Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 2 in C minor ("Resurrection")
Hilde Rossl-Majdan (s), Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (s), Otto Klemperer conducting the Philharmonia Chorus and Orchestra

Howard Hanson
Concerto for Organ, Harp, and String Orchestra; Nymphs and Satyrs Ballet Suite; Concerto da Camera for Piano and String Quartet; Two Yuletide Pieces for Piano; Four Pieces for Chorus

David Craighead (organ), Eileen Moore (harp), Brian Preston (piano), Meliora Quartet, the Robert Wesleyan College Chorale, Robert Stewart director, David Fetler conducting the Rochester Chamber Orchestra

Anton Bruckner
Mass No. 3 in F minor
Cynthia Clayton (s), Melanie Sonnenberg (ms), Joseph Evans (t), Timothy Jones (b), Franz Anton Kreger conducting the Houston Symphony Chorus and the Moores School Symphony Orchestra

Available in a variety of downloadable formats, CD and DVD hard copies from High Definition Tape Transfers. The Mahler and the Hanson programs used in this review were from a DSD 64 Direct Stream Digital source, the Bruckner from a FLAC 24-bit/96kHz source.  Review By Max Westler

  I consider it a marvelous thing that I don't remember much of anything about the 1970's. But for all that's been lost in the fog of time, I do recall one afternoon a new friend invited me over to his apartment to worship at the shrine of the new Tandberg 6000X reel-to-reel tape recorder he'd just purchased that morning. We spent some time comparing (his) tape to (my) vinyl versions of the same performances, and agreed that in each case the tape sounded better. But it was the last recording he played that most affected me: a performance of the Meditation and Dance of Vengeance from Samuel Barber's ballet Medea by Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony that quite simply blew me away. Up to that point, I'd never heard anything that sounded half as good. I walked away vowing to purchase my own reel-to-reel player, but it proved beyond my means; and by the time I had the requisite liquid assets, the audio world had moved on to cassette recorders, and (alas!) I moved right along with it.

I'm sure it was the still vivid memory of a long-ago afternoon that first attracted me to the High-Defintion Tape Transfers website. As it happened, I'd been looking for an opportunity to experience the world of high-definition downloads, and what better place to start than a company that used non-copyrighted 2 and 4 track consumer analog tapes to source digital transfers? I was also much taken with their classical catalogue, for it contained performances by many conductors and orchestras I'd come of age listening to. My only problem was trying to decide which recordings to audition, for the offerings proved to be an embarrassment of riches. After much pleasurable dithering, I finally chose the three recordings currently under review, for they best represented several things HDTT does very well.

Klemperer's 1961 recording of Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony was an easy first choice. I've loved this performance since I first heard it in graduate school, and it's held pride of place in my collection ever since. Klemperer brought a special authority to his performances of the symphony. In 1905 he conducted the off-stage brass in a performance of the "Resurrection" conducted by Mahler disciple Oskar Fried and attended by the composer himself. The great man was so impressed by Klemperer's work he helped him secure his first conducting post and later recruited him to assist in the premiere of the "Symphony of a Thousand." Though there were several Mahler symphonies Klemperer assiduously avoided (the First, Third, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth), he made a specialty of the Second, and used it as his calling card. Over the course of a long career, the only work he programmed more often than the "Resurrection" was Beethoven's "Eroica."

In 1961, Klemperer was 77, and he brought a lifetime of experience to bear on this recording. Slower than some of his earlier and later live performances, the studio version runs just over 70 minutes, and it's still a good deal faster than most other versions. Bernstein's classic NY Philharmonic performance clocks in at 80 minutes, as does Ivan Fischer's more recent one. But tempo only tells us so much. What really distinguishes this performance is Klemperer's unwillingness to exaggerate or distort the music in any way. Given the histrionics of some other performances, his approach is bracingly direct and honest, driven forward by a thrusting, inexorable momentum. The tightly controlled structure gives this "Resurrection" a terrifying sense of inevitability I don't hear in other versions, as good as some of them are.

But the obvious greatness of this performance was seriously comprised by the deficiencies of the domestic pressing of the original LPs. Congested, monochromatic, bass-shy, it pretty much sounded as if it had been recorded in the midst of a dense London fog. Later reissued on CD in EMI's "Great Recordings of the Century" series, the sound was greatly improved: more detailed, but also brighter on the top. It still seemed as if something important was missing. And that's why listening to this DSD download came as such a revelation. Here at last was a realistic soundstage as wide as it was deep, and in which every section of the orchestra was securely placed. The utter transparency of the top end was balanced by the sense of warmth and detail on the bottom. I don't think I'd ever been able to clearly, cleanly differentiate the violas, cellos, and double basses in the sonic mess of earlier incarnations. The clarity also revealed the full dynamic range of this performance from insinuating whispers to earth-crunching triple fortes.

Klemperer always divided his violins left and right: a good thing to do in a Mahler symphony. But those expressive antiphonal effects were largely masked in earlier recordings; the high-definition processing lets you hear every breath of the ongoing conversation. I'd always thought of this performance as rather stark and severe, but in fact it shimmers with somber shades and dark-hued colors. But what I found most impressive was the wealth of detail I'd never heard before: the menacing knock of the kettledrum at the end of the first movement; the shrilling tsunami of the winds during the apocalyptic outburst in the finale. And then there's the intimacy and power of the final choruses, where you can hear every syllable clearly enunciated. I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea. Thanks to HDTT for finally giving this glorious performance the sound it so richly deserves.

Although largely forgotten now, composer, conductor and pedagogue Howard Hanson was once a central figure in the life of American music. Born to the same generation as Aaron Copland, Roy Harris and Walter Piston, Hanson's music was once widely performed and admired: in 1937, his opera Merry Mount had its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera, and was hugely successful; that first performance received fifty curtain calls, still a record. In 1924 Hanson became the director of the Eastman School of Music, a position he would hold for the next forty years. As the conductor of the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra, an ensemble made up of faculty members, first chair players from the Rochester Philharmonic, and students, he exclusively recorded American tonal composers. Produced for the Mercury Living Presence series, these recordings still sound remarkably fresh and vivid today. I don't know how Hanson fared conducting Beethoven and Brahms---or even if he ever did. But when it came to the music of Morton Gould or William Schuman, he was as intense and controlled as Toscanini. Toward the end of his career Hanson publicly and fiercely opposed the growing influence of experimental and twelve-tone composers, whose music he dismissed as ugly and nihilistic. He died in 1981, and so didn't live long enough to witness the resurgence of tonal music and American Romanticism he would surely have found deeply satisfying.

The music on this transfer of a CD originally released by Bridge will not rock your world. But it is uniformly entertaining and engaging. Hanson believed in beauty, simplicity, and directness of utterance. He knew how to fashion an attractive melody, and also how to give it a dramatic shape. His compositions are well crafted and brilliantly orchestrated. Certainly his most famous work, the Second Symphony (subtitled "Romantic"), epitomizes all those virtues, as do the varied compositions heard on this program. The earliest of these works, the Concerto da Camera for Piano and String Quartet, was written in 1917, andgave Hanson his first great success. The Nymphs and Satyrs Ballet Suite, composed in 1979, was one of his last works. My favorite work on the program is the stunning Concerto for Organ, Harp, and Orchestra, first written in 1926, revised in 1941. It's a more intimate, small-scaled work than, say, the explosive Poulenc Concerto, but its warm-hearted, folk-like thematic material and infectious rhythms are entirely winning. Two short and very charming "Yuletide Pieces" and gorgeous choral settings of Psalms 8, 21, and 150 round out he program. Enjoyment of the music is enhanced by demonstration-quality sound. Whether we're listening to a solo piano, a piano quintet, a chamber-sized orchestra, or a full chorus, the results are vivid and realistic: you have the uncanny sense of performers working their magic in a well-defined acoustic space. The performances are uniformly committed and intensely focused. Clearly these musicians really believe in the value of the music they're performing.

In addition to transferring existing sources, HDTT also seeks out and records its own performances: in this case, a Bruckner Mass No. 3 from Houston featuring local forces. The Houston Symphony Chorus is an amateur group that often sings with the Orchestra. The Moores School Orchestra is made up of faculty members and students from the University of Houston's music school. The four soloists and the conductor are all faculty members. The performance was recorded in Grace Presbyterian Church on April 26-27 of 2013. Bruckner's Mass No. 3 is a notoriously difficult work to bring off, a volatile mixture of baroque forms, deep reverence, and hot-blooded Romanticism. It's standard critical practice to compare the provincial performance to one that's well established, and then to find it wanting. Indeed, there are recordings of this Mass by the likes of Eugen Jochum and Sergiu Celibidache that are definitely worth hearing. Be that as it may, this is the greatest recording of the work I've ever heard. The performances are committed and inspired. The chorus handles Bruckner's intricate and often knotty writing with ease, and sings with a resounding intensity that will shiver your timbers. Their concentration and stamina never flag. With the exception of some wobbles here and there, the same goes for the soloists. You might have guessed a student orchestra would somehow fail to measure up to the extremely complex, ever shifting demands of the music, but these young musicians meet and exceed all expectations. The brass is especially stirring, just when it most needs to be. Fritz Anton Kregar is a name new to me, but he brings a knowing authenticity and sense of purpose to this highly charged music, as well as a sure-handed sense of dramatic structure. He really delivers the goods. If ever there was a large-scale work that required demonstration-quality sound, it is this one. And producer John Profitt gives us the big space in which this performance can really blossom. The recording captures the detail work in the choruses with utter transparency. I should add that this performance is enhanced by three sections that aren't usually included: a symphonic prelude (that may or may not have been written by Bruckner, though it sure does sound "Brucknerian"), a setting of the "Ave Maria" for tenor and orchestra (that definitely was composed by Bruckner), and an improvised fantasia on Bruckner's themes by organist SigurdOgaard, used here as a "Postludium."

And so, for collectors like me, always on the lookout for the best-sounding version of their favorite performances, HDTT might well prove to be El Dorado. But you'll also find other precious goods there: out-of-the-way items like the Hanson program, and other Houston-based based performances (a great sounding Verdi Requiem, for example). There's also a large and growing collection of Jazz. For those who would like more information on HDTT, I include the link to an interview with Robert Witrak, the enthusiast who founded the company. I'm proud to say that it appeared in this very magazine. I certainly have him to thank for making my first experience in high-definition sound so rewarding.

The link: www.EnjoyTheMusic.com/superioraudio//guiltypleasures/0708/hdtt.htm

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