Vox Audiophile Edition Releases: Mozart and Rachmaninov (CD Reviews)

 by Karl Nehring

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major, K. 453; Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat major, K. 595. Walter Klien, piano; Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Minnesota Orchestra. Vox VOX-NX-3012CD

 

Rachmaninov: Symphony No. 2, Op. 27; Vocalise, Op. 34, No. 14. Leonard Slatkin, St, Louis Symphony Orchestra. Vox VOX-NX-3013CD

 

Many classical music lovers of a certain age are no doubt familiar with Vox, a budget label that produced some real gems over the years. A quick example: I’ll never forget a day back in the mid-1970s when I was strolling through a Sears department store one afternoon and came across an aisle display that featured the newly-released 4-LP Vox Box of Ravel’s orchestral music featuring Stanislaw Skrowaczewski conducting the Minnesota Orchestra. I was back in college on the G.I. Bill after serving 4½ years in the Army, with a wife, two kids, a pair of Bose 901s, a rapidly expanding passion for classical music, and a tight budget. When I saw that this box was on sale for something like seven bucks – well, that settled it, I just had to have it. It sounded pretty darn good through the 901s (purchased in Germany with my reenlistment bonus) when I got home, and I found the music of Monsieur Ravel to be utterly captivating. Even though Vox was a budget label, the sound quality on some of their releases could be excellent (the main drawback was the often substandard quality of their vinyl pressings), and this Ravel set, which was recorded by Elite Recordings (engineer Marc Aubort and producer Joanna Nickrenz), had beguiling sound. Those performances and recordings still hold up as you can see from reviews of digital releases from the Ravel set, such as a review from our own John Puccio that you can read here, or an article at the PS Audio website that provides some insight into the recording process, which you can find here. 

Appearing on the back cover of these new “Vox Audiophile Edition” releases is a highlighted statement affirming that “The recordings of American orchestras produced for VOX by the legendary Elite Recordings team of Marc Aubort and Joanna Nickrenz are considered by audiophiles to be among the very finest sounding orchestral recordings ever made.”For this new series of reissues from the Vox catalog, the folks at Naxos have begun to pull some of those  tapes out from the vaults and carefully prepare these CDs for release, the end product of their labors being what they describe as “new192 kHz / 24-bit ultra high definition transcriptions of the original Elite Recordings analogue master tapes.”

 

The first two releases in this new series feature works by Mozart and Rachmaninov. The Mozart recording features the Austrian pianist Walter Klien (1928-1991), who during his career was a specialist in the works of Mozart who in fact recorded all of the composer’s works for piano for Vox and its subsidiary Candide label. For this recording, which was originally released in 1978, he was accompanied by the Minnesota Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Skrowaczewski, who defected from Poland in 1960 to become the orchestra’s Music Director in 1960, a post he held for 19 years before stepping down in 1979 to concentrate on composing and guest conducting. This is not Mozart for the “Historically Informed Practice” crowd; instead, it is Mozart playing in the grand style, robust and assertive, with a modern grand piano supported by a large orchestra. It’s fun, it sounds very good indeed, and if you like Mozart, you’ll most likely love this recording.

 

The Rachmaninov release features the American conductor Leonard Slatkin (b.1944) leading the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, for which he served as Music Director from 1979 through 1996 and is now Conductor Laureate. Slatkin and the SLSO recorded all three Rachmaninov symphonies for Vox in the mid-1970s; however, given the wide popularity of the composer’s Symphony No. 2, it makes sense that it would be the first (let’s hope not the last) to be given the “Audiophile Edition” rerelease. Slatkin and the SLSO give a powerful, straightforward reading of the score, and are aided in that regard by the well-balanced engineering. Although the vintage analog recording lacks that last bit of transparency and definition that can be attained by modern digital recording technologies, Elite Recordings knew where best to place their microphones and they did the very best with the technology of their day. Not too long ago I had happened to acquire a Vox Box CD set of Rachmaninov orchestral works recorded by Slatkin and the SLSO back in the ‘70s, a set that included their performance of Vocalise. Comparing the track from the Vox Box to the track from this new transfer. I found that the newer release seemed slightly cleaner in the sound of the massed strings and brass. No, it was not a dramatic difference – in fact, it was quite subtle at best, but that is to be expected. Still, this new edition offers as fine a version of this recording as can be had – and does so at an eminently reasonable price.  

With brief but useful liner notes and careful attention to sound quality, not to mention such excellent and enjoyable musical selections, this new series of “Vox Audiophile Editions” is off to a flying start. It will be interesting to see what other vintage recordings the folks at Naxos might decide to dig out from the Vox back catalog. Seasoned classical music fans well know there are plenty of excellent performances in that catalog from which to choose.