Fortune has smiled on music lovers worldwide: EMI has been remastering their enormous back catalog into hi-def and SACD issues. Nothing quite compares to the EMI catalog; even those great stalwarts RCA Victor and Deutsche Grammophon can’t quite capture the scope, immensity, and prestige of the EMI roster in its great days. To have an ever-enlarging selection of these stellar recordings restored into their best possible shape is a kingly gift indeed.
Keep in mind that EMI wasn’t always EMI. Originally it was The Gramophone Company, Ltd., and in that guise was partnered with several other important labels, including—at one time or another—the fledgling Deutsche Grammophon, English Columbia, and especially RCA Victor. Before the second world war, stuff that was released in the USA on RCA Red Seal came out in England on HMV (His Master’s Voice), as The Gramophone Company’s offerings were generally known. With the advent of the LP in the 1950s, the corporate tectonic plates shifted and The Gramophone Company, now EMI, partnered with Capitol Records in the USA. Capitol rarely released classical titles under their own name (Steinberg and the Pittsburgh SO were a rare exception, as were the crossover Hollywood Bowl albums) but instead chose to create a mostly-classical label, Angel Records. They reached back into early record-industry history for both the name and the logo, a cute little angel inscribing a record disc with a long quill pen.
That should have been just fine and dandy, but as every record collector came to know, Angels were atrociously pressed and started evincing wear issues after only a few playings. The word went out on the audiophile street that the way to go was to get the EMI originals—which weren’t available in the US, especially not in those pre-Internet days. So most of us made do with Angels. I had a ton of ‘em; Schwarzkopf with von Karajan in the legendary Strauss Rosenkavalier, the great Puccini opera recordings with Renata Scotto, Klemperer’s magisterial Brahms, Mozart, and Beethoven, von Karajan’s wonderful recordings with London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, Barbirolli in Manchester, Boult in London. Most of them sounded wonderful the first time around. Then the trouble started.
The CD era put an end to that nonsense, thank heavens. EMI went international and I retired most of my Angels to boxes in the garage. There they stayed until I had a major housecleaning and had them hauled off to the dump. I don’t really regret that, even though I have been participating in the vinyl renaissance of late. Even a superb VPI turntable cannot turn sows’ ears into silk purses. CDs were definitely the way to go with the EMI catalog, and still are.
That aforesaid vinyl renaissance has resulted in some golden EMI goodies being brought out on super-duper virgin 180 gram vinyl. I have a few of them, and they’re an utter delight: Klemperer’s Bruckner 4th, for example. But these hi-def remasterings are even better. I downloaded two from HDTracks recently, both from Klemperer and the Philharmonia Orchestra. The first is the 1963 Mozart album of symphonies 40 and 41, still a big-band standard for Mozartean excellence after all these years. Hearing it in hi-def digital audio (96 kHz sampling rate, 24 bits) is like looking through a newly-cleaned window. The Philharmonia’s whipcrack string section loses the harsh edge it sometimes evinces on both Angels and the earlier EMI compact disc releases and becomes incisive while glowing with richness. The woodwinds—and they were probably the best on the planet in those days—are in perfect complement to those glorious strings. Everything about the performances breathes artistry, from Klemperer’s meticulous pacing (not slow tempi, pace the usual shibboleths about Klemp) to the warm acoustic of Kingsway Hall. Even if you’re a die-hard early-music person who wouldn’t listen to Mozart at A440 on a bet, these performances simply cannot fail. Stellar musicianship, sterling technique, and radiant audio: what’s not to like?
Then there’s the piece de resistance of Klemperer’s Romantic catalog—the Brahms German Requiem with Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, with the mighty Philharmonia and its hand-picked chorus. Despite today’s sad tendency to snip the Requiem down to HIP size, to speed it up or dance it up or reduce it to faded Victorian salon music (ahem…John Eliot Gar….cough cough) the fact remains that there is Brahms, and then there is BRAAAAAAHMS. This is BRAAAAAAAHMS, and boy howdy is it ever. If you join me in treasuring the German Requiem for its spiritual fervor, for its heroic character, for its breathtaking scope, for its precious moments of intimacy, even its passages of bitter regret, this is the one German Requiem to rule them all. Once again, contrary to the usual schtick about Klemperer, it isn’t particularly slow, not even where you might expect—such as the grandiose fugue in the 6th movement. I had a copy of the Klemp Requiem on LP for a while, yet another flimsy Angel pressing of a massive performance. I had to listen past the audio inadequacies to focus on the musical glories beneath, but it was generally worth the effort. The current remastering makes it clear that the audio was never second-rate. It was vintage Kingsway Hall captured in EMI’s Sunday-best 1961 technology, so with the master tapes themselves restored for the 1999 “Great Recordings of the Century” release followed by this current remastering, this is truly hog heaven for Brahmsians, Klemperians, audiophiles, and really anyone with a pair of functioning ears and an ounce of musical taste.
Here’s a thought: the entire EMI catalog, soup to nuts, stretching all the way back to Caruso’s 1902 after-lunch session in a Milan hotel room…restored and preserved for posterity in these beautiful hi-def digital remasterings. Could it happen?