Saturday, November 20th, 2010
I have posted three new CDs on the Klassic Haus Restorations website, all recordings that I very much enjoyed restoring. The Rudolf/Cincinnati Symphony Beethoven “Eroica” is one of my favorite recordings of that revolutionary work; the recording is one of US Decca’s best in the Israel Horowitz-produced Cincinnati Symphony series, and the performance is incisive and well-paced. The Brahms “Tragic” Overture with the Pittsburgh Symphony led by William Steinberg comes from a Command reel tape that included the Third Symphony (issued on a separate CD: KHCD-2010-022).The Schütz “Musikalische Exequien” performance with the Westphalian Choir, soloists and instrumentalists led by Wilhelm Ehmann was originally on a Vanguard Everyman disc, itself a reissue made in 1967 of an early 60s Bach Guild recording. The extended solo and choral “obsequies” are sympathetically performed, with a select group of original Baroque instruments based on performance suggestions by Schütz, and scholarly research on performance practices of the time of Schütz. The Shapirra-conducted Bruckner Symphony in f minor was a rare EMI-Electrola disc, the first commercial recording of that work, along with the still seldom-recorded Overture in g minor. The recording was produced by Davis Mottley, and engineered by Robert Gooch (no recording venue mentioned; most probably one of the several church sanctuaries used by EMI as recording halls in the 70s). Check them out; each will have an MP3 sample. Cheers – Curt