Mercury Living Presence

Nice to hear from you again, Detlof. I know I'm preaching to the choir with you and Rush!

As Rushton noted, the originals are highly prized by collectors. A fine example of a very simple recording philosophy (3 mikes across the front of an orchestra) superbly executed by a producer with excellent musical taste. The recordings have a lot of the energy you might hear at a live performance (their reproduction of orchestral dynamics was probably the best of the era), but on the whole are on the bright side, as Chadlnliz points out; the first set of SACD reissues actually seemed to tame that brightness just a little, compared to the original CDs. The CDs were remastered under the direction and direct supervision of Wilma Cozart Fine, the original producer of the records, so they had a lot of care taken in their transfer.

Glad to hear from Rushton that the LPs are worth buying, I have held off, as a number of previous re-issues of some Mercury recordings, both on Mercury's budget labels and on the Philips label, have been either disappointing or a mixed bag (not the case, though, with the few Classic Records reissues, wehich are stunning).

In response to Mapman's question, not sure if you're referring more to the simple mike placement, but perhaps Telarc, in its pre-multi-channel days, was close to a mainstream record company using a fairly simple miking technique (spaced omnis as the main array) and taking great care in the mastering and production of its recordings. While many companies have produced fine classical recordings, such as Harmonia Mundi, Reference Recordings, Delos, Decca, etc., most of them use or used far more of a microphone array than Mercury did.

White and Shaded Dogs refer to the labels on the RCA Living Stereo recordings from back in the 50s and early 60s. Both of the dogs were white, actually, but a Shaded Dog was a dog on a shaded background, while the White Dog is a dog on the plain red background. These were the earliest of the RCA Living Stereo issues, and were much better pressings than the later Red Seal reissues of those recordings that came from RCA later in time. The early RCAs are equally prized by collectors as the Mercs; a slightly different recording technique, but equally talented recording engineers and producers. Another plus of the series was that they got to record the Chicago Symphony at the peak of its powers under Fritz Reiner.

Mapman--what you state is certainly the case with pop recordings, which are compressed so they will sound good on the radio. Most classical labels have less compression issues, unless you listen to them on your radio, in which case the radio station compresses the recording for you. Telarc is probably the modern label most akin to the spirit of the Mercuries in terms of trying to get the dynamics of a performance on tape uncompressed, but I tend to agree with Shadorne that most other companies' recordings sound dynamically compressed compared to the Mercuries. This is particularly true when comparing vinyl pressings; that was a hallmark of the Mercury label.

By the way, despite the theoretical advantages of the digital recording medium in terms of dynamic range over analog, for some reason the most dynamic recordings in my collection are the vinyl versions. Comparing the Classic Records re-issue of the Mercury Firebird against even the SACD of the same recording, the vinyl just seems to be more natural, vibrant and have more dynamic punch than the SACD or CD--more of a "jump factor", as we used to call it. Not sure why, but it just seems that way to me, and I think also to a lot of others.

On the Harmonia Mundi recordings, Linn did a ReKut record of the Corelli Concerti Grossi 1-6, a superb recording from that series by McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque.

Sabai, which recording are you referring to--the Harmonia Mundi on Linn ReKut? I'm not sure if they're still available.