|
Beethoven: Eroica & Diabelli Variations
Artur Schnabel
Recorded 1937-1938
VIP Records CL-1001 - $12.50 (US Shipping Including)
Read the Reviews of this CD.
It isn't often that masterpieces emerge from trivial stunts, but that is exactly what happened in the case of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations. Anton Diabelli, a music publisher, wrote a simple waltz melody and was brazen enough to ask the leading composers of the day, including Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt, to write a single variation apiece. Beethoven's initial reaction to the idea was negative. He called Diabelli's waltz a mere "cobbler's patch". But he finally agreed to compose not just a single variation, but a complete set of variations.
Beethoven's achievement stands alongside Bach's Goldberg Variations as the ultimate expression of the musical form. In his book, The International Record Book, David Hall describes Beethoven's Diabelli Variations as having "an emotional range as broad and deep as life itself." Hall quotes Robert Haven Schuffler as saying, "Beethoven could squeeze blood out of bricks. And he made rubies of the blood, and platinum of the residue of the bricks, and organized these products into miracles of design that would have put Benvenuto Cellini to shame."
The Eroica Variations are a masterpiece in their own right, paling in significance only in comparison to the Diabellis. Using a musical theme from the Creatures of Prometheus ballet, which was later used in his third symphony, Beethoven created a virtuoso showpiece for piano. The Eroica Variations contain power and optimism that belied the depression and frustration Beethoven himself was feeling about the progression of his deafness when he composed them.
Artur Schnabel was one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century. He is best known for his complete cycle of Beethoven Piano Sonatas and the piano music of Franz Schubert. David Hall wrote, "While there are technical slips and moments of rhythmic inflexibility in some of his readings, Schnabel makes us completely unaware of anything coming between the listener and the music. Beyond this, no interpreter can go."
Schnabel refused to record prior to 1929, expressing a distrust of the medium. He wrote in his autobiography, "One of the chief reasons for my refusal was that I did not like the idea of having no conrol over the behaviour of the people who listened to music which I performed- not knowing how they would be dressed, what else they would be doing at the same time, how much they would listen..." In private he was more blunt, saying that he didn't want to be playing a Beethoven Sonata on record while the listener sat in a bathrobe eating a ham sandwich. He was equally distrustful of the technology of reproducing pianos. When a representative of the Duo-Art piano company proudly told him that their player piano was able to reproduce 16 distinct levels of dynamics, Schnabel dryly replied, "That's unfortunate, because I play with 17."
Schnabel's Beethoven is firmly established as a benchmark, towering among the greatest recordings of piano literature. There have been numerous releases of these recordings over the years, but the quality varies greatly. These records were never released on high quality shellac, only in inferior European pressings. The level of crackle in these disks is very high. To correct for this, many transfer engineers use heavy noise reduction and compression settings to flatten the sound out. Even at the time, technicians at His Master's Voice encouraged Schnabel to not play the pianissimo passages quite so quietly, saying that some of the notes couldn't be heard over the surface noise. Schnabel replied that he didn't intend for all of the notes to be heard... some were to be just felt.
Listening to the original 78rpm records of these great works for the first time proved conclusively to me that Schnabel was absolutely correct. The dynamic balances in these recordings are perfect, and each note is given its own individual coloring. Any attempt to compress or re-equalize the recording would destroy this delicate balance. That's why my main goal in restoring these performances was only to only eliminate as much noise as I could without compromising the piano tone. I've been working on this CD for the past year, and I have thrown out hundreds of hours of work and started over twice. The challenges presented by the crackly British shellac proved to be the perfect testing ground for my restoration techniques. After many hundreds of hours of work, I have finally reached a result that I am satisfied with. I think it does justice to both Schnabel and Beethoven. I hope you agree. -Stephen Worth
Prices & Ordering Information
These CD's are $12.50 apiece. Shipping within the US is included. Shipping to Canada is an additional $2.50 for the first CD, and $1 for each additional CD shipped with the same order. International shipping is an additional $5.00 for the first CD, and $2 for each additional CD shipped with the same order. You can order online, using our secure PayPal links. If you don't have a PayPal account yet, sign up now using the link to the left, and you will get a $5 from PayPal for signing up. If you would prefer to send a check or money order by mail, drop me a line at... sales@vintageip.com and I will send you an order form that you can print out and mail in.
Reviews Of This Recording
It is enough to say that Schnabel's interpretation of the Diabelli series constitutes in our opinion, his greatest single achievement on discs. The recording as such is flawless. --David Hall, The Record Book International Edition
Please Note: The following review has been edited to fit on this page. If you would like to read the text of the entire review, please see the Diabelli Review Page.
The artifacts left to us by Schnabel are in their particularities like examples of historical musicoarcheology. And like a fatiguing but exciting dig in the dry dusty rolling hills of Ethiopia, under the burning sun, the experience is not entirely a passive one supplying only creature-comforts of existential pleasure. For as a listener to these old records, one must be involved to a certain extent, in a manner that is not at all demanded by a modern stereo (especially digital) recording.
There are defects. You can smooth the sound with equalization; add echoes; take out hisses and ticks; and each step of the process both adds and detracts. The recordings may superficially SEEM to be more "modern"; but they lose something of their earthy impact. Solo piano records are problematical in a distinctive way: the instrument is so exposed, and there is so little 'masking' available in the dryish acoustical halo, that the noises of the wax and the stampers and all subsequent processing is unremovable. Or SHOULD be unremovable; for some have tried to do it, and have indeed managed to take out all the crackle... but also the realism. As a consumer, you have distinctive choices, for so many hands have now tried to massage the Schnabel records over the generations that there is a version for almost any inclination.
What is a bewildered musical enthusiast to make of all this? Well, I for one- having heard at least *some* of the 78 original disks- conclude that there is really no "perfect" transfer, no "correct" way to illuminate every nook and cranny and quality of these documents. Let us make a virtue out of the "vice" of competition, and allow that it is surely better for the collector to have a variety of approaches, all arguably legitimate *if* one accepts their first premises. There is such a *huge* range in human perception, listening skill, sound-acuity training, and playback circumstance variety, that I'd argue that perhaps the "cause" of Schnabel-study is best served by having the different viewpoints of diverse, extremely knowledgeable, dedicated, and determined individuals at the helm of the turntables and processors- even if they produce radically differing results and (frankly) HATE the alternative viewpoints of their colleagues and competitors!
Schnabel's performance has an intimacy that is, to my ears, unmatched by any other on records... *any* kind of records, from the noisy, imperfect 78s of Schnabel's time, to the 24-bit cold digital perfection of today. Part of this quality is intrinsic in the technology that limits the reality of sitting very close to Schnabel in a *real* music room, and funnels it down into the mechanical system that preserved the experience for us. From the instant that the waxes were cut, to this very day, no one has been able to part that veil. It has become an element in the experience of enjoying and learning from Schnabel.
EMI have tried. One listens and while feeling perhaps a bit closer to what the producer may have heard on the other side of the glass window, there is something missing: the accumulated experience over the decades of hearing THE ORIGINAL RECORDS: the pressings one was fortunate to hold in one's hands, and to put lovingly onto the turntable.
Other CD transfer artists- some great geniuses- have tried every respectable modern trick using not the EMI materials, but the best American or European pressings that have miraculously survived, undamaged, unscuffed, and unshattered. Some have compiled many sets into an ideal one that NO collector of yore could probably have accumulated; and then pieced them all together into one continuous experience that minimizes the scratch in admirable ways. Some of the engineers have given us EVERY microscopic fragment of sound, from perhaps 20 to 20,000Hz, mitigating only the worse sliced-and-diced snaps from embedded fragments and pits pressed uniquely into each shellac side at the factory long decades ago. We have to listen to these the way a trained microscopist learns to use his optical instrument: with both eyes open, peering into the ocular with only one; mentally ignoring the out-of-focus view through the other. Thus, the "78 microscopist" type of listener tunes out the shellac hissing.
Other producers aim at an audience that is less forgiving of defects, so they layer on the phase shifting networks, the dynamic filtering processors, the CEDAR decrackling, the gating effects. Then they decide that the original intimate pickup is a mite too clinical, and add trails of electronic echo to make the sound more grandiose and spacious. The end result is interesting; it's sometimes fascinating; it sometimes illuminates a detail here and there; but it is DIFFERENT than the experience the old connoisseur had at his gramophone, big heavy album in his lap, record twirling dizzily at the breathtaking 78 rpm velocity.
If you have enjoyed Schnabel's records the way the pianist's contemporary colleagues and musical public did, in the days of the thirties and forties- from the 78s- then perhaps another way of treating these old documents might please you even more than either of the two approaches described above: the way Stephen Worth has edited Schnabel's Diabellis into this admirably satisfactory presentation.
I understand that his efforts have met with tireless self-criticism, and that he has tried again and again. He has asked for advice and outside impressions about tonal balance, filtering, and noise mitigation. An intelligent producer does that, and then returns wisely to his own convictions. My impression in listening to this transfer is that he has achieved a specific goal of giving the auditor the "genuine 78 rpm record experience" without being tempted at every turn to strive to satisfy a modern, youthful auditor, trained only by CD sound and impatient with history. I also sense a lack of any compromises made in conformance with commercial expectations, or any desire to "smooth" the presentation until we have drawn, in effect, yet another veil across the impenetrable one.
What remains is pure Schnabel, pure music, and the faint trace of the machines that saved these things for us. The technology exists- given access to whatever sanitary documents reside in British sound vaults- to throw a very different spotlight on this piece of history. If, however, you are most comfortable with the idea of listening to a cherished artifact- a genuine antique, with intrinsic worth- smelling the pungent shellac and perhaps the rough, heavy envelope and cardboard container and their faint effluvia, closing your eyes and imagining the brilliant red (or deep purple) label whirring around in a blur; then THIS might be the version of Schnabel's Diabelli set for you!
To sum up: perhaps no transfer of these recordings, including ones done on Lp or CD by the parent company, can be perfect and ideal. Yet surely this new VIP production is an especially musical and rewarding experience, viewed in the context of piano tone heard from a real instrument in our time. VIP's claim is that their production is made with "no intrusive digital manipulation" and I for one find that to seem to be an honorably true statement. --S. W. San Jose, CA
Please Note: The preceding review has been edited to fit on this page. If you would like to read the text of the entire review, please see the Diabelli Review Page.
Return to the VIP Records Home Page
To subscribe to the VIP Records email list, send a message to... recordslist@vintageip.com
This page is maintained by Stephen Worth. Its contents are copyrighted and may not be duplicated or redistributed in any manner without the prior written consent of the authors.
|
|