SCRATCHY RECORDS

posted by James Reel

I write this post a few minutes after having aired a 1947 recording of Franz Lehár conducting his own Merry Widow Overture. We don't have many "historical" (old mono) recordings in the library, the assumption being that listeners have a low tolerance for the compromised sonics. But I wonder if that's true.

I remember the little argument that arose at a 1980s conference of the Association of Music Personnel in Public Radio when Victor Ledin, who was then affiliated with a San Francisco Radio station, gave a little speech about how we should be playing more recordings--particularly piano recordings, his specialty--from before the stereo era. The playing styles back then were quite different, and each performer tended to have far greater individuality than most of the pianists being recorded by the major labels in the '80s. Somebody then countered that the average radio listener wouldn't be listening closely enough to discern the artistic differences; all that's likely to be perceived would be the surface noise and limited frequency range of recordings transferred from scratchy old 78s.

In the case of the Lehár recordings from the 1940s, there's no surface noise to contend with; Europe had entered the tape era a few years before, and, at worst, there's a bit of tape hiss in the background (but hardly any in this particular remastering). The frequency range, though, does lack the extreme lows and some of the highs of modern recordings, so if you're paying just a little attention, you can tell the difference.

But how many radio listeners are paying attention?

I suspect most people have the radio on in the background as the move from room to room doing various things, or they turn it on in the car, where many sonic infelicities are masked by road and motor noise. Under such conditions, would they notice that it's a 1947 recording?

Now, they probably do notice when we play one of the classic 1930s Artur Schnabel recordings of Beethoven sonatas, which, being drawn from 78s, are more crackly and muffled. But does a competent mono recording from the tape era (starting around World War II, at least in Germany) cause radio listeners to notice anything different? Are radio listeners listening that closely?

And if they're not, that raises another question: Even with modern recordings, will they notice many differences in performance quality or interpretation? Is there any point in a radio station owning more than one recording of anything?

Let me know.