The utmost concentration is essential when mixing the 3 channels of the original Mercury recording tapes to two channel stereo in order to achieve that perfect stereo-balance and a real to life sound at all instances, for all instruments. Because "real to life" means: dynamics that are detailed and frequencies that are harmonious in all registers - as is the case in the recording of 'Pictures at an Exhibition' played by pianist Byron Janis on Mercury CD 434 346-2.
The grand piano has extraordinary presence and you can clearly imagine that you are almost able to touch the black lid, while seeing the keyboard from the side and part of the bronze frame with the strong, tensed strings, and you hear the wooden construction. As if you were there.
It is also a question of microphone placement, of choosing the right position of the instrument in the studio or concert hall and of using top quality tape recorders, playback amplifiers and monitor loudspeakers. But to mix the three channels down to two-channel-stereo when the signal is transferred to a DAT recorder while preparing the CD reissues, that takes as great a skill as the initial transfer to the lacquer in the nineteen fifties and sixties. Obviously Wilma Cozart Fine has the ability to concentrate in abundance. The Mercury Compact Disc with 'Pictures at an Exhibition' is the eminent proof.

Wilma Cozart Fine at the Western Electric mixing console and surrounded by a host of components as she poses for the camera at the occasion of the release of another batch of CDs containing transfers of legendary Mercury 'Living Presence' tapes. Connoisseurs can easily spot the modular Audio Suite (designed by Mark Levinson) which is one of the few preamplifiers in the world today that can boast of extreme neutrality.

LIVING PRESENCE

The label or term 'Mercury Living Presence' originated from music critic Howard Taubman's review of the recording of 'Pictures at An Exhibition' (Mussorgsky). Taubman wrote in the fall of 1951 in The New York Times, that this recording sound as if you are in the living presence of the orchestra". From then on "Living Presence" became Mercury's quality slogan that distinguished the label from its competitors and adorned all following Mercury-issues. MG 50000 was reviewed in High Fidelity Magazine, Volume 2, Number 2, of September-October 1952. Critic C.G. Burke wrote:
"Acoustically in the foremost rank of orchestral records. With one gigantic sound, Mercury attains a status she has never had before. Brass timbre has seldom been more sucessfully engraved than in this bold statement wherein everything is unambiguous and the phalanx is overwhelming. (...) the brilliant music in Ravel's orchestration acquires a singular emotional force in this triumph of engineering wherein nothing is lost and everything is in proportion."

In the summer of 1950 Wilma Cozart accepted a positon with Mercury, as is stated in many artciles.
When it became known that the youthful Kubelik was to leave the Chicago Symphony - because of a conflict - before the summer of 1953, the orchestra would no longer be available for Mercury to make recordings with. From then on Fritz Reiner was going to be the conductor and he was contracted by RCA. After her appointment with Mercury Records, Wilma Cozart immediately proposed that Mercury should hire the Minneapolis Symphony with Antal Dorati who had been recording for RCA Victor in the past. She knew Dorati from the time she was his secretary with the Dallas Symphony and also when she moved to the orchestra of Minneapolis.
Recording projects with Antal Dorati and the Minneapolis Symphony were immediately undertaken: MG 50004 (Borodin, 2nd Symphony, and Stravinsky, Firebird Suite) released in June, 1952; MG 50005 (Berlioz, Roman Carnaval, and Ravel, Alborada del Gracioso) released in December of that same year; MG 50008 (Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 5) released in November, 1952. MG 50009 (Rimsky-Korsakov, Scheherazade) released in September, 1952. At the same time recordings with Kubelik were made.
Kubelik's Brahms for instance was released in December 1952. The last recordings of Kubelik/Chicago for Mercury were made on 3-5 April 1953: Mozart Symphony No. 38 “Prague” (issued on MG-50015) coupled with Symphony No. 34 which was recorded from 4-6 December 1952). Schoenberg's Five Pieces op. 16 and Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes of Weber were on a rather late release (MG-50024).
See also the separate page MONO DAYS
and check James Lacy's Complete Living Presence discography.

AUDIOPHILE CD WITH BYRON JANIS

Wilma Cozart Fine: 'Not so long ago a dealer called and told me that he had some trouble in selling a pair of Thiel high-end loudspeakers. The client had been listening to all sorts of music but was unable to decide if he would buy the speakers. Until the dealer played this CD and the client went home with the speakers and the CD.'
This performance by pianist Byron Janis of Mussorgsky's original piano version of 'Pictures at an Exhibition' was recorded decades ago (December 25 - 29, 1961) in New York, in the Ballroom Studio of C. Robert Fine - Bob for insiders - to whom Wilma Cozart was married four years earlier. Today this recording is as modern as it was then, because the sound quality and the total image are a showpiece (in the best sense) of what is possible in recording technique, and will remain so for years to come.

This edited image is from an advertisement of Audio Devices, Inc., promoting their audiotapes, audiodiscs and audiofilm in 1955. The caption:

"Robert C. Fine, President, and Al Mian, Chief Mixer, at master control console of Fine Sound Inc., 711 Fifth Avenue, New York City."

The first paragraph in the ad reads:

"In professional circles Bob Fine is a name to reckon with. His studio, one of the countries largest and best equipped, cuts the masters for over half the records released each year by independent record manufacturers."

NEW MIX

In recent years Wilma Cozart Fine has transferred over 200 Mercury tapes that date back from the years when analogue recording was an art as well as a science. She mixed the many legendary tapes to a DAT recorder from which the CD-masters were made.

In order to make this possible it was necessary to restore the original recording and mixing equipment, Ampex 300-3 stereo tape recorders (using 1/2 inch tape) , the 35 mm Westrex machine, and the Western Electric mixing console. All were used at the end of the nineteen fifties and the beginning of the nineteen sixties, the early stereo days.

The 35 mm film with the recording of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 with Byron Janis and Antal Dorati was lost and a tape copy of this recording was used for the first transfer to CD by Wilma Cozart Fine.

Naturally the recorders and mixing console is valve-equipment. Although the transistor had been invented decades before, this was the only quality equipment available. In the process of restoring, not only the circuitry had to be checked, but the heads of the recorder should have the precise gap and should function with the right bias and equalization in order to read the signal to the max. The restoration of the equipment was not without difficulty. It took about six months to compete. The Ampex machines are special machines with three heads and three channels, with three head amplifiers. They were built specifically by Ampex for Bob Fine.

EARLY EXPERIMENTS

Wilma Cozart Fine: "Bob handed the specifications to Ampex. You know, he was a technician and an inventor. Already in 1955 he experimented and compared the quality of 2 and 3-track stereo. He said that only recordings made with 3 channels could provide a good stereo-image."
Those of you readers who have witnessed the rise (and decline, I should say, in some sections) of the high-fidelity scene through the years - or have read about the often painstaking trials that led to the extraordinary achievements in the sixties when the analogue sound reproduction was at its peak if you owned top quality playback equipment - may know that especially in the beginning of the stereo era, some amateurs used a center-channel, that is to say that a third loudspeaker was placed in between the stereo pair to produce a signal that was the subtraction of left and right channels. Others experimented with a 'mid-speaker' that radiated the addition of the left and right signals, but at a precise adjusted level.

STEREO FROM 1956 ON CD

One of the earliest proofs of Bob Fine's stereo technique is on CD as well. It is Mercury 432 005-2 with Kodály's 'Hary Janos Suite', 'Dances of Galanta' and 'Maroszek Dances', and Bartok's 'Hungarian Sketches' and 'Romanian Folk Dances', all performed by the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Antal Dorati. The recording date: November 1956.
In November 1953, Robert E. Blake, Don Gabor's recording technician, already recorded in stereo for the Remington label. The orchestra was the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra directed by conductor Thor Johnson it performed with the Helsinki University Chorus; see the link on top of this page). RCA and English Decca (London) followed in 1954.
However, Bob Fine's stereo recording is unique because of the use of three microphones and the specific placement to record the performance on three tracks (channels) in order to fully capture the original orchestral balance.

UNIQUE

So a stereo-recording is only then true to life if the sound stage is picked-up by three microphones. This means in case of an orchestra: one microphone for the left section, one for the right section and one for the players sitting right in the middle in front of you.

DIGITAL RECORDINGS AND 3 MICROPHONES

I read on the internet a discussion between technicians telling that they were using this basic setup but were not pleased with the result. They concluded that the original 3-microphone setup has its flaws. They forget that digital format of 16 bit and 44.1 kHz. sampling frequency is completely different from analog. Yes, the digital format has a dynamic range of 96 dB and the same signal to noise ratio. Despite the fact that the analog formats have a S/N ratio somewhere in the region of 80 dB, the resolution is much higher if compared to the CD. The digital format of the CD is a linear format where with decreasing recording level the resolution is decreasing as well. Many modern recordings use a more close miking of all the sections of instrument of an orchestra, a band or an ensemble.
If microphones are positioned at the front of the orchestra and 7 feet high, instruments far away in the back of the orchestra get a less precise result when playing softly (low recording level). In that case the addition of dither to the signal will help. Many technicians understandably do use more than the three channels used by the Mercury team. Today they are likely to use 24 channels for recordings of large orchestras and will adjust the various channels for obtaining the original orchestral balance and will monitor the balance of the sound meticulously.
This is specifically the case if there is a great difference in level between the loudest and the softest passages in the music. The soft passages will get far less resolution and can show slight distortion. Check what is the difference between the linear format and a high resolution digital format here: History: 25 Years CD. You can also read about the analog approach (miking) in the early days when technicians started recording in the digital format.
And: in the days of analogous recording, valve amplifiers were used in recorders and steering amplifiers. Naturally the playback system consisted also of valve amplifiers and the big loudspeaker systems had large woofers with a relatively high resonance frequency. If today one wants to make recordings like Mercury did, analogous tape machines have to be used for the recordings which then can be transferred to a digital format.

Frederick Fennell's admired Gershwin album.

The cover of the Dutch Mercury edition of "Spanish Fire" MDY 135 376 (from US Mercury stamped matrix PPS 6025) with the explanation of the f:35d Perfect Presence Sound Series..

 

 

The covers of spectacular sound recordings of so called popular music were often of a higher quality than the musical contents engraved on the disc, especially in the case of this Mercury Perfect Presence recording of Clebanoff "Strings Afire", made in Hollywood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

SR 90139 with Rossini Overtures - Antal Dorati conducting the Minneapolis Symphony - shows variations in the basic setup with 3 microphones.

TIME CONSUMING

The technique of microphone placement is in essence as simple as it is effective. But it took a master technician like C. Robert Fine to devise it in concordance with the laws of nature covering the audible frequency spectrum, maintaining a frequency characteristic as straight as possible, while not disturbing time and phase.
When preparing a recording it takes time to position the microphones in such a way that the sound balance of the orchestra is captured as desired. First the microphones were put in the right position: the distance above the orchestra and the angle were determined.

The position also depended as a matter of fact on the acoustic energy generated by a 100 piece orchestra, by a string quartet or by a single performer as in the case with Byron Janis playing Mussorgsky in the Ballroom Studio in New York, or performing Chopin in the large concert hall in Moscow. Also the specific acoustic properties of the hall were the orchestra was playing were taken into account. And finally the nature of the work plays an important part in the game.
The 'Organ Symphony' of Camille Saint-Saëns asks for a completely different microphone placement than the Minute-waltz of Frederic Chopin.

Of course the Mercury-people were experienced technicians and producers. They had knowledge of the music itself, the instrumentation and the score, which all added to their method of recording. This 3-microphone technique was specifically used for classical, and symphonic music in particular.

PERFECT PRESENCE SOUND SERIES

There was also a series with excellent sound recordings of popular orchestral music for which the technicians chose to apply multi miking, using a variety of microphones: Telefunken (U-47) and RCA (44 BX, BK 5, KM 56). But now the slogan "Perfect Presence Sound Series" were added. One of these outstanding recordings was "Frederic Fennell conducts Gershwin" on PPS 6006, from which the notes about Studio A at Fine Recording Studios in New York City are shown on the left. Wilma Cozart was the recording director; Harold Lawrence was the Musical supervisor; Bob Fine the technical supervisor.
The Perfect Presence Sound Series recording "10 trombones like 2 pianos" (PPS 6001) was done in Hollywood by recording engineer Mel Chisholm and recording director David Carroll. They followed a different set up.
"Spanish Fire" (PPS 6025) was another of those recordings made in Fine's ballroom studio in New York. The cover explained the technical ins and outs of f:35d Perfect Presence Sound stereo recording. It also mentioned the advantages of 35 mm film:

1. Film cuts the background noise of a recording to an irreducible minimum. There is no tape hiss.
2. No flutter: film is used on a specially designed recorder which guides it throughout its closed loop sprocket guide path across the recording head.
3. The recording width of film is nearly three times that of conventional one-half inch tape. This allows much more space for each channel in stereophonic recording and eliminates the danger of Crosstalk between tracks.
4. The 5 mil thickness of film as against 1.5 mils for tape means less danger of print-through in storage.
5. Better transient response and a greatly extended frequency range are made possible due to the faster rate of speed (18 inches per second or 90 feet per minute) for film, and its closed loop path and the low impedance head assembly.

It is clear that in some cases artists and technicians were not always creating beautiful music. Many times they were merely challenging the limits of the possible through perfect phase in microphone placement, the use of specific tape recorders, the cutting of the lacquer in such a way as to achieve great dynamics, and finally through a perfect pressing. Many of those recordings had demonstration quality and were especially loved by the high fidelity crowd.

DIFFERENT STEREO IMAGES

The various methods of microphone placement result in different sound and different images. Dutch technician Hans Lauterslager, who worked as a recording engineer with 'Philips Phonographische Industrie' (later to be Phonogram and Polygram respectively before it became part of Universal Music), talked in 1988 in Dutch record magazine 'Luister...' about his experience while working with the Mercury recording team in London making recordings for Mercury and Philips in the early nineteen sixties.
For the recording of the set of the complete Symphonies of Tchaikovsky with Dorati, they used Mercury's 3-microphone technique, yet the aural perspective is not always the same. Even though the typical 3-mics approach was executed, there are differencies in the quality of recordings, specifically after Mercury had been acquired by Philips and the relationship was put into practice in 1962. C Robert Fine left Mercury then. Wilma Cozart Fine left Mercury ion 1964.

ISSUES WITH TCHAIKOVSKY

After the take-over the responsibility for productions lays in the hands of Harold Lawrence, Robert Eberenz, and Claire Van Ausdall, and of Philips producers and technicians. Among these is recording technician Hans Lauterslager.
In this time of change, the recordings of various Tchaikovsky symphonies were made. In the 1950s Philips had mono recordings with Paul van Kempen (Nos. 5 and 6) and Van Otterloo (No. 4). There even was a mono Pathétique with Antal Dorati conducting the Vienna Symphony Orchestra on Philips' sublabel Fontana CFL 1019 (re-released in 1962 as 697010EL. On top of that Philips recorded No. 5 with the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Wolfgang Sawallisch in the 1960s. It looks as if Philips' A&R department does not have a consistent policy for Tchaikovsky. But that was going to change when a complete set was planned with the newly contracted Igor Markevich.

DIFFERENT DATES

Mercury had started recording the Tchaikovsky Symphonies in stereo in London in 1961. It is interesting (and at the same time strange) that Philips sometimes mentions a different year of recording.

Tchaikovsky Symphonies 1-3 : LSO 26-31 July 1965. Philips stamped in the dead wax 1965.
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.4, London Symphony Orchestra 12 June 1960. In the complete Dorati Tchaikovsky Philips set the year of recording is 1961. Gramophone catalog states the release in July 1962 on AMS 16118 (MMA 11168 mono)
Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5: LSO, 23 June 1961. Philips mentions in the dead wax 1962. Gramophone catalog lists this recording as released in November 1962 on AMS 16125 (MMA 11175 mono).
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6: LSO 17 & 18 June 1960. Not issued on MMA. In the complete Dorati Tchaikovsky set: matrix says 1963.

In the US most of the symphonies were issued on separate discs. except for No. 4 of which the old Dorati recording with the Minneapolis Symphony remained available. No. 5 was released on Mercury SR 90255, No. 6 on SR90312, and Symphonies Nos. 1-3 on SR-2-2-9015.

In September of 1966 the complete set of symphonies with the London Symphony under Dorati became available on SR-6-9121.
In the mid 1970s, these same recordings were issued in Europe on the Philips label. It was also a 6 LP box set but here with reference 6747-195.
Apparently there was a conflict of interest. The first Markevich recording was listed in the Gramophone catalog already in October 1962 (Pathétique), 1962. In 1965 No. 3 was recorded, No. 1 was listed in October 1966, No. 5 in December 1966, Nos. 2 and 4 were recorded 1967.

In my perception the earlier recorded symphonies do not sound as good as the 3 first symphonies which were recorded in 1965. Most striking is the aural stereophonic perception and naturelness of the sound of Symphony No. 1. If you own the Mercury set of the symphonies or the complete Philips set, you should be able to hear how beautifully (for example) the third movement in the 1st Symphony is executed, both by the orchestra and the Mercury-technicians.

SOUND STAGE

Most striking however is the stereophonic perspective of the original 3 LP boxed set with Tchaikovsky's Three Suites for Orchestra (SR 3-9018, Antal Dorati and the Philharmonia Orchestra), or the lack of it. The inlay states that Hans Lauterslager and Harold Lawrence made the recordings. You can hear that the Mercury 3 mike technique was not achieved to the full. Lauterslager said in Dutch monthly record magazine "Luister..." that the Mercury setup was too time consuming and would require a longer recording session. Though Harold Lawrence reported that the three microphones were positioned at three carefully calculated spots, the listener can easily hear the difference in sound when comparing the recording of the Suites to other, earlier Mercury recordings made in the US and in England. The positioning depends for a great deal on the quality of hearing of the technician and the producer. By then the talented Robert Fine did not work for Mercury any longer. The Philips management apparently found Fine's way indeed too expensive, just like other aspects of the final product. The pressings from plates coded RFR were now done in the Chicago factory. They were of lower quality as many later Mercury SR and Philips PHS releases showed.
It is of course possible that the microphone placement of one recording session differs slightly from the positioning during the next session. The recordings of the Rossini Overtures conducted by Antal Dorati on SR90139 is an example of this. There is a discernible difference between Side One and Two.

.

The liner notes of early Command recordings explain Bob Fine's microphone technique:

35 MM SOUND FILM CHARACTERISTIC

That same CD carries two encores played by Byron Janis. One of them is recorded on the 35 mm film recorder made by Westrex. Westrex had modified the machine mechanically and electronically so that three heads were aligned and three channels with electronics were built in. Certainly inspired by the Cinemascope and Widescreen movie technique which for their sound recording used 5 tracks on the film. In the movie theater there were 3 speakers in the front (left, middle and right) and there were two speakers in the back of the theater and some supporting speakers on the side walls. 
Since dialogues in movie theaters have to be understood, originally these film recorders had a frequency-characteristic that could not be identified as high fidelity. So they were modified in order to achieve the desired characteristics: an extended frequency range and linearity, with the benefit of an increased signal to noise ratio of the 35 mm sound film
If this correction is not made, the sound gets that slightly "glassy" character as often heard in Everest recordings.
Also the attention paid to the cutting of the discs and the use of the best cutting-lathe played a mayor role in achieving excellent dynamics and a detailed sound quality. Though not every reviewer was always pleased with the clear and often bright results. But those who owned quality-equipment enjoyed practically every first release bought of any Mercury recording. One should not forget that quality cartridges of quality brands like General Electric, Fairchild and Ortofon in the mono days generated a different sound appropriate for the way recordings were made and records were cut. And later the many stereo models with the newly devised elliptical styli, translated the modulated groove in the early stereo years in a completely different way than modern high end cartridges do with their ultra fine line tips and often too slender sound.

EVEREST

Everest initially used 35 mm film for recording and explained the advantages on the inner sleeves: thicker tape, less print-through, wider tracks, higher dynamics.
When Everest stopped their high quality productions, the Studio with 35 mm recorders and consoles were sold to Bob Fine. How come that there is a distinctive difference in the sound characteristics of a Mercury Living Presence recording (and of early Command recordings as well) if compared to the early Everest stereo releases? These are caused by the choice of microphones and microphone placement. There are also the differences in the electronics of mixers and amplifiers used when cutting a laquer. These are: frequency characteristics, signal to noise ratio, dynamic capabilities, phase characteristics, and distortion values. Remember: Bob Fine had the recording characteristics of the 35 mm machines changed by Ampex.
Every record label has its own "sound". In RCA and Decca (London) recordings a slight phase shift can be noticed as if the signal is somewhat weaker in the lower-mid/mid section. Everest recordings show a less chiseled transient.

COMMAND

Command recordings however have fantastic sound because of the application of exact the same microphones, the electronics and the perfect placement. C. Robert Fine and George Piros were responsible for that as is printed on the inside of the early Command gatefold issues.

NOISE REDUCTION

Often these differences are also brought about by the unfortunate application of the Dolby Noise Reduction System. Mercury did not use a noise reduction system.
A 35 mm film recorder was originally designed for the recording of speech to be put on the sound track of movies. The frequency characteristic and the dynamics were mainly designed to reproduce the dialogues. C. Robert Fine had the electronics of his 35 mm recorders modified for recording music in high fidelity.

CAMEO 4:35MM

The use of 35-millimeter film was also chosen by the engineers of the CAMEO record label. But now 4 tracks were used. Above is the explanation taken from a cover of such a 4 track recording.

MORE QUESTIONS

I was in the privileged position to meet Wilma Cozart Fine in Holiday Inn Plaza Hotel in the center of Amsterdam. We had been talking already for quite a while. But I wanted to know more about Mercury's past and the transfer of the tapes to CD.

In Mercury's special recording van Robert Eberenz just has put on a new reel of 35 mm tape into the recorder.

RAB: Was this recording technique patented by Mercury? The label Everest also used 35 mm film recording, and Command did the same.

WCF: No, there were no patents. Everest was Bert Whyte's label. He started an audio shop and later on he became a journalist. He died in 1994. My husband and I were good friends of Bert Whyte.

RAB: How about other labels and the competition?

WCF: We came already in the nineteen fifties with 'Living Presence' and only sometime later RCA with 'Living Stereo'. We were so busy with producing that we actually paid hardly any attention to other labels. And there were the big labels: Columbia, RCA, American Decca.

RAB: Did Mercury have their own plant where the records were pressed?

WCF: Yes, we had one for pop. Classical LP's were pressed at RCA's factory. We cut the lacquer and they manufactured the matrix.

RAB: I admire so much that you have mixed the three tracks manually towards two channels during the cutting of the record. I myself made audiovisuals and had to mix the tape with speech and the tape with music manually and synchronize it with the images. I had to start a fade-in at the right moment and finish the transition to the following image on preselected moments in the music, sometimes slowly and at times very quickly. If I made a mistake I had to start the whole program of 20 minutes all over again. I can imagine how intense your work must have been.

WCF: Yes, we never mixed the channels to a master tape, but always directly to the cutting lathe. A tape would introduce extra hiss and we did not want that.

RAB: As the transfer was in progress you could change the stereo-balance. Did you do that?

WCF: I had to prepare myself well and I had to note beforehand which passages needed small adjustments. Too much correction is not good. That would disturb the natural sound balance of the orchestra.

RAB: Was there more than one lacquer cut from the same recording so that two masters were made, possibly with a small difference, and RCA used both of them?

WCF: No, only one lacquer was cut. Of course things did go wrong sometimes. You know, the groove with a high level of dynamics need more space. It can be done by the cutting machine automatically. We did it manually. I would say to the technician who was cutting the lacquer: 'Here comes the loud passage' and he then varied the distance between the grooves. It could happen that we were busy and that I had still three more minutes of music on the tape and he had already reached the final groove. And then everything had to be done from the start. But we also have cut lacquers that contained a maximum of information, almost 30 minutes for one side.
.

When a reel is full, a new reel with unrecorded tape is inserted. To make splicing possible, the performers will start playing several bars earlier in the score. The recordings will overlap.

This same procedure is followed whenever a mistake in the performance has been made: noise, false note, or whatever. The performers will start playing at a point much earlier in the score. Now there is enough overlapping to make a perfect splice.
But...

Just after S1 a mistake in the performance has been made.
So at S1 of take 1 a splice should be made to continue at S2.
But there is a problem. The perforation at S1 of take 1 and S2 of take 2 do not coincide. See the drawing. Unfortunately the splice cannot be made at S1.

However both the music signal and the perforation do synchronize much earlier in the recording, at S3. There the splice will be made in order to avoid an incorrect transition. This means that a new take has to start much earlier than is the case with 1/2" audio tape.

The 35 mm brown recording film was not transparent of course but was visualized for better understanding. (Diagram drawing by R.A.B.)

The Mercury people were always proud of the "simple" way they made their recordings. The liner notes of MG 50038 say:

" This recording was done at Orchestra Hall, Chicago, on January 8 and 9, 1954, using a single Telefunken microphone hung approximately 15 feet above and slightly behind the conductor's podium, the orchestra playing in normal concert set up throughout these recording sessions. Fairchild tape machines were used for the recording sessions; and the processing from tape to disc was done through Fairchild tape machines, McIntosh 50-watt amplifiers and the Miller cutting head, employing the Fine-Fairchild margin control system of variable pitch and variable depth of cut - thus assuring a 100-percent reproduction in disc form of the recording captured originally on magnetic tape."

Note: Zoltan Kodaly composed The Peacock Variations for the 50th anniversary of the Amsterdam (Royal) Concertgebouw Orchestra and the work was first performed in 1939, Willem Mengelberg conducting.

RAB: Did you record more than one take and did you splice them?

WCF: Yes, the disadvantage of the Westrex-recorder that we used on location was that it could handle spools with a maximum of 10 minutes. In case the orchestra made a mistake, we stopped and the recorder was prepared with a new reel with magnetic film. The orchestra had to continue in the same tempo. No difference should be noticed. Sometimes we started all over again if the mistake was made in the beginning of the work. That amounted to a lot of tape. A tape that contained a mistake could not be used a second time.
Or we just continued after a mistake, but then a few bars earlier in the score in order to have enough length to make a perfect splice. You know that 35 mm sound film is transported via sprocket wheels. The music and the position of the sprockets on both takes do not always coincide. That is why we needed more tape in order to be able to make the splice much earlier at a spot where music and perforation were identical.

RAB: I first came in touch with 'Living Presence' many years ago as a student on a summer job when I was traveling to New York. On 1600 Broadway I bought the 'Peacock Variations' by Zoltan Kodály with Antal Dorati as conductor.

WCF: With the Chicago Symphony. That was in mono. We did not do mono-recordings in this series of CD's.

RAB: No stereo-version was made in later years?

WCF: No.

RAB: I thought it was very well done. One could hear a big orchestra in quite a natural way. Everything was there in the right perspective.

(I told Wilma Cozart Fine that I bought several Mercury LPs: Brahms' Second Piano Concerto with Gina Bachauer and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (SR 90301), Rachmaninoff's 1st and Prokofiev's 3rd with Byron Janis and Kyril Kondrashin (SR 90300), and Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony with Dorati (SR 90258). We talked about how in the 3rd movement of Brahms' Second Concerto you could almost see the strings of the cello, and how beautifully Janis played the second movement in Rachmaninoff and the variations in Prokofiev. Exceptional were the sections of Brass and percussion in Prokofiev's 5th Symphony. But all instruments are all there in the right proportions. Nowhere there is an emphasis on a single instrument in particular or on some specific aspect of an instrument. These works are also available on CD.)

RAB: Not long ago I bought a Nixa LP with Vaughan-Williams' 8th Symphony, out of curiosity and I was amazed by the excellent recording. Now I do read in the notes of Polygram Classics & Jazz that you and the 'Living Presence' team made this recording in England in 1956.

WCF: Nixa was a subsidiary of the Pye factories. We made various recordings for them. Later the contract between Philips and Pye ended and Pye was purchased by EMI. EMI releases the recordings that we made for Nixa.

RAB: Apart from the Sviatoslav Richter-recordings for Philips, did you make recordings for other labels?

WCF: Yes we made a number of recordings for the Italian publisher Ricordi. They too do not belong to Philips. The specialty of the releases of the Mercury-recordings on CD is that we restored the old equipment and used it, I do not know how EMI does it. They do not have our equipment.