He also created the Hart House Orchestra to carry on what he had started in England.<\/p>\n

\"Zara
cellist Zara Nelsova<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Unlike Boyd Neel, cellist Zara Nelsova (1918-2002) was Canadian-born (Winnipeg), and she is well-represented in this box set, playing the Rachmaninov Sonata Op. 19 with Artur Balsam, as well as unaccompanied works by Kod\u00e1ly, Reger, and Bach.<\/p>\n

Chamber music is given due recognition in this set with the Amadeus Quartet and Clifford Curzon playing Mozart, the Quartetto Italiano offering some very beautiful Schumann and Verdi, and the Vegh Quartet providing unique insight into music by Schubert and Smetana. I was bewildered, however, to find two entire CDs devoted to all four Ernest Bloch quartets played by the Griller Quartet; these are pretty tedious pieces, no matter who plays them.<\/p>\n

Violinist Alfredo Campoli, one of Decca\u2019s foremost artists in the 1950s, and all but forgotten today, is superb in the Elgar Violin Concerto (Boult conducting) and alternatively charming and virtuosic in smaller pieces by Kreisler, Wieniawski and others.<\/p>\n

I have fond memories of cutting classes in high school to hear the Vienna Octet under the auspices of the Women\u2019s Musical Club at Eaton Auditorium. This ensemble, led by the legendary Willy Boskovsky, is featured playing Mozart, Mendelssohn and Brahms on two CDs in the set.<\/p>\n

It is surely fair to ask is why it makes sense to invest in a boxed set of this size – even at this decent price – when some of the artists represented here went on to make new recordings of the same repertoire with much better sound later in their careers. Sir Georg Solti, for example, made later recordings of all the repertoire contained in this set. Sir Clifford Curzon, who is heard in this set playing the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 with van Beinum and the Concertgebouw Orchestra, made a superb recording of the piece several years later with Szell and the London Symphony. Christian Ferras, who plays the Brahms Violin Concerto with Carl Schuricht and the Vienna Philharmonic here, recorded the piece later with Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic.<\/p>\n

Perhaps for collectors, simply stating the facts, as I have done here, provides the answer. One of the great joys of collecting is to hear the same artists at different stages of their career. Great artists change over time as they study and restudy the repertoire. Sometimes the changes are for the better; sometimes the later recordings are disappointing as age begins to take its toll, but following the career of an artist of the stature of a Solti, a Curzon, a Ferras or of an ensemble such as the Amadeus Quartet is to be enriched and enlightened on many levels. Many of these recordings are \u2018one-of-a-kind\u2019 treasures, never to be equaled, let alone surpassed, no matter how advanced the technology.<\/p>\n

#LUDWIGVAN<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Decca releases humungous 52 CD box set of mono classics from 1944-1956.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":29327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[118,77,51,52],"tags":[5505],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/07\/91q2W9t-YjL._SL1500_.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-7CW","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29322"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29322"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29368,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29322\/revisions\/29368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29322"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=29322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}