In the early days a single Telefunken U-47 microphone was entrusted to capturing the lavish sound of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Just one little ol' microphone, suspended about 25 feet above the podium in Orchestra Hall. No fussing, no twiddling, no jiggering the levels to boost the soft passages. Nope. Just Rafael Kubelik and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in their pristine glory, roaring and singing and shimmering and dancing through the Ravel orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. I'm listening to that by-now legendary recording, made at the beginning of the hi-fidelity era that was ushered in by the development of magnetic tape and LPs. It remains as rich and compelling a performance of Pictures as ever, a superb American orchestra in its pre-Reiner incarnation, the audio as clear as a bell and only a slightly crackly tape hiss giving a hint that this razor-sharp recording is 61 years old as of this writing. It made it all the way from its original magnetic tapes to an immaculately remastered compact disc (using original equipment restored back to prime fighting trim) and was subsequently transferred to the hard drive of a Mac Pro in Apple Lossless format.
I'm hearing it played back on audio equipment that utterly outclasses even the most exalted gear of the early 1950s, but nowadays can be acquired by ordinary folks on ordinary budgets, requiring neither mortgaging the house nor selling one of the children. But it would sound good on dang near anything. There's no hiding this light under a bushel.
But that was Mercury Records and their soon-to-be christened Mercury Living Presence recordings, setting unimpeachable standards for audio excellence that have remained in force to this very day. They knew how to do it at Mercury, and the way to do it was to get out of the way and let the guys play. Select your equipment with the discerning ear of a connoisseur; place your microphone just so; set the levels once and never again; roll the tape and capture the thing. In 1955 Mercury went stereo via a custom three-track Ampex tape console with two additional side microphones while retaining that overall focus on the one single unimpeachable source. As before they placed the microphones and set the levels, and that was the end of that. The final mixdown from three tracks to two LP channels was handled with exquisite discernment by Wilma Cozart Fine, who many years later supervised the digital remasterings.
Those Mercury Living Presence LPs have held up astonishingly well over the passage of time. I own a number of originals that were properly cared for by their owners down the years; those discs tend to play as though brand spanking new, with only the fleeting occasional click or pop to remind me that I'm hearing vinyl that's been sitting around for a half century. Even those Mercury LPs that haven't fared so well are rarely plagued by groove distortion, thanks to the care and integrity with which the pressing process was handled. Only when Mercury started entrusting disc production to overseas firms (the "Golden Imports" series) did pressing quality start to deteriorate. Real, original Mercurys usually display a resistance to wear matched only by the finest vintage Deutsche Grammophon and Philips pressings.
That isn't to say that they're utterly perfect. The Mercury sound runs fairly bright, although it never edges over into stridency. The preferred microphone placement was onstage rather than out in the hall, so the orchestras in particular might sound a bit overly close or analytic to some ears. That's primarily a matter of taste, not tech. Mercuries tend to be clear rather than rich, revealing instead of enhancing. They are as resolutely honest as is possible within technological limits.
Mercury Records signed with a relatively limited roster of orchestras and performers for their classical recordings. Given that the Mercury pockets were far shallower than RCA, Columbia, or DG, Mercury orchestras and conductors were generally one level below the stratospheric figures encountered on other labels. Thus you didn't get Toscanini or Reiner or Szell or Rubinstein or Horowitz or Heifetz. Ditto the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic. Instead you got Antál Dorati, Paul Paray, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, and Howard Hanson. You got the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Eastman-Rochester Symphony and Pops and Wind Band, and for one short breathtaking thaw in the Cold War, the Moscow Philharmonic led by Kyril Kondrashin. Soloists were an even tighter-knit clan: pianists Byron Janis and Gina Bachauer, cellist Janos Starker, violinist Henryk Szeryng, guitarist Pepe Romero et familia. Not a lot of chamber music and minimal opera, but tons of orchestral music and some truly memorable solo albums—such as Starker's exquisite Bach Cello Suites.
From time to time the Mercury folks produced a jeu d'esprit that pushed the boundaries of classical recording. I'm particularly fond of the tacky but effective march records from Frederick Fennell and the Eastman Wind Ensemble, including that early-stereo audiophile favorite Screamers, a gloriously over-the-top collection of loud circus marches. And then there was Balalaika Favorites courtesy of the Osipov State Russian Folk Orchestra, proudly announced as "First recordings ever made in the Soviet Union by American musical and technical staff and equipment. Recorded by Mercury on location in Moscow." PR aside, the album is one of the most enjoyable ever made. Just try to make it through Waltz of the Faun without a big silly grin on your face, just try. The stories of making that album and the other Russian discs in 1962 have all the allure of Stanley and Livingstone carving out paths in the uncharted jungle. Several years devoted to hacking through the bureaucracy (on both sides) were followed by the daunting challenge of transferring a Mercury recording truck all the way to the Soviet Union. Moscow's voltage was a bit too high for the American equipment, so recording engineer Robert Fine hit on the clever kludge of hooking a long string of incandescent light bulbs onto the circuit; the combined resistance tamed the Moscow voltage sufficiently to avoid frying the American-made film recorders, amplifiers, and associated equipment.
Tidbit: among the engineers who assisted the Americans during the Moscow sessions was the daughter of master film director Sergei Eisenstein.
Then there was the best-selling 1812 Overture disc with its West Point artillery and jaw-dropping sonics, and the ambitious two-disc Civil War series that combined period music with recreations of the sound of famous battles. A curiosity perhaps, but worthwhile.
In the final analysis it's all about the music, and that's what the label was all about. Mercury Living Presence afficionados know that Minneapolis had itself one hell of an orchestra in the 1950s and 60s. (It still does.) Maybe Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Cleveland were getting all the industry attention, but Minneapolis had the goods and then some. Even the tinder-dry acoustics of Northrop Auditorium couldn't lessen the impact of the orchestra's sizzling virtuosity. Their Sacre du printemps ranks amongst the greatest of them all, with longtime maestro Antál Dorati in tip-top form; their Dvořák Slavonic Dances out-does Szell/Cleveland in the sheer exuberance category, while avoiding that latter recording's unfortunate lean towards the martial. Paul Paray's Detroiters weren't quite in the same league, but what they lacked in niceties of execution they more than counterbalanced with gorgeous tone and Paray's sterling musicianship. It says a great deal about America's regional orchestras that Minneapolis, Detroit, and even Rochester were fielding bands that held their own easily with Mercury's sole big-name group, the London Symphony Orchestra. And Minneapolis ate London's lunch.
The Mercuries are all available in superb digital remasterings that preserve the manifold virtues of a peerless crew of engineers, and the LPs are also out there, both as originals and in some cases high-quality new pressings from SpeakersCorner. Certain albums have become sought-after collector's items and command a stiff price from dealers. Others can be had for a modest price and require little more than a thorough cleaning to spring back to life. Without question they're worth exploring, not just for their impeccable audiophile credentials, but also for the sparkling window that Mercury opened onto the regional American music scene of the 1950s and 60s.
At the risk of sounding like an advertising hack: A stellar set of 51 representative CDs in a boxed set is a current must-buy item for anyone interested in fine recordings. Original jacket art, an excellent historical booklet, and flawless remasterings combine to illustrate the achievements of a well-loved name in audio history. Fortunately, since Mercury is now under the Universal Music banner, full-res downloads are also available from both the Deutsche Grammophon and Decca online sites. So come on, now…aren't you just the least little bit curious to hear Balalaika Favorites? It's the quirky hipster party disc par excellence, after all, and it's a hell of a lot better recorded than most of today's over-compressed and twiddled fare.
