Stereo Sound Is Here To Stay
JAMES, HIBBARD
MUSIC By Hibbard James Stereo Sound Is Here To Stay I HAVE A CONFESSION to make. Although I have an abiding antipathy to fads, I have now decided that stereo is here to stay. I was pretty much...
...This has always been the problem with a distressingly large percentage of the people who go in for hi-fi in a big way...
...But the music that is being recorded is excellent and it is being done by today's top-flight artists...
...Or, to put it another way, do you regard a record as a technical toy or as the means of preserving, and reproducing at will, a particular performance in which the music and the performance are of first importance...
...I find his the more satisfactory of the two recordings...
...Cohen on the telephone...
...Both are great, but the stereo version has an added richness that can be matched only by actually hearing the opera in a stage performance...
...1 in G Major, recorded in 1927 (Angel COLH 12...
...Lisa Delia Casa...
...Hilde Gueden...
...It's a wonderful way to introduce stereo...
...Obviously, many of the greatest recorded performances are permanently lost to stereo...
...while it's a bit unfair to compare the monaural recording with George London and the Glyndbourne Orchestra (Epic 4SC—6010) with the newer stereo version, it seems to me that Siepi brings a greater flexibility to the title role, while never losing sight of the deeper qualities that make the Don such a fascinating figure...
...Vienna State Opera Chorus and the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Joseph Krips—London OS A 1401), the greatest opera by the greatest of composers...
...Anton Dermota, Suzanne Danco...
...I shall be devoting more and more of my column to stereo, but I should like to begin by calling attention to one of the best of the stereo albums to reach me in recent weeks: Mozart's Don Giovanni (Cesare Siepi, Fernando Corena...
...Since my capitulation, I have been getting stereo discs in such numbers that it will be some weeks before I can get my bearings again...
...Last year, I commented favorably upon one of Angel's "Great Recordings of the Century" series which featured Alfred Cortot, Jacques Thi-baud and Pablo Casals in a performance of Joseph Haydn's Trio No...
...But there is a much more serious difficulty about the craze for high-fidelity reproduction, whether in monaural or stereo, which cannot be answered as easily or obviously...
...Stereo, fortunately, is avoiding so far most of the excesses that all too often characterized hi-fi...
...The sort of thing I mean is pretty well summed up by a vintage George Price cartoon that appeared in the New Yorker...
...his ear glued to an obviously expensive record unit, the while his wife is complaining to a friend: "Twenty-five-hundred dollars for a record changer, and what does he play...
...There are now two complete versions of Don Giovanni available and...
...The stereo revolution is no gradual affair like the change-over from the old 78 RPMs to long-playing records—a change which took several years, with a number of minor skirmishes and counter-movements along the way...
...Obviously further resistance is fruitless...
...Today, they occupy almost three times the space needed to list new monaural releases and, as a coup de grace, both Angel and London records are being released only in stereo as of the beginning of 1959...
...Furthermore, although special equipment is required to play stereo records, the new stereo equipment will play monaural records without damage (but please note that monaural equipment cannot handle stereo discs) and with excellent reproduction...
...I have no doubt that a hi-fi buff would find much to criticize about the technical aspects of this particular recording...
...They are so entranced with the reproduction that they are all too often completely oblivious to the quality of the performance which is being reproduced, or even to what is being reproduced...
...It is all too easy to make fun of such grotesqueries (indeed, the advertising copy describing them often serves as its own parody...
...Basically, it boils down to the question: Would you rather have first-rate reproduction of a second-rate performance or second-rate reproduction of a first-rate performance...
...The same performance is also available on monaural records, and if you want a good example of what stereo can do, compare the two...
...I was pretty much of a hold-out against hi-fi in its more extreme manifestations, largely because of the antics of that lunatic fringe which always seems to infect any new technological development in the recording industry...
...The emergence of stereo has been abrupt...
...Just a few months ago, stereo releases took up only a few pages in the monthly catalogues...
...With this album...
...But all flaws admitted, I would rather own this recording than a technically flawless record of the same piece plaved by some amateur trio...
...It shows a gentleman with a rapt expression...
...In the most recent record catalogues, you can still find such objets d'art as Voices of the Satellites, A Farewell to Steam (recordings of steam engines) and Sport Cars in Stereo ("Spectacular adventure in sound and motion...
...London Records has put out a real prize package...
Vol. 42 • February 1959 • No. 6
