This miserable Japanese freaks did it again!

For years the Scherchen Mozart Requiem 1953 performance was available only on the Westminster LP and at few privet low quality CD transfers, The Universal/DG has the wonderful transfer (289 471 201-2) of  Scherchen’s 1958 stereo performance with Vienna Sate opera. It is very-very good, one of the best, but still it never reached the magnificent 1953 mono recording with Magda Laszlo, Hilde Roessel-Majdan, Petre Munteanu and Richard Standen.

Today I went to the HMV Japan site to follow up with my order and juts for fun, known that at this site imposable turns sometimes inot possible I searched for Scherchen+Laszlo.  Surpasse, Surpasse … the site returned me the following….

http://www.hmv.co.jp/product/detail.asp?sku=1906187

Are those Japanese folks are comply out of control! Thank God they are!!!

I do not know this label and the quality of the transfer. It looks like it is a French label as the French folsk sell it:

http://www.fnac.com/Shelf/article.asp?PRID=1509990&Mn=31&Origin=FnacAff&Ra=-29&To=0&Nu=18&Fr=3

I hope it has no La Marseillaise opening in the third movement.

Anyhow, this is another phenomenal lead from the HMV Japan site. I wonder if Universal would eventually release it? As soon they do I would go search for the Universal Tokyo.

Or perhaps I should stop do it and start to use my Lavry AD 122 and press my own CD?

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

clarkjohnsen wrote:

Yes, the 1953 Scherchen. For over twenty-five years I have hailed it as the best ever committed to disc. So let them laugh at me, I don't care. But the sonics were not good, and it was never remastered, because along came stereo, dammit. Now we have Romy to tell us what the recording really sounds like, when he purchases it, as surely he must.

Nobody needs to have Romy to tell what the recording really sounds like, as it is available on LP for “over twenty-five years”.

I disagree that the 1953 Scherchen’s Mozart Requiem had “not good sonics”. It was a typical for Westminster, slightly bright sound (I do not think that it was even the RIAA curve) but properly EQed it is very good. I do not EQ it but play it with SPU mono and this arm/cartridge of mine is tuned, slightly to roll of HF. Still I feel that even “as is” the 1953 Scherchen’s Requiem is perfectly fine. BTW, I have a few of this records including one sealed, never played or even opened – quite a commodity nowadays….

The performance-vise it is Scherchen’s ’53 is a disaster… the disaster for anyone who ever performed Mozart Requiem after Scherchen. Whoever tried to play the Requiem made it ether too tragic and funeral or too musical and entertaining. Among all know to me performances no one was able to hold the same phenomenal balance between the event and the reasons as the Scherchen’s did in the 1953, Interestingly that the Scherchen’s stereo recording is few years loosing in many dimensions. It has some false not justifiable pathos and do not has that magnificent starched in time expressiveness…

If someone wishes to get the recording on CD and not wiling to go for the Japan then there is an US sources. The Massachusetts based Pierre Paquin form the Haydn House has the recording available:
 
http://www.haydnhouse.com/home.htm

The quality of the transfer if quite good for ordinary music collector. I am not please with the way how the cartridge read the groove (there was some auditable issuers)  and with the quality of Pierre’s AD converts (it has some digital flattens and sharpness) Still, the Haydn House’s CD is very good and well worth much much more that the $10 that they ask.

Also, the Deutsche Grammophon will release soon the Scherchen’s ’53 in this famous “Westminster ”. Usually their “original recording remastered” are very good and it should be very very interesting….

Rgs,
Romy

Hmmm, what is interesting the he proposes Scherchen as some kind of cult or some kind of off-mainstream? I would not agree with it. The both Scherchen’s Requiems are quite conventional and very much orthodox. Here is where we have a problem with public perception of Mozart music generally. Mozart music is very well played and there are zillions recording if each peace but any imaginable conductors. But the realty is that the Mozart music, as I can recognize it, is probably the most complex music to accomplish a great performing event.  It is not about the complexity of the musicianship but rather with huge expressiveness hidden in superbly simple, elegant and almost primitive forms. I think that per capita of playing attempts Mozart has the lowest scores among all composers who got really great recorded performances – it is juts too damn hard to perform Mozart in the way in witch it might be performed. (Not to mention to reproduce)

Naming the greatest Mozart’s performers I have to say that it is shame that n Karl Bohm’s performance with Vienna “did not work”. Bohm really really really knew how to play Mozart and it is very unfortunate that his 1971 recording was “not there”. Speaking about the great Mozart’s Requiems… There is one very good recorded performance in 1941 by estimable Victos de Sabata with Eiar Orchestra and Chorus in Rome’s Basilica Of Santa Maria. I have an album of 2 10” records pressed by Cetera-Coria. As far as I know the recording never was re- issued. The Victor de Sabata’s Requiem is kind of “hard” Requiem, in a way similar to the second Karajan but at the same time more “eventful”.

I still vote for the First Scherchen as the absolute best…

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

clarkjohnsen wrote:

Romy wrote: "what is interesting the he proposes Scherchen as some kind of cult or some kind of off-mainstream?" No, not at all! He wrote: "Who on earth was Scherchen? I soon found out, and Beecham and Walter soon became history. And thus began a personal love affair with the music making of this quixotic conductor that has persisted ever since."

http://www.klassi.org/mahler/viewtopic.php?t=1042&sid=37583871e419e194b7e372f150af0fdd

Rgs,
Romy

Since the last week BSO phenomenal live broadcast form BSO Tanglewood I really wonder what they would show today. Today our removed James Levine leads BSO with Tanglewood Festival Chorus with All-Mozart program including the Requiem. If you lucky to visit my site for a next hour or two then you can catch is live at:

http://www.wgbh.org/schedules/program-info?episode_id=2880120&program_id=395996

Go to manu on the left and click “listen Live”. I have very good feeling about the forthcoming Requiem. It will be after the stunning Liszt Second last week:
 
http://www.goodsoundclub.com/TreeItem.aspx?postID=2662

and second, it will be in Tanglewood or on sthe emi-open air… If the performance turn out to be interesting then will post a fragment from it. I have a good feeling…

The Cat

Romy the Cat wrote:

Since the last week BSO phenomenal live broadcast form BSO Tanglewood I really wonder what they would show today. Today our removed James Levine leads BSO with Tanglewood Festival Chorus with All-Mozart program including the Requiem. If you lucky to visit my site for a next hour or two then you can catch is live at: http://www.wgbh.org/schedules/program-info?episode_id=2880120&program_id=395996 Go to manu on the left and click “listen Live”. I have very good feeling about the forthcoming Requiem. It will be after the stunning Liszt Second last week:   http://www.goodsoundclub.com/TreeItem.aspx?postID=2662 and second, it will be in Tanglewood or on sthe emi-open air… If the performance turn out to be interesting then will post a fragment from it. I have a good feeling…

Yep, it was quit bad. The BSO did bad and the Levine’s reading was so poor that it was even funny in pleases. Levine chose to play Requiem with tempo, intensity and playfulness that would be more suitable for Die Fledermaus then for the Mozart work.  It was like a disco music. Very very bad. It was particularly sad that it was in context of the following….

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/07/25/levine_is_top_paid_conductor_in_us/

The Cat

In continuation of the hunt for the inflames best CD-version of the Scherchen’s Westminster 1953 recording of Mozart’s Requiem I would like to inform about a new opportunity.  A Paris-based couple Rene Tremine and Myriam Scherchen run a small label issuing well-received historical recordings of classical music. Recently they realized the Scherchen’s Westminster 1953 Mozart Requiem. I was not able to find then in US as I got them from Japan…

http://www.Tahra.com

It is not perfect. The Tahra’s Requiem 53 sound OK for hi-fi show but not for being good as it should be. I do feel “some”, and sometimes quite heavy digital effects. But it how most of them do nowadays…. Still, whoever does not have vinyl the Tahra’s Requiem-53 CD is an option to “get” what Scherchen did with Wiener Opera.  Well,… unit the Tokyo DG will press it on the “Originals”….

Romy the Cat wrote:

Yesterday WGBH-FM broadcasted their own live-to-tape recording of Handel & Haydn Society’s Mozart K. 626, the Requiem. John Nelson conducted with Christine Brandes, soprano; Paula Murrihy, mezzo-soprano; Charles Reid, tenor; Alfred Walker, bass. I heard it live a few months back and I was impressed but yesterday I heard it again and I actually liked it. It was different and it was not like Requiem. It was rather like concert-oratorio, it was theatrical, it was playful and even happy in a way, it sounded almost like a pop music. I do not think that it was the intention but it was a fresh take, not the last thing that I caught it on radio while I was doing a wedding. I recorded it and when I got home I re-listened a few movements. Today I listened the Requiem again- the entire thing it is amazingly easy performance for listening. In addition it is live that right the way set it way apart from anything else. Even commercial live recordings, heavily edited and with fixed imperfection of the play are very much different from row live recordings…. The Cat