abbedd

EA Bartok CFO part 1 of 2.zip
EA Bartok CFO part 2 of 2.zip

Stereo Flacs

Bartok CFO
Ernest Ansermet
SRO
Oct 1956
Victoria Hall recording session
Produced by James Walker
Engineered by Roy Wallace
3 Newuman mics on the Decca Tree
Ampex tape deck
Roy Wallace designed mixer

Michel Schwalbe leader

Andre Pepin Flute
Roger Reversy Oboe
Leon Hoagstaol Clarinet
Henri Helaerts French Bassoon
Edmond Leloir Horn
Peerless Paolo Trumpet
Pierre Aubapan Trombone

Sourced from an open reel tape- 4 track 7 1/2 ips
Revox A-77 Mark III

This has appeared on CD in Japan and on the EMI Great Conductors 2 cd set in bad and worse sound caused by using an equalizer as a panning device to add more presence and bring the SRO out of Victoria Hall and into YOUR listening room

Enjoy

Jeffrey "Abbedd" Powell Design, Manufacturing, Acoustical Engineer and EDT*

"Music not Audio"

*Educated dial twiddler


________

In 1918 an Orchestra was needed to suit the purposes of the Orchestral and Opera fans of the French speaking part of Switzerland (Suisse Romande). Who better to create and build this Orchestra than the man who had proved himself so well as Music Director of Diagalev’s Ballet Russe since 1915? Who better than a man who played the Piano, Violin, Clarinet and Trumpet? And a man who had his own specific Orchestral sound in mind. There was no better man than Ernest Ansermet.

To create an Orchestra that would be able to achieve the sound that Ansermet wanted, L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande(SRO) had strings that were hired from Belgium and Italy. The winds from France and the brass from Vienna. But it is too simplistic to say that the Ansermet sound had Belgian and Italian Strings, French winds and Viennese brass. This is what Ansermet used as the best way to start to achieve his sound. He altered each section to fit his vision. For example, the winds played in a modified French style. All the good qualities of the amazing way the French have with winds were retained without the bad qualities that Ansermet did not like. This modified method can only be called the Ansermet method. No other Orchestra’s winds played this method so that the wind section of the SRO is instantly recognizable.


Vibrato was prohibited. Even the strings were denied this crutch:

“He very often asked the strings section to play on the fingerboard, without too much vibrato and with long strokes of the bow. In this connection, he liked to quote Leopold Mozart (Father of Wolfgang Amadeus the Composer and the leading Violinist of his time) who recommended playing without too much vibrato so as to retain the expression of the Music. In using the strings in this particular way, Ansermet ran counter to the concept of present day conductors who hardly practice this technique any more but always call for an intense vibrato. It is for this reason that we have excellent orchestras practically everywhere nowadays but without any character of their own, orchestras which all sound alike, regardless of the country of origin”

Paul Rudhardt, Viola Player OSR (translated from French)

In regards to training an Orchestra, here are the words of Ansermet

There are several kinds of orchestras. There are orchestras trained
for being brilliant, technically brilliant, and others which are trained
for giving more the truth of the music, the expression of the music.
There are other orchestras, namely in Germany, which are trained for
giving always-as in Vienna-sentimentality. Every phrase is senti-
mental, is expressive in this sense. But I don't like sentimentality …
… If, for instance, I have to play a work by -Debussy in Vienna
with the Vienna Philharmonic, which is a first-rate orchestra, I have
great difficulty. I was never able to obtain a perfect performance of
the
Firebird Suite-the Suite of 1919-with the Vienna Philharmonic,
because they had not the equality of sound and the exactitude of
rhythm that is required for this music.
So the style is different. The style of the Vienna orchestra is not the
same as the Berlin Philharmonic, not the same as the Philharmonia in
London, not the same as the Orchestre de Paris, and so on.
I tried to give this style to my orchestra here, and this style was the
right expression, the right phrasing, not the effect but the inner truth
of the music. Of course, this applies to every composer. So we try to
give Beethoven the right spirit of Beethoven, or give Haydn the right
spirit, and so on. If you have another kind of conductor, you will hear
a symphony by Haydn and all the notes will be perfectly well done, but
Haydn will be absent. The question is to feel Haydn through the
symphony, or to feel Beethoven or to feel Mozart or Debussy. I have
often heard Nuages or Fetes of Debussy as if it would be The Ride of the
Valkyries. But it is not the same!


It is a unique experience to hear a recording of Ansermet conducting the OSR. In Ansermet’s words:

I mean by orchestral style the way players approach the music. If a
conductor comes to an orchestra as a guest conductor, he has no time
to train the orchestra or to educate the orchestra. He has just to beat
as he can and to obtain from the orchestra what he can obtain. But if
somebody is a regular conductor, as I was with my orchestra in Geneva,
he has to educate the orchestra. You can educate it in different ways.
You can look for the external effect, for the technical perfection, for
the
brilliance of the sonority, and so on. Or you can look for the right
phrasing, the right accentuation, the right tempo and the right sonorous
value of every voice. That is style. The manner you approach the
orchestra, so you approach the music.


And this is Ansermet's philosphy of recording


Do you feel with the mechanical advances made in
recording that
they are all to the good ?

Not always. Because in the first years when we were making stereo
the microphones were placed before the orchestra and they took the
whole orchestra at once. Now they place several microphones in the
orchestra and that may alter the balance established by the conductor.
For instance, if I conduct I make the balance between my horns,
trombones, strings and woodwinds.
Now if they take it with a microphone placed in the brass, they will
give more value to the brass than I have given myself. That is a danger
I think in this progress, or so-called progress of the technique is a
danger. I told our technician, 'You are trying now to make a photo-
graph of the orchestra, because you place your microphones every-
where. But no, you have not to take a photograph, you have to take a
reproduction of the sound I produce myself with the whole orchestra.'
SOMETIMES THE ORCHESTRA HAS TOO MUCH OF A CONCRETE PRESENCE, A SONOROUS PRESENCE, THAN A MUSICAL PRESENCE.
At the beginning of our collaboration with Decca(1946), our records had
very good success, and after two or three years I had the opportunity
of going to London to visit the Decca factory where the records are
made. One of the technicians in this factory asked me, 'Can you
explain to me why your records are so clean sounding ?' I told him
perhaps the reason: 'You have before you a nice lady. She is of very
good appearance-nice clothes, and so on-but you don't know if,
under the clothes, the underwears are clean. I can tell you my effort is
to make clean the underwears !'