Some of my recent remastering projects have at last hit the retail market… some here, one in Japan.
American indie label Musical Concepts has licensed some of the choicest vintage masters from the often-underrated Vox catalogue. A couple of years ago I worked on the final mastering (and partial restoration) of Vlado Perlemuter's legendary Mozart piano sonata cycle, which Musical Concepts issued in a 4-CD set; earlier this year, I remastered and restored materials from his ca. 1952 recording of Schumann's Kreisleriana and Fantasie, Op.17.
More Schumann solo piano repertoire found its way to me in the form of sessions by Brazilian pianist Guiomar Novaes recorded around the same time, which were coupled with VOX's earlier digital transfer of her recording of Schumann's Piano Concerto with Otto Klemperer (with a few sloppy splices and truncated tails repaired by yours truly).
French pianist Monique de la Bruchollerie may not be familiar to some pianophiles, but she was an early stalwart of the Vox roster and also made some splendid recordings for HMV. Her recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.1 with Rudolf Moralt and the Wiener Symphoniker is a real barnburner — dramatic, outsize, and with plenty of sonic wallop (no surprise, as it sounds an awfully lot like the consistently excellent ORF airchecks of the same vintage). The new transfer is indeed an improvement over DoReMi's CD issue of this recording, apparently transferred from an LP source.
But the one I had the most fun restoring was Susanne Lautenbacher's decidedly historically uninformed recording of the Bach sonatas with harpsichord (with Martin Galling). This is just plain beautiful, collegial music-making of the highest order by a violinist who deserves far more recognition than she has had. Yes, there are quite a few "authentic" recordings of this repertoire I enjoy, but this set brings to life a superb example of post-WWII interpretive style before the original instrument movement dominated this repertoire. The sources for this recording were a bit problematic, but terrific sound nevertheless emerged.
The Perlemuter, Novaes and Lautenbacher are available from arkivmusic.com as CD and mp3 downloads; the Bruchollerie CD can be ordered from HMV Japan.
