Search - Ottorino Respighi, Giuseppe Verdi, Victor De Sabata :: Verdi: Requiem; Respighi: Feste Romane

Excessive audience noise, inferior sound engineering

pyramidcvv | Western US | 04/23/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This live 1951 performance of the Verdi Requiem by Victor De Sabata deserves preservation for its historical value. However, its seriously substandard sound makes it almost unlistenable to the general record collector.



Was this a pirate recording? I can't imagine musical giants like De Sabata and Tebaldi actually approving this recording for distribution.



I'm wondering if perhaps the original master was somehow damaged prior to remastering. I noticed a few spots where the artists all of a sudden went under-pitch for a moment, then returned back on pitch.



But I can only speculate why this recording sounds so bad.



For all it's worth, here are some specifics.



First, the audience noise. While there are other live performances of the Verdi Requiem on CD (Cantelli, Celibidache), none of the ones I've heard have anywhere near this level of audience noise. At one point, it sounded like someone was rustling paper and talking into a microphone. The noise was constant and marred every quiet passage in the performance.



The overall sound balance was extremely uneven. In the opening of the Kyrie, for example, the first three soloists come across with big glorious fortes. But the mezzo sounded like her microphone suddenly went dead.



Throughout the recording, the orchestra was continuously over-miked to the chorus' disadvantage. Although it is not surprising to hear big brass choirs occasionally drowning out a chorus, this album took it to a fault.



The chorus was often not much more than a fuzzy haze. At times, you couldn't even make out their words. Just to give one example, when the basses sang "Dona eis" toward the end of the Agnus Dei, it sounded more like "uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh."



And speaking of basses, most of the time they were literally on perpetual "uh" mode. Seriously: it sounded like the only vowel they knew was "uh". Having heard the La Scala chorus in the newer Verdi Requiem by Riccardo Muti, I'm sure this is not the case. But the way these choristers were recorded makes them sound just plain awful.



The few positive episodes - Giacinto Prandelli's Ingemisco, Nicola Rossi-Lemini's Confutatis, Tebaldi's Libera Me - weren't enough to balance out the copious negatives that make this Verdi Requiem simply too painful to listen to.



I would not recommend this to the casual listener. There are two other De Sabata recordings of the Verdi Requiem: one with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Giuseppe di Stefano; and another with Beniamino Gigli. If you are still interested in De Sabata's Verdi Requiem, I would recommend seeking out these alternatives.



Respighi's Feste Romane, recorded in 1939 (!) with the Berlin Philharmonic, is literally light-years in improvement in terms of sound compared to the Verdi Requiem. It made me wonder even more if the Verdi was actually a poorly done pirate.



This showpiece, of course, cries out for the highest levels of acoustic technology. But this vintage performance has more than enough orchestral fireworks to captivate even owners of current CDs. I was especially impressed with the virtuosic strings of the October Festival, and the frantic clamor of La Befana. Even the loudest passages come across without distortion. There is not even any noticeable hiss.



It's too bad this fine Feste Romane was not combined with other De Sabata recordings of equal sound quality.



No texts or translations."