Speakers Corner / Columbia MS 6331 - 180 Gram Virgin Vinyl -
AAA 100% Analogue - Mastered by Kevin Gray at Cohearant Audio
Limited Edition - Pressed at Pallas Germany
Igor Stravinsky: Violin Concerto In D-Major, Symphony In Three Movements - Isaac Stern and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra conducted by Igor Stravinsky
For many years Stravinsky was reluctant to write a concerto for the violin. He felt he was too unfamiliar with the instrument and its particular properties, and it would be too problematic and too much of a challenge to create a large work for the violin. That he finally acquiesced is due in part to persuasion from Paul Hindemith and support from the violinist Samuel Dushkin, who gave him valuable advice during its development.
With its four-movement form and the descriptive titles of the movements –Toccata, Aria and Capriccio – the Violin Concerto in D testifies to Stravinsky’s intensive preoccupation with Baroque forms, which he employs with rhythmic and metric imagination and irony. Stravinsky himself said that the work »stinked of violin«, but the orchestra is also very present so that one is reminded of a concerto grosso.
The author Ernst Müller (Analogue Audio Association Bulletin) praised the work euphorically, especially for its »revelatory character and the tremendous dynamics of this Columbia recording. You can hear all the details, the winds are precise, and the orchestral accompaniment is simply grandiose.
Recording: February and June 1961 at American Legion Hall, Hollywood, by Edwin Michalski
Production: John McClure
Musicians:
Isaac Stern, violin
The Columbia Symphony Orchestra
Igor Stravinsky, conductor
Selections:
Igor Stravinsky
Violin Concerto in D Major
Symphony in Three Movements
Are your records completely analogue?
Yes! This we guarantee!
As a matter of principle, only analogue masters are used, and the necessary cutting delay is also analogue. All our cutting engineers use only Neumann cutting consoles, and these too are analogue. The only exception is where a recording has been made – either partly or entirely – using digital technology, but we do not have such items in our catalogue at the present time
Are your records cut from the original masters?
In our re-releases it is our aim to faithfully reproduce the original intentions of the musicians and recording engineers which, however, could not be realised at the time due to technical limitations. Faithfulness to the original is our top priority, not the interpretation of the original: there is no such thing as a “Speakers Corner Sound”. Naturally, the best results are obtained when the original master is used. Therefore we always try to locate these and use them for cutting. Should this not be possible, – because the original tape is defective or has disappeared, for example – we do accept a first-generation copy. But this remains an absolute exception for us.
Who cuts the records?
In order to obtain the most faithful reproduction of the original, we have the lacquers cut on the spot, by engineers who, on the whole, have been dealing with such tapes for many years. Some are even cut by the very same engineer who cut the original lacquers of the first release. Over the years the following engineers have been and still are working for us: Tony Hawkins, Willem Makkee, Kevin Gray, Maarten de Boer, Scott Hull, and Ray Staff, to name but a few.
At the beginning of the ‘90s, in the early days of audiophile vinyl re-releases, the reissue policy was fairly straightforward. Companies such as DCC Compact Classics, Mobile Fidelity, Classic Records and others, including of course Speakers Corner, all maintained a mutual, unwritten code of ethics: we would manufacture records sourced only from analogue tapes.
Vinyl’s newfound popularity has led many other companies to jump on the bandwagon in the hope of securing a corner of the market. Very often they are not so ethical and use every imaginable source from which to master: CDs, LPs, digital files and even MP3s.
Even some who do use an analogue tape source employ a digital delay line, a misguided ’80s and ‘90s digital technology that replaces the analogue preview head originally used to “tell” the cutter head in advance what was about to happen musically, so it could adjust the groove “pitch” (the distance between the grooves) to make room for wide dynamic swings and large low frequency excursions. Over time analogue preview heads became more rare and thus expensive.
So while the low bit rate (less resolution than a 16 bit CD) digital delay line is less expensive and easier to use than an analogue “preview head”, its use, ironically, results in lacquers cut from the low bit rate digital signal instead of from the analogue source!
Speakers Corner wishes to make clear that it produces lacquers using only original master tapes and an entirely analogue cutting system. New metal stampers used to press records are produced from that lacquer. The only exceptions are when existing metal parts are superior to new ones that might be cut, which includes our release of “Elvis is Back”, which was cut by Stan Ricker or several titles from our Philips Classics series, where were cut in the 1990s using original master tapes by Willem Makkee at the Emil Berliner Studios. In those cases we used only the original “mother” to produce new stampers.
In addition, we admit to having one digital recording in our catalogue: Alan Parsons’ “Eye in the Sky”, which was recorded digitally but mixed to analogue tape that we used to cut lacquers.
In closing, we want to insure our loyal customers that, with but a few exceptions as noted, our releases are “AAA”— analogue tape, an all analogue cutting system, and newly cut lacquers.
