Age of Living Stereo - Tribute to John Pfeiffer
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Artist: Age of Living StereoEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1996-05-21
Music Label: RCA
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
- Coppelia: Prld; Mazurka - Boston SO/Pierre Monteux
- La Damnation De Faust: Dans Mon Coeur Retentit (The Ride To The Abyss; Pandemonium) (Excerpt) - David Poleri/Martial Singher/Harvard Glee Club/Radcliffe Choral Society'G. Wallace Woodworth...
- Also Sprach Zarathustra, Op.30: Opening - Chicago SO/Fritz Reiner
- Salome: Dance Of The Seven Veils - Chicago SO/Fritz Reiner
- Sym No.6 in F, Op.68 'Pastoral'; Shepherds' Song: Joyous Thanksgiving After The Storm (Excerpt) - Leopold Stokowski/Members Of The NBC SO
- Con No.1 in d, Op.15: Rondo: Allegro Non Troppo - Chicago SO/Fritz Reiner
- La Mer: From Dawn Till Noon On The Sea (Excerpt) - Boston SO/Pierre Monteux
- Sym Fantastique: March To The Scaffold - Boston SO/Charles Munch
- Pavane (From American Symphonette No.2) - Morton Gould And His Orch
- Son in f, Op.57 'Appassionata': Andante Con moto - Vladimir Horowitz
- Con No. 1 in b Flat, Op.23: Allegro Con Fuoco - RCA SO/Kiril Kondrashin
- Con in e, Op.64: Allegretto Non Troppo; Allegro Molto Vivace - Jascha Heifetz
- Interview Segment - Boston SO/Berj Zamkochian/Bernard Zighera/Leo Litwin/Charles Munch
- Sym No.3 in c, Op.78 'Organ': Maestoso; Allegro - Boston SO/Berj Zamkochian/Bernard Zighera/Leo Litwin/Charles Munch
- Interview Segment - RCA Victor SO/Leopold Stokowski
- Hungarian Rhap No.2 in c# - RCA Victor SO/Leopold Stokowski
- Interview Segment - Morton Gould And His Orch
- Rodeo: Hoe-Down - Morton Gould And His Orch
- Interview Segment - Artur Rubinstein
- Con No.1: Rondo (Excerpt) - Artur Rubinstein
- Interview Segment - Boston Pops Orch/Arthur Fiedler
- Gaite Parisienne: Barcarolle - Boston Pops Orch/Arthur Fiedler
- Interview Segment - Nathaniel S. Johnson
Music reviews of Tribute to John Pfeiffer
Music Review: A Chance to be there at the Dawn of Modern Recording
Rating: 5 Stars
How does one talk about this issue? Hearing these selections for the first time in 1954 left listeners staggered, astonished, transfixed. The engineers played them to audiences with a giddy delight in sharing what they had captured, dumbfounding illusions of sonic realities. After hearing them one person said it was 'like walking into a great cathedral'; and while this is of course merely an 'artificial' cathedral of sound, and especially orchestra sound, the comparison still sits well.
Included on this CD are a significant number of some of the most important recordings ever made: The first stereo trials by RCA under the leadership of Producers Richard Mohr and the late John 'Jack' Pfeiffer, the dedicatee of this release. Pfeiffer was instrumental in RCA's adopting stereo several years before it was a viable commercial medium. At the end of 1953, after testing out two-track recording systems, he pushed RCA into the extremely expensive policy of making many future recordings with two crews, one for the current monaural recodings and another totally separate crew for stereo recording. This CD offers many listeners a chance to hear the breakthrough in sound captured on tape by those early RCA engineers in the earliest days of stereo.
The results at times are flabbergasting. Right out of the box we can hear what was then a totally novel and breathtaking spaciousness; instruments were positioned around in space just as they might sound from a seat in the auditorium. Unlike the old monaural recordings, the stereo recordings also opened up a new startling palette of richer fuller harmonics, and strikingly realized instrumental timbres. Listen to the 2nd selection on the CD, a February 21st 1954 recording of The Damnation of Faust by Berlioz, recorded in Boston Symphony Hall with the Boston Symphony Orchestra led by Munch, and including a tenor, a baritone, and the combined forces of two choral groups. The performance and the recorded sound combined to quite literally sound the death knell for monaural recordings of symphonies: only the slow transistion of customers to stereo delayed the inevitable. Like color television the advent of stereo recording was a major breakthrough as well as marker in the twentieth century.
Anyone interested in hearing just how fine these first stereo recordings were can now do so with the release of this compilation.
The CD includes a short written tribute to Pfeiffer by his colleague and friend Richard Mohr, as well as a longer written essay by Pfeiffer on "The Age of Living Stereo". There is a list of CD reissues of the "Living Stereo" series included at the end of the CD booklet. Since the release of this tribute in 1996 many of these "Livng Stereo" recordings can now be purchased in improved SACD hybrid transfers at great prices! For example - Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade; Stravinsky: Song of the Nightingale [Hybrid SACD]Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique [Hybrid SACD]
A must purchase for stereo fans, and especially fans of orchestra recording, as well as anyone deeply appreciative of the memorable achievement and impact of these great American pathfinders.
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