Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 "Pastoral" (HQCD review)

Also, Fidelio Overture. Fritz Reiner, Chicago Symphony Orchestra. HDTT HQCD374.

Quite a while ago--in the Seventies, actually--I compiled a magazine article on the favorite recordings of audiophile friends and acquaintances. I asked each of several dozen music critics, hi-fi store owners, and audiophiles to send me their lists of five-to-ten favorite LP's, and it somewhat surprised me that the final list I put together contained several references to Fritz Reiner's Beethoven Sixth for RCA. It surprised me because although I had always admired the performance, I had never thought the recording was very good. Some years later, things changed.

The first time I heard Reiner's recording of the Sixth, it was on RCA's first LP. It didn't sound good. A few years later RCA reissued it on a lower-priced LP, and it sounded even worse, this time with surface noise. Around 1990 or so, RCA released the recording on CD, and I had high hopes. Well, at least the noise had disappeared, but as I remember it still sounded rather thin and vague to me. By the late Nineties I had high hopes that RCA would remaster the recording in their "Living Stereo" CD series, but that didn't happen (or if it did, it escaped my attention). Then came JVC to the rescue in 2002 with an XRCD audiophile remaster. Finally, I could hear the performance in good, high-quality sound. The only problem was the price of the disc: very costly and out of the reach of a lot of listeners.

Now, HDTT (High Definition Tape Transfers) has come out with their remaster, sounding almost as good as the JVC but at half or less the cost. HDTT offer a full range of physical product and digital downloads in a variety of formats from the HQCD I reviewed to FLAC, DSD 64 and 128, DXD 24 bit/352.8 kHz, 24bit/192kHz, 24bit/96kHz, CD's, DVD's, you name it. Phew! Something for everybody, and still at prices lower than the hard-to-get JVC product.

Anyway, let's look at the performance, which Reiner led in 1961. Critics often accused Reiner of being too strict with his tempos (he was certainly a strict disciplinarian when it came to leading an orchestra), but here we see no signs of that. While he keeps things moving along at a healthy clip, it's true, there's also a good deal of flexibility in his control. The first-movement Allegro, for instance, is quick and taut but unhurried, too ("ma non troppo," as Beethoven indicates). These are "cheerful impressions upon arriving in the countryside," after all, and that's the way Reiner carries it off--cheerfully.

Under Reiner the second-movement "Scene by the Brook" is properly bucolic and serene, a lovely day in the peace and quiet of rural fields, woods, and streams. When the peasants carry on their merrymaking in the third movement, they do so with a minimum of riotous rambunctiousness. This is no drunken orgy but a group of friends and neighbors enjoying one another's company in gaiety and dance. As such, Reiner holds a fairly tight rein on the rhythms, allowing them to develop and open up smoothly and naturally.

Finally, we come to the storm that briefly opens up in the afternoon and the "Shepherd's Hymn of Thanksgiving" that follows the outburst. Again, Reiner handles both extremes with elegance, power, and restraint. The storm is aptly explosive, and the hymn is pleasantly optimistic, though not exactly inspirational. Indeed, it is only in this final section that I find Reiner just a little too rigid, but his ending is nevertheless in full accordance with everything that's gone before.

For me, there have long been only three top choices in the "Pastoral Symphony": Karl Bohm's genial performance with the Vienna Philharmonic on DG; Bruno Walter's happily assertive rendering with the Columbia Symphony, now on Sony; and Reiner's under review. For secondary alternatives to these, one might consider the more leisurely views of Otto Klemperer and the Philharmonia or Eugen Jochum and the London Symphony, both on EMI. But, really, Reiner's is as good as or better than any of them.

For a bonus (not found on the JVC disc), we get Reiner's interpretation of Beethoven's Fidelio Overture. It's a straightforward, almost austere, but surely authoritative reading. It reminds me of Reiner's handling of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony: an ardent, no-holds-barred account; an old-fashioned locomotive blazing down the tracks at full steam, yet always under perfect management.

The talented RCA team of producer Richard Mohr and engineer Lewis Layton recorded the music in April 1961 at Chicago Symphony Hall, and HDTT transferred it to the HQCD I reviewed from an RCA 4-track tape in 2014. First I listened to the entire symphony on my primary Sony CD player. Afterwards, I put the JVC XRCD I mentioned earlier into my Yamaha machine, adjusted the two discs for the same gain, and compared the HDTT and JVC products side-by-side.

At first during the comparison, I'd swear I couldn't hear any differences. Then, as my ears became more attuned to the sound of the two discs I began hearing subtle distinctions. The HDTT seemed very slightly softer, warmer, more rounded; the JVC marginally clearer, cleaner, better focused. Further along I began to wonder if the JVC wasn't producing a wider dynamic range; it did sound a tad louder to me at certain points. So, I took a decibel meter and measured the variance between the softest and loudest passages on both discs; sure enough, the JVC did show a decibel or two more range. But these differences were so small that unless I had had the two discs playing next to one another, I would never have guessed that they weren't identical.

Again, I want to emphasize the price differential of the two albums: If you can find the JVC product, it will set you back anywhere from $50 to $150. The HDTT will cost you anywhere from $8 to $36, depending on the format you choose. That is a real difference, and the HDTT disc will sound big, full, natural, detailed, transparent, and dynamic. Sounds like a deal to me for a practically unbeatable performance. Nice cover picture, too.

For further information on the various formats, configurations, and prices of HDTT products, you can visit their Web site at http://www.highdeftapetransfers.com/.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

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

Readers with impolite, discourteous, bitchy, whining, complaining, nasty, mean-spirited, unhelpful letters may send them to classicalcandor@recycle.bin.

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa