'Complete' in just under sixteen minutes

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 in B minor, 'Pathétique'

1. Allegro non troppo

2. Allegro non grazia

3. Allegro molto vivace

4. Finale, adagio lamentoso

The Imperial Symphony Orchestra 

conducted by [Lilian Bryant]

Pathé 2079 & 2089

(Matrix Nos.79629; 79630; 79659; 79660)

London: March & June, 1912

 1 Flac , Here at Mediafire. [about 48Mb]

There is everything to like about these records. It is the first Tchaikovsky Symphony to be recorded, it is conducted by a woman, it has not been heard much, the records are uncommon, difficult to play and equally hard to transfer and listen too in decent sound. What more could a record buff wish for!

The symphony is more than a bit curtailed for some two-thirds of music has been lopped out, but by some very clever arranging the essence of the work still somehow holds together. One wonders why Lilian's name did not appear on the records for Pathé in March 1912 mentioned that The Imperial Symphony Orchestra directed by Lilian Bryant was increased to 30 players. 

Anyway this is the first attempt at a complete recording of the Pathétique; indeed one of the earliest 'complete' anything symphonic from this period. Landon Ronald and the New Symphony Orchestra recorded the third movement, or at least 4 minutes of it in January 1912 and in 1913 recorded the second movement, maybe they where thinking to do more but nothing came of it. It was not until 1923 that all four movements were attempted again and this time the work was indeed complete running to 20 sides and once again conducted by Ronalds..  As the symphony was performed every year at the Proms from 1898 to 1974 excepting 1927 (three time in 1898, 1899 and 1904 and often twice in several other season) it was certainly then, as now, very popular.

Lilian Bryant

'Lilian Bryant might not be a household name to many music lovers and record collectors today, as it but rarely appears undisguised on the many thousand recordings she was heard on between the late 1890s and 1928. One of the pioneers of the British recording industry, she became "musical director" for the Edison-Bell cylinder recording studio shortly before the turn of the last century - a position that meant rehearsing with singers and instrumentalists, playing piano accompaniments for them, but also arranging and orchestrating music for recording purposes, and last not least conducting the in-house orchestra. As the early studio orchestras consisted mainly of wind instruments that registered well on the primitive recording equipment, they were mostly recruited from local military bands and led by military bandmasters. It is thus a particular exception to find a woman in this position, apart from the fact that woman conductors and composers were anyway considered an oddity in late-Victorian England. Despite these unfavourable circumstances, Mme. Bryant made her career, that had started at the very beginning of commercial record production in London, with various major companies over more than two decades: From 1905 to 1908 she was employed by Louis Sterling, in whose studios both Sterling cylinders and Odeon discs were recorded, to conduct for stars like John McCormack, and organize the first complete recordings of Gilbert & Sullivan operas ever. When Sterling had to sell his enterprise to Pathé Frères, that company promptly dismissed their former musical director in her favour. With the "Imperial Symphony Orchestra" under her direction, British Pathé produced pioneering recordings of symphonic and concert music. Beside all this studio work, Bryant found time to tour as piano accompanist (e.g. for Peter Dawson), compose, and conduct theatre orchestras in and around London. When the Great War put an end to Pathé's London studio, she worked as rehearsal pianist for HMV for several years (occasionally recording under her married name "Mrs. George Baker"), and in the 1920s, she resumed her career as musical director in the recording studio, this time for the newly-founded Crystalate company ("Imperial" and "Chantal de Luxe" labels). Her final recordings were made for Columbia in the mid-1920s.' This biography from taken from True Sound Transfers

Pathé records

14" records are difficult to play, the rumble on these records is appalling. Pathé recorded onto master cylinders and through a mechanical pantograph mechanism could transfer the master cylinder onto different sizes of disc. The unfortunate byproduct of this process was a lot of  rumble. I have alleviated it a lot but did not want to loose any more of the lower frequencies than I really had to. On the other hand because they used such a large master cylinder the sound that was captured was often very good even though quite faint. A short article on this method of recording can be found at The Mainspring Press Record Collectors' Blog

As was usual practise at this time the two records were announced at separate times with the first two movements issued in April 1912 and the last two movements in July 1912. The records were deleted, as were all 14" discs at the end of 1916.

Understanding Pathé numbering

The record  label, or rather etched lettering infilled with an ochre dye, at first looks a bit confusing. The record number is within the lozenge at 6'oclock [2079]; below this another number is the transfer number for the pantograph process [81098 - R.A.] and the matrix number is at 7'oclock [79629].

One other interesting facet of these records is a very, very faint date that can be discerned to the left of the transfer number. This mirror image scratched in gives us the day on which the stamper was made. Only the fourth side in this set has this complete reading '28/9/12' - side 3 just having 8/9 and side 2 with just  letter 'B' this may just equate to side 2. In any case it gives a date that the recording could not be after. I have flipped and and inverted the image above to make it a this a bit clearer.

Maybe not the best day to push something Russian onto 'my public' just one of those coincidences.

Use your gramophone every morning and Slenderise

Elisabeth Ann Loring [& W.T Best piano]

How to Slenderise

Columbia DB 1327 

(CA14236-1 & CA14327-1)

(recorded 5th January. 1934)

 1 Flac , Here at Mediafire. [about 18Mb]

Well it is the time of year for a bit of exercise. We ‘Gramophonists’ are apt to sit about all day listening to 'stuff' and looking at blogs so flab is a certain unwelcome byproduct. Thankfully a number of helpful records were issued to combat this problem. Our record comes with a nice card showing the delectable 'Elisabeth Ann' showing you idlers the way to fitness through her movements whilst you listen to her firm instructions.

Miss Elisabeth Ann Loring was the ‘Woman's Page’ editor for the Sunday Dispatch, and Modern Weekly, using her first names as her pen name. She was born in London in 1908, although I have not been able to confirm this, and her accent is redolent of a cross between Miss Jean Brodie and Margaret Thatcher, maybe it is just the result of some elocution lessons or my imagination. She appears to have started out as a novelist with Ladies' paradise. The story of a fashion in marriage of 1933 the earliest work I have been able to trace. She studied diet and became the beauty editor for a number of women's monthly magazine and was the creator, Bread and Butter Diet for Slenderising. Further contributions under her pen name found their way into the likes of Good Housekeeping, Woman's Journal, Modern Home, Miss Modern, Woman and Beauty, etc. together with a number of books with such titles as Beauty adorned, the cultivation of personal loveliness 1935. 

She made a special study of physical culture and hormone therapy, but was still turning out the odd novel with titles that included Night After Bond Street, 1936; Designs by Jo 1936; and Bronze Angel 1937. During the war she turned out the unlikely title Hutchinson's knitted comforts for the forces 1940 and later in a similar practical work A Book for Women 1946. Later ‘Elisabeth Ann’ became the editor of Portland Publications and a director of Medistat until her death in 1978.

The unnamed pianist, accompanying with strict tempo versions of well known classics, is one W.T. Best. He  is something of a  mystery and  although he worked for Columbia throughout the 1920s & 30s & 40s with various singers and instrumental groups I  have been unable to trace anything about him. His equivalent on HMV was the ubiquitus Madame Adami who is just as mysterious, does anyone even now know what her full name was by the way? W.T. Best disappears from the recording rooms during the mid 1940s when Gerald Moore generally takes over his role in the 'better class of material'.

For some reason recordings of the voice, where the record has enormous amounts crackle as here, seem to start gurgling. I assume this is due to the smoothing of the ticks and pops which in turn create some sort of distortion in itself. In these UK pre-war recordings the noise is about 7-10% of the recorded time so some sort of distortion is apt to take place with this sort of intervention. Anyway it sounds none too bad for all that.

'Dwarfish, sharp-tounged, conservative, and not a little paranoide...'

Robert Schumann

Symphony No. 4 in D minor, Op. 140

1. Andante con moto - Allegro di molto (D minor)

2. Romanza: Andante (A minor)

4. Largo - Finale: Allegro vivace (D major)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

conducted by Hans Pfitzner

Polydor 69625, 69627 &  69627 

(1406as, 1407as, 1408as, 234az, 232az & 233az)

(recorded October-December 1923)

1 Flac , Here at Mediafire. [about 62Mb]

or

1 Flac , Here at Mediafire. [about 115Mb] - with Spatial Enhancer [see below]

Being a bit tardy in stuffing things on my blog, will try and be a bit more 'proactive'

Anyway my quote continues '... Hans Pfitzner was perhaps his own worst enemy. But his pronouncements have been misread and his intentions misconstrued, and certain aspects of his life have been held against him, so that thirty-five years after his death he remains an unjustly neglected figure.' Greene's Biographical Encyclopedia of Composers 1985.

As a conductor Pfitzner made a good number of recordings for Deutsche Grammophon in the 1920s and '30s and as he was responsible for dragging Schumann out of oblivion, into which he was falling at that time, it is not surprising and appropriate that he was chosen to conduct the only acoustic recordings of any Schumann Symphonies. Nos. 1 & 2 where recorded in 1925 and 1926 with the Berlin State Opera Orchestra however No. 4 was the first to be recorded at the end of 1923 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

Unfortunately the Scherzo was not issued with the set and I have some reason to believe it was recorded for matrix 1409as is otherwise unallocated to any other recording. Issuing a 7 sided set (plus a filler for the 8th side) of an unpopular symphony in the middle of an epic hyper inflationary period may have been thought as too risky for DG/Polydor so the Scherzo may have thus dropped.   Compton Mackenzie review in The Gramophone for October 1925 of the first Polydor recordings to be available in Britain gives a quick notice 'The Fourth Symphony of Schumann is the only Schumann symphony on the gramophone, and the Polydor version of it may be recommended as a good workmanlike production. Unfortunately, the scherzo has been omitted, so that the symphony is not complete.' The fact that the recording was issued once electrical recordings had already got underway may have stifled sales under the Polydor label. At any rate it seems uncommon and I have never seen it issued anywhere.

Anyway rather than me gassing on about the relative merits of this or that performance I defer to Peter Guttman who has reviewed a great number of recordings of this symphony at his website Classical Notes including the electrically recorded remake by Pfitzner issued in 1928.

As with the majority of acoustic orchestral recordings several things are immediately noticeable, firstly the reduced number of players, maybe only six first and second violins,  brass substituting for the lower strings, also placement of various instruments near to the horn for particular passages all don't help with the balance. The Danish violinist Henry Holst (1899-1991) is very likely the leader of the orchestra in this performance and he can be best heard playing in the trio section of the Romanza. It would be nice to know who the other players are in these recordings and also something of their careers.

I have joined the movements into one track to give some idea of a continuum as Schumann intended, this means that we jump from the second to the fourth movements which might give you a bit of a jolt.

*Spacial Enhancer - The blurb say that  'SHEPPi (Stereo Haas Effect Ping Pong Inverter) is a stereo image enhancement tool modeled after the K-Stereo Ambience Processor by Algorithmix. SHEPPi imparts a subtle, natural sense of space thanks to a combination of EQ'able synthetic early reflections, M-S widening and inverted stereo delay feedback. This plug-in has been enhanced for both track insert as well as aux send applications, making it an excellent tool for both mastering and stereoizing purposes.' 

Oooh it all sounds a bit technical and mucking about with recordings in this way is not seen by some to completely ethical - Still it is worth playing around with as it does indeed help with the separation of the instruments and gives space for the sound.