Why Should We Listen to Old Recordings (or Any Recordings for That Matter)? by Thomas Wolf
Those old records are so scratchy and the sound is so weird. Why would anyone want to listen to them?
The musicians on many old records do such strange things. Sometimes they even play wrong notes. I prefer to listen to performers who play the music perfectly. I know some of those old-time musicians are legends but many of them sure don’t sound like it.
The fidelity of my equipment is equal to or better than the acoustics of many concert halls. I like to listen to superb recent recordings played by terrific musicians on my home system. That’s one of the advantages of advanced recording technology. I don’t have to leave home.
Okay. This is a sample of some of the skeptical comments I received over the past months when I mentioned to friends and colleagues that I was working on a recording project. Many were surprised because they know I much prefer live music and rarely listen to recordings for pleasure. They were even more surprised when I said the project was to reissue some classical music recordings from the 1930s and 1940s. More about the project later.
But for now, I should say that I sympathize with many people who made comments like the ones with which I began this piece—not because I agree with their opinions about recordings but because I share some of the same feelings when people talk to me about old films. The images in old films have what one of my friends used to call “rain on the screen” (black and white lines and blobs sparking on the screen). I find them so distracting. Background lighting flickers from bright to dark and characters are often so out of focus that you cannot even tell that they are moving at humorous unnatural speeds. Listening to some of the sound tracks can be painful. The oldest films often have ridiculous plot lines. Newer “old” films (say from the ‘40s and ‘50s) address many of these issues but I am bothered by the dated quality of much of the content—subservient women kowtowing to chauvinistic males, black people always cast in the role of servants, heroes smoking like chimneys. And like people who resist going to concert halls and who listen to music at home, I am perfectly happy to watch films of any kind on my home computer—who needs a movie theatre when I can watch at my leisure, take a break when I want, and stop watching if I don’t like a particular film?
So why don’t I have some of these same feelings about recordings? Let me deal with the complaints.
An early recording studio. The awkwardness of the set-up made quality performances challenging and the sound quality was often poor by our modern standards.
How bad is the sound of old recordings? Despite the best technology available today, I will grant that it is often impossible to eliminate all the scratches and hisses and other obnoxious superfluous noises on many old recordings without compromising the sound of the music itself. And the extraneous sounds can be unpleasant—no doubt about it. My grandmother, Lea Luboshutz’s 1909 Russian recordings are good examples. They are scratchy. And yes, their sound is not “true”—that is, the tone of her violin in the primitive recording studio must have been far different from what was captured on the recording. It sounds tinny—not the rich tone that critics of the time raved about. The question is whether the records offer enough that is wonderful to put up with the sound distortion. In many cases, I think they do.
If so-called “near-perfect sound” is what you are looking for, certainly modern recordings are, for the most part, preferable to older ones. But I don’t agree that staying at home and listening to a well-recorded performance can give you an equal or better acoustic experience than going to a live concert in a reasonably decent hall no matter how superb your home equipment. For one thing, consider that the space in which you are listening to the music is part of the auditory experience. You are not going to duplicate the very special ambient sound of a concert hall when you listen in a small room or with earphones though it is true that modern recordings will sound better than those recorded more than 80 years ago. You are also not going to experience the subtleties of beautiful tone or what in earlier times people called “touch”—the very special sound that great musicians can produce on their instruments.
“I can’t hear the harpsichord,” is a common complaint of audience members at early music concerts whose ears have grown accustomed to the artificially enhanced and balanced sound of recordings.
And let’s be honest. The sound engineers have had their hand “enhancing” these modern recordings. Is that bad? Well, yes if you care about authenticity and, most importantly, not allowing your ears to develop bad listening habits. Have you ever gone to an early music concert and listened to a musical work that you had previously heard on a recording? “I can’t hear the harpsichord,” was a complaint I received countless times when I presented early music concerts with harpsichord in a concert hall. “It is so much better on my recording,” people would say to me. Of course it was, if by “better” they meant the recording had been electronically engineered for what someone controlling the mix considered perfect instrumental balance. A listener who became accustomed to that engineered acoustic with the amplified harpsichord is not going to like what he or she hears at the concert. But authentic the recording is not.
What about the complaint that musicians didn’t play as well in the old days, despite the hype around their reputations? Do today’s musicians play better? Keep in mind that modern recordings are not unitary performances. They are assemblages of many performances, engineered to get the best result technically speaking and even individual notes can be “modified.” By comparison, take one of my grandmother’s 1909 records. It was recorded in a single “take”—that is, there was no splicing together of the best of several takes…no “correcting” single notes that were slightly out of tune. So yes, there were times when she may have missed a note or played it sharp or flat. But I like her recordings anyway and so apparently did others who wrote about them. (Tully Potter, in a recent article in The Strad, for example, called them “brilliant.”[1]) There was a single musical conception just like in a live performance with all the blemishes included. A modern “perfect” recording does not have the same feel.
What about the performers’ actual skill? Are musicians today more accomplished when it comes to feats approximating technical perfection? Is that a good reason to avoid old recordings? Here it all depends on what you mean by “better.” Modern performances can certainly be astonishing. I remember a concert I attended at Tanglewood a few years ago where I encountered the long-retired concertmaster of the Boston Symphony, Joseph Silverstein, who now was a subscriber sitting on the other side of the footlights listening to his old orchestra. I joked with him, “Haven’t you heard these pieces often enough? You must have played them 100 times.”
The late Joseph Silverstein, former concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, commented on the astonishing technical skill of modern orchestra players.
“Yes,” he said, “But this group of musicians plays so much better than we did years ago.”
What did this renowned figure in the music world really mean? At the time I spoke with him, he continued to play solos and chamber music at a very high level and was still revered as a musician. But he was referring to something very specific—the technical excellence of the players in the orchestra, which generally improves with every generation. Does that mean that their performances overall are better? Technical perfection can get us only so far (and incidentally can make many performances by different players sound alike). Again, I would trade a few wrong notes for a really beautiful or interesting musical conception…even one I disagree with.
One of the reasons I listen to old recordings more often than I listen to modern ones is to appreciate the range of performance styles that have existed over the last hundred years. Today, of course, technical perfection is an overriding concern. But there are other aspects of performance practice today, some of which are wonderful but others I find distracting after comparing them to recordings of certain of my favorite musicians of the past. For example, I have a particular interest in string chamber ensembles (string quartets, quintets, sextets, string orchestras, etc.) and find that many musicians active today tend to over-exaggerate accents as well as over-dramatize the swelling on long notes or notes before a cadence. Alex Ross of the New Yorker noted the same trend among today’s orchestra conductors—what he called in a recent article, “the prevailing fashion these days (to) vie with one another to see who can drive ahead most impetuously and jab at accents most aggressively.”[2] Ross talks enthusiastically about a particular 94-year-old conductor Herbert Blomstedt, “a resolutely unshowy musician who has gone about his business decade after decade.” While Blomsted is still active and one can hear recent recordings made to modern standards, most musicians who were born around the same time have long since retired or died. I revere some of their old recordings to remind myself of their style of playing which I love.
At ninety four, the Swedish conductor Herbert Blomsted represents an unshowy approach to music that is reminiscent of many of the best musicians of the past whose performances can only be captured by listening to old recordings.
String quartet players in those days did not have to throw their arms in the air at the end of movements as they do routinely today—so many young ones seeming to exclaim after their exaggerated performance practices, “Look at me. Aren’t I wonderful?!” Rather, many of the best musicians of the past sat quietly, stressing the long unfettered musical line, letting the music speak for itself. Listen to many old recordings and you will hear for yourself. True, this represents only my taste but I regret that others are not exposed to some of these wonderful performers of past eras.
I have given much thought to these issues over the past months as I have become immersed in a historical recording project—the reissuing of the discography of the duo-piano team of Luboshutz & Nemenoff, recently released by Marston Records. Ward Marston is a legendary record producer whose company specializes in historic reissues. When he mentioned his interest in the project, I was ecstatic. After all, Pierre Luboshutz and Genia Nemenoff were my great aunt and uncle and I loved the way they played. It was a style that is less prevalent today, where the beauty of the music was paramount. I owned numerous of their records, but had not been able to listen to them for years on my modern equipment. How excited I was that their style of performance could now be shared on CDs.
The latest project of Marston Records is the reissuing of the complete discography of the husband and wife duo-piano team of Pierre Luboshutz and Genia Nemenoff.
I was excited for another reason as well. Ward told me of live concert broadcasts with the Boston Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra and possibly others that, if we could get our hands on them, would be amazing additions to the collection (no editing, just unitary performances). I happily signed on to the project and agreed to write the liner notes. I would leave everything else to Ward (or so I thought). But Ward had other ideas.
One of the important decisions he left to me was selecting which recording of Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos, K. 448 we should include. This is a seminal work for these instruments, generally considered the first important original sonata for two pianos. Pierre and Genia had recorded it several times and we had access to three of the recordings. I knew perfectly well that none of the recordings would capture the remarkable silky sound that I remember so distinctly—no recording can do that, especially those from so long ago. But I knew that one would be able to hear much of what made Pierre and Genia’s playing so special in terms of phrasing and other aspects of musicianship. Unlike so many of today’s musicians, they were not slaves to the score. They were willing to shape the music in ways that displayed their musical personalities.
One recording we ruled out right away. It was a studio recording that had not been skillfully made. That left two under consideration—one a studio recording and the other a recording of a live broadcast on radio station WQXR. That latter recording was captured by chance, taken off the air by a New York music lover who owned good quality disc recording equipment. Not surprisingly, the studio recording was more technically perfect from a pianistic point of view. I seriously doubt there was significant editing involved given when it was made, but Pierre and Genia obviously had quite a bit of time in the studio to play the piece repeatedly and decide which performance or parts of performances they liked best. The result was a smooth rendition in which the tempos were carefully considered and there were no slips or missed notes (at least none that I could discern).
Some of the best music-making in our family was after a big dinner when we all got to play something. The performances were often far more spontaneous and fun than our concerts and recordings even if there were many wrong notes.
In the live broadcast on WQXR, by way of contrast, I sensed that Pierre and Genia may have been a bit nervous or perhaps just excited (hyped up, as a musician-colleague calls it). There would only be one “take.” Certain tempos were faster than usual (sometimes even a bit rushed) and there were a few slip-ups (not major but noticeable to me). On the other hand, this WQXR performance, like so many that take place under live conditions, was more interesting and spontaneous. In listening to it over and over again, it reminded me of family music sessions at my parents’ home when the various musicians in the family, often including Pierre and Genia, would all be together. After a big dinner, sometimes around some holiday, and fortified with wine, we would all play something. We would be loose and relaxed and it was some of the best and most fun music-making we ever achieved. There were plenty of wrong notes by all of us, often accompanied by smiles and giggles. But the performances were so spontaneous and wonderful—often with exaggerated rubatos, sometimes excessively fast tempos, and spontaneous phrasing. While the WQXR performance was not quite that—it was after all meant for a large listening audience and not just for family—it tended much more in that direction and I was so glad to have it.
Yet, here I was, realizing that this CD set was going to represent Luboshutz & Nemenoff playing at their best. I felt I had my great aunt and uncle looking over my shoulder. What would they have wanted me to do? There was no question in my mind that there were simply too many tiny blemishes for them to have been happy with the WQXR performance. It had been for broadcast, they would have said, not for a permanent record of their playing (they would have been unaware that it even existed). Given that I had a good alternative and this was such an important piece in the repertoire, the choice was clear. Reluctantly, I gave in and chose the studio recording. But for anyone interested, here is the recording from the live WQXR performance that we did not include in the set. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
For those who may be interested in the four-CD set of Luboshutz & Nemenoff, go here.
[1] Tully Potter, “Book Review: The Nightingale’s Sonata: The Musical Odyssey of Lea Luboshutz,” The Strad, 29 October 2019
[2]Alex Ross, “The Most Vital Conductor of Beethoven is Ninety Four,” The New Yorker, August 30, 2021
My thanks to Malcolm Kottler and Gregor Benko for their suggestions on earlier drafts.