A Festival of Lessons and Carols Christmas Eve 1958
Click here for complete track listing

David Willcocks Director
Simon Preston Organ
King's College Choir

"I have not been in many places outside the US, but I have been in Kings College Chapel, Cambridge, England and listened to the choir sing a program of vespers. I have also bought as many of the CDs of this group's annual Festival of Lessons and Carols as I could lay hands on. But not until I heard this new HDTT digital transfer of an analogue tape made of the service in 1958 have I been back. From the first notes of "Once in Royal David's City," sung by the choir as it enters the church proper and processes down the main aisle, we are aware of (how else to put it?) this extraordinary chapel. And we never cease to be aware of it. Every note sung, every note played by Simon Preston on the chapel organ, every word spoken by the readers manifests the place. Notes and words rebound off the high stone walls and hang in the air. This is not analogue but it was once and it damn near is now. This is not the most imaginative Festival ever celebrated at Kings, perhaps because several of the numbers have been cut to fit the rest on one CD. The annual service usually includes at least one contemporary work written especially for the occasion. But no matter. Regardless of how many of the CDs you have, regardless of whether or not England's Episcopal version of Christianity and Christmas (or any other) is yours, do not fail to hear this recording. Amen." by Bob Neill Positive Feedback Online - Issue 40

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Beethoven Mass in C Major

Munich Bach Choir & Orchestra/Karl Richter Gundula Janowitz, Soprano · Julia Hamari, Alto Horst R. Laubenthal, Tenor · Ernst Gerold Schramm, Bass Organ: Elmar Schloter

"The Sanctus seems to descend out of some rare ether long distilled from earthly considerations, although the tympani part keeps us earthbound. The contrapuntal "Pleni sunt coeli et terra" takes us through the marriage of heaven and earth, the organ punctuating wonderfully colossal chords from the upper-register choristers. Janowtiz and Hamari shine in the Benedictus, with its several hints at Mozart's Cosi fan tutte. Lovely flute and string windings among the vocal elements. The vocal quartet at the Benedictus provides a devout intimacy of effect. Lovely vocal separation at the Hosanna in excelesis, punctuated by large horn, string, and organ chords. The C Minor rumblings that open the Agnus Dei convey a darkness of spirit and fretfulness over the state of our world. Fascinating color effects as the woodwinds and strings intertwine with the pleas for an end to human suffering. The vocal virtuosity at "dona nobis pacem" proves aerially operatic, and the subsequent move to C Major renews our faith in our collective will to survival."
Gary Lemco/Audiophile Audition

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Hector Berlioz Requiem Grande Messe des morts
(Recorded Live at the Salzburg Festival 1979)

James Levine/Vienna Phiharmonic Orchestra/Vienna Philharmonic Chorus

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Erich Bergel conducting the Houston Symphony Orchestra / Houston Symphony Chorus
Ruth Falcon, soprano; Tom Krause, baritone

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Florent Schmitt Psalm 47 and La Tragedie De Salome

Jean Martinon conducts the French National Radio Orchestra & Chorus Andrea Guiot (soprano) & Gaston Litaize (organ)

 

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Gustav Holst The Hymn of Jesus
The Perfect Fool-Ballet Music
Egdon Heath

BBC Chorus BBC Symphony Orchestra London Philharmonic Orchestra
Sir Adrian Boult

"HDTT (High Definition Tape Transfers) have made this album available in several different formats, the one I listened to being an HDCD. Although HDTT usually transfer their recordings from tape, in this case they used a Decca vinyl LP, recorded in Kingsway Hall, London, in 1961. The sound exhibits a very wide dynamic range, with HDTT using enough noise reduction to keep ticks, pops, and hiss to the barest minimum without affecting the tonal balance or high end"
Classical Candor

HDTT lists are always worth keeping an osprey eye on. You never know what they are going to come up with.
At one time HDTT used to source all their material from the commercial reel-to-reel tapes that in the 1950s-1970s were more popular in the USA than in the UK. Some of the sound they realised from these sources remains astonishingly vivid - a real buzz to hear. This CD derives from an iconic British Council-sponsored Decca LP. It was from the Beatles era when British classical music was pretty scarce in the catalogues.
Rob Barnett - MusicWeb International

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Mahler-Des Knaben Wunderhorn and Berg Wozzeck Excerpts

Mahler: Janet Baker and Germaine Evans Wyn Morris conducts The London Symphony Orchestra
Berg: Soprano Phyllis Curtin Eric Leinsdorf conducts the The Boston Symphony Orchestra

"The Mahler recording derives from 4-track World Tape Club sources, in excellent sound that allows both Baker and Evans full vocal sway while the color elements, like the E-flat clarinet, piccolo, tympani, snare and bass drums, crash cymbals, and three bassoons make their effect, among others, evident. The No. 8 "Trost im Ungluck" makes an immediate sensation, rife--as is No. 5 "Lab Des Hohen Verstandes"--with materials to supply a host of Kurt Weill songs. The No. 5 projects harmonies I find redolent with Grofe and Copland! Viennese and pastoral at once, the swagger of the rhythms is infectious, irreverent, and earthy at once."
Gary Lemco/Audiophile Audition

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Mozart Die Zauberflote (Highlights)

Karl Böhm conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra & Vienna State Opera Chorus
Kurt Böhme (bass) Sarastro
Léopold Simoneau (tenor) Tamino
Paul Schöffler (bass-baritone) Speaker
Erich Majkut (tenor) First Priest
Harald Pröglhöf (bass) Second Priest
Wilma Lipp (soprano) Queen of the Night
Hilde Gueden (soprano) Pamina

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Carl Orff: Carmina Burana/Cantiones Profanae

  The Carmina Burana is a manuscript written in 1230 by two different scribes in an early gothic minuscule (small letters; what we would today call lower-case, as opposed to majuscule – large, capital, upper-case, used in Roman manuscripts) on 119 sheets of parchment. In the 14th century, a number of free pages, cut of a slightly different size, were attached at the end of the text. The handwritten pages were bound into a small folder, called the Codex Buranus, in the Late Middle Ages. However, in the process of binding, the text was placed partially out of order, and some pages were most likely lost as well. The manuscript contains eight miniatures: the wheel of fortune (which actually is an illustration from the songs CB 14–18, but was placed by the book binder as the cover), an imaginative forest, a pair of lovers, scenes from the story of Dido and Aeneas, a scene of drinking beer, and three scenes of playing games – dice, tables, and chess.                                                                      
In 1934, Orff encountered the text in the 1847 edition of the Carmina Burana by Johann Andreas Schmeller, the original text dating mostly from the 11th or 12th century, including some from the 13th century. Michel Hofmann, then a young law student and Latin and Greek enthusiast, assisted Orff in the selection and organization of 24 of these poems into a libretto, mostly in Latin verse, with a small amount of Middle High German and Old Provençal. The selection covers a wide range of topics, as familiar in the 13th century as they are in the 21st century: the fickleness of fortune and wealth, the ephemeral nature of life, the joy of the return of Spring, and the pleasures and perils of drinking, gluttony, gambling, and lust.  Between 1935 and 1936, German composer Carl Orff composed music, also called Carmina Burana, for 24 of the poems. The single song "O Fortuna" (the Roman goddess of luck and fate), from the movement "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi," has often played or excerpted in films.
While divided into three parts or “estates” of love – the Forest, the Tavern, and Art of Courtship - the cantata wants to progress from the merely carnal and ephemeral aspects of sensation to the metaphysical power of love to move the heavens.
Carmina Burana was first staged in Frankfurt by the Frankfurt Opera on June 8, 1937 (conductor: Bertil Wetzelsberger (1892-1967), choir Cäcilien-Chor Frankfurt (de), staging by Oskar Wälterlin and sets and costumes by Ludwig Sievert). Shortly after the greatly successful premiere, Orff wrote the following letter to his publisher, Schott Music:
"Everything I have written to date, and which you have, unfortunately, printed, can be destroyed. With Carmina Burana, my collected works begin."
 Capitol Records-EMI brought out the Stokowski Carmina Burana in 1958 (SPAR 8470), a work Stokowski had incorporated into his first season with the Houston Symphony Orchestra. Stokowski, the great lover of sound and sensuality in music, delights in this profane celebration of love, its deification of the rites of Spring, Eros requited, and the implacable progression of Fate. Both the pains and pleasures of Love resound with resonant power, now in even more spectacular realization through this remastering.  

 

 

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Prokofiev Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Rev
Shostakovich The Sun Shines over our Motherland

Kirill Kondrashin/Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra
RSFSR Russian Chorus
Boys Choir of Moscow Choir School

HDTT are at their devastating zenith when working from reel-to-reel tapes.

Things could have gone to hell in a handcart with the first black-hearted piled high chord in the Prokofiev. However the CD renders the moment with total fidelity and security. The singing is large, passionate, raw and full blooded. The choir takes on the massed voice of The People in all its illimitable power. The brass roar and gallop at 2:38 (tr.1). The sounds are on a seismic scale and are superbly and naturally rendered in tr. 4 at 5:10. Those machine gun ratatats and huge rushing sounds emanating from the 500 strong orchestra and choirs are viscerally exciting. The orchestration is full of incident including an accordion (tr.4 7.16), siren effects and an over-the-top amplified narrator. In tr. 5 the quiet-pulsed sweetness of Romeo and Juliet is referenced in silvery white light.

Rob Barnett - MusicWeb International

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Teresa Stich-Randall Soprano sings
Handel / Mozart / Schubert

Saar Chamber Orchestra / Karl Ristenpart, Conductor

"The scales Stich-Randall runs for us, the repeated notes, the swift passing trills and turns, have only Fernando Valenti's harpsichord pyrotechnics as a rival for seamless proficiency. The words Agnus Dei might be porous, they fill with so much airy delight. Impeccable in every note."
Gary Lemco/Audiophile Audition

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