Strauss: Also Sprach Zarathustra (HQCD review)

Also, Burleske in D for Piano and Orchestra. Byron Janis, piano; Fritz Reiner, Chicago Symphony Orchestra. HDTT HQCD264.

First, let’s get the old joke out of the way about your being able to tell a true, dyed-in-the-wool audiophile because he only listens to the introductory fanfare (“Sunrise”) of Zarathustra. Think 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Next, let’s consider the performance. In 1954 conductor Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony made their first recording of Zarathustra in stereo for RCA. It became one of the earliest commercially available stereo recordings ever produced (and the earliest stereo recording of Zarathustra, period). Eight years later, in 1962, RCA audio engineers figured they had advanced the art of stereo recording enough that they asked Reiner to re-record the piece, which we have here. Subsequently, RCA released both the 1954 and 1962 recordings to CD in their “Living Stereo” series, and I was lucky enough to have both recordings on hand (the ’62 version on a JVC XRCD) for comparison.

The thing is, when Reiner made the ‘62 recording, he was in ill health, resigning from the orchestra shortly afterwards and dying the following year. His health issues may explain in part why critics for the past fifty years have pretty much agreed that this later recording was not quite as spontaneous, animated, or tension-filled as the earlier one. Indeed, the ’54 recording has withstood the test of time remarkably well, becoming a genuine classic, and there really hasn’t been anything to come along since to surpass it. Certainly not Reiner’s ’62 performance, which, by the way, is still quite good. What’s more, the ’54 recording’s audio quality holds its own as well, and in some people’s estimation still sounds better than the ‘62 one we have here. In any case, it’s the later recording HDTT remastered, so I was anxious to give it a listen.

A little more background: German composer and conductor Richard Strauss (1864-1949) wrote his tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra) in 1896, inspired by a philosophical novel by the German philosopher and poet Friedrich Nietzsche. Strauss divided the music into nine sections, naming the sections after various chapters of the book: “Sunrise,” “Of the Inhabitants of the Unseen World,” “Of the Great Longing,” “Of Joys and Passions,” “The Grave Song,” “Of Science and Learning,” “The Convalescent,” “The Dance-Song,” and “The Night-Wanderer’s Song.”

It’s probably best not to put too much stock in the literal meaning of each of these sections but to enjoy them for their figurative spirit. In fact, Strauss himself, criticized at the time for trying to put Nietzsche’s philosophy into music said, “I did not intend to write philosophical music, or to portray in music Nietzsche’s great work. I meant to convey by means of music an idea of the development of the human race from its origin, through the various phases of its evolution, religious and scientific, up to Nietzsche’s idea of the superman. The whole symphonic poem is intended as my homage to the genius of Nietzsche, which found its greatest exemplification in his book, Thus Spake Zarathustra.”

Listeners could always expect fine interpretations from Reiner, and I can’t think of a stereo recording he made with the CSO between 1954 and 1962 that didn’t thrill critics and audiences alike. It seems a little unfair that in ‘62 fans expected him to outdo his own ‘54 Zarathustra, since practically no one has done so to this day. Nevertheless, Reiner’s ‘62 performance remains vital, its vision still grand, noble, and eloquent. A simple glance at the timings for the work (about thirty-two minutes in ‘54 and thirty-four minutes in ’62) shows us that the conductor had slowed down a bit with the years and was taking things at a slightly more leisurely pace. This had the advantage, however, in producing a warmer, richer tone, which is especially telling in the final moments of the piece. It’s one of the most-affecting “Night-Wanderer’s Songs” you’ll find anywhere.

The companion music on the disc is Strauss’s early Burleske in D for Piano and Orchestra, with Byron Janis, recorded in 1957. Mr. Janis remains one of America’s preeminent pianists, and his performance of the Burleske remains one of the best you’ll find. 

RCA producer Richard Mohr and engineer Lewis Layton recorded the music in Orchestra Hall, Chicago, in April and May of 1962. The folks at RCA say in their original liner notes that they used six overall microphones for the occasion to capture the full impact of the 109-man orchestra. HDTT (High Definition Tape Transfers) remastered Zarathustra from an RCA 4-track tape (and the Burleske from an RCA LP) and then transferred it to HQCD. I put the HDTT disc into one CD player and the audiophile edition JVC XRCD of it remastered from the original master tape into another player and listened to them side-by-side, changing them out of each player from time to time to ensure fairness.

The chief difference I noticed within moments of Zarathustra was that the HDTT disc had a better left-to-right stereo spread than the JVC disc, the JVC for some odd reason favoring the left side of the stage. The HDTT, by contrast, distributed the instruments far more evenly and more realistically across the sound stage. Then I noted a marginally greater degree of clarity from the HDTT disc, while the JVC seemed to produce a greater degree of smoothness, although these qualities appeared to vary a tad as the comparison went on. Both discs displayed about an equal amount of roughness in the strings, no doubt a characteristic of the master tape, but for that matter the roughness was almost too small to care about. In addition, I heard a minimal level of background noise from both discs, with the effect perhaps heightened at times by the increased transparency of the HDTT. Bass was robust on both discs, and spaciousness and dynamics as well, but I’d give a small edge here to the HDTT.

Perhaps some day HDTT will favor us with a remastering of Reiner’s 1954 recording of the work. “‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.”

HDTT remastered the Burleske from a 1957 RCA LP, and I actually found its sound a touch more pleasing than the Zarathustra. It seemed quieter and softer, with a warm, added glow. It’s quite nice, and even if the music itself is nowhere near as impressive as Zarathustra, it makes a welcome coupling.

For further information about HDTT discs and downloads, you can check out their Web site at http://www.highdeftapetransfers.com/storefront.php.

JJP

Meet the Staff

Meet the Staff
John J. Puccio, Founder and Contributor

Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on the Big Jon and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.

Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing for the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (formerly DVDTown) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.

Karl Nehring, Editor and Contributor

For more than 20 years I was the editor of The $ensible Sound magazine and a regular contributor to both its equipment and recordings review pages. I would not presume to present myself as some sort of expert on music, but I have a deep love for and appreciation of many types of music, "classical" especially, and have listened to thousands of recordings over the years, many of which still line the walls of my listening room (and occasionally spill onto the furniture and floor, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife). I have always taken the approach as a reviewer that what I am trying to do is simply to point out to readers that I have come across a recording that I have found of interest, a recording that I think they might appreciate my having pointed out to them. I suppose that sounds a bit simple-minded, but I know I appreciate reading reviews by others that do the same for me — point out recordings that they think I might enjoy.

For readers who might be wondering about what kind of system I am using to do my listening, I should probably point out that I do a LOT of music listening and employ a variety of means to do so in a variety of environments, as I would imagine many music lovers also do. Starting at the more grandiose end of the scale, the system in which I do my most serious listening comprises Marantz CD 6007 and Onkyo CD 7030 CD players, NAD C 658 streaming preamp/DAC, Legacy Audio PowerBloc2 amplifier, and a pair of Legacy Audio Focus SE loudspeakers. I occasionally do some listening through pair of Sennheiser 560S headphones. I miss the excellent ELS Studio sound system in our 2016 Acura RDX (now my wife's daily driver) on which I had ripped more than a hundred favorite CDs to the hard drive, so now when driving my 2022 Accord EX-L Hybrid I stream music from my phone through its adequate but not outstanding factory system. For more casual listening at home when I am not in my listening room, I often stream music through the phone into a Vizio soundbar system that has tolerably nice sound for such a diminutive physical presence. And finally, at the least grandiose end of the scale, I have an Ultimate Ears Wonderboom II Bluetooth speaker for those occasions where I am somewhere by myself without a sound system but in desperate need of a musical fix. I just can’t imagine life without music and I am humbly grateful for the technology that enables us to enjoy it in so many wonderful ways.

William (Bill) Heck, Webmaster and Contributor

Among my early childhood memories are those of listening to my mother playing records (some even 78 rpm ones!) of both classical music and jazz tunes. I suppose that her love of music was transmitted genetically, and my interest was sustained by years of playing in rock bands – until I realized that this was no way to make a living. The interest in classical music was rekindled in grad school when the university FM station serving as background music for studying happened to play the Brahms First Symphony. As the work came to an end, it struck me forcibly that this was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and from that point on, I never looked back. This revelation was to the detriment of my studies, as I subsequently spent way too much time simply listening, but music has remained a significant part of my life. These days, although I still can tell a trumpet from a bassoon and a quarter note from a treble clef, I have to admit that I remain a nonexpert. But I do love music in general and classical music in particular, and I enjoy sharing both information and opinions about it.

The audiophile bug bit about the same time that I returned to classical music. I’ve gone through plenty of equipment, brands from Audio Research to Yamaha, and the best of it has opened new audio insights. Along the way, I reviewed components, and occasionally recordings, for The $ensible Sound magazine. Most recently I’ve moved to my “ultimate system” consisting of a BlueSound Node streamer, an ancient Toshiba multi-format disk player serving as a CD transport, Legacy Wavelet II DAC/preamp/crossover, dual Legacy PowerBloc2 amps, and Legacy Signature SE speakers (biamped), all connected with decently made, no-frills cables. With the arrival of CD and higher resolution streaming, that is now the source for most of my listening.

Ryan Ross, Contributor

I started listening to and studying classical music in earnest nearly three decades ago. This interest grew naturally out of my training as a pianist. I am now a musicologist by profession, specializing in British and other symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. My scholarly work has been published in major music journals, as well as in other outlets. Current research focuses include twentieth-century symphonic historiography, and the music of Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Malcolm Arnold.

I am honored to contribute writings to Classical Candor. In an age where the classical recording industry is being subjected to such profound pressures and changes, it is more important than ever for those of us steeped in this cultural tradition to continue to foster its love and exposure. I hope that my readers can find value, no matter how modest, in what I offer here.


Bryan Geyer, Technical Analyst

I initially embraced classical music in 1954 when I mistuned my car radio and heard the Heifetz recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. That inspired me to board the new "hi-fi" DIY bandwagon. In 1957 I joined one of the pioneer semiconductor makers and spent the next 32 years marketing transistors and microcircuits to military contractors. Home audio DIY projects remained a personal passion until 1989 when we created our own new photography equipment company. I later (2012) revived my interest in two channel audio when we "downsized" our life and determined that mini-monitors + paired subwoofers were a great way to mate fine music with the space constraints of condo living.

Visitors that view my technical papers on this site may wonder why they appear here, rather than on a site that features audio equipment reviews. My reason is that I tried the latter, and prefer to publish for people who actually want to listen to music; not to equipment. My focus is in describing what's technically beneficial to assure that the sound of the system will accurately replicate the source input signal (i. e. exhibit high accuracy) without inordinate cost and complexity. Conversely, most of the audiophiles of today strive to achieve sound that's euphonic, i.e. be personally satisfying. In essence, audiophiles seek sound that's consistent with their desire; the music is simply a test signal.

Mission Statement

It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.

When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.

So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job. --John J. Puccio

Contact Information

Readers with polite, courteous, helpful letters may send them to classicalcandor@gmail.com

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"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa