Decca Veteran Charged With Remastering Complete Callas Catalog

Maria Callas with Nanni Ricordi in 1958. She recorded
Cherubini's Medea at La Scala with Tullio Serafin for
Dischi Ricordi on Mercury label equipment flown in
from New York. Warner Classics now owns the rights.

When the compact disc revolution began to hit the classical music world in the early 1980s, many labels looked to their back catalogs for a treasure trove of riches. The process by which they went about reviving some of the great masters was a bit painstaking to say the least. First the old analog master tapes had to be located and transferred into a new digitally encoded master. "The digital process merely translates everything on the old tape - hiss, bumpy splices, bad balances and mixes, deterioration of tape oxide - onto a new tape. Sometimes the sound is beefed up with added reverberation, filtering of high and low frequencies (to eliminate hiss and rumble) and occasionally a touch of compression (ostensibly to protect your home system from the shock of dynamic extremes)....After the recording to be reprocessed has been designated, the balance engineer assigned to the project goes back to the original

The original British cover art has been faithfully reproduced.
For more information about the release, click here.

master tape to see what shape its in. First he determines what sort of equipment it was recorded on, so it can be played back on the same system (otherwise, hiss becomes intolerable). He then looks it over for oxide deterioration, for weak or sticky splice joints, and other signs of age and/or wear. It must be remembered that producers and engineers counted on certain flaws on the master tape - poor splices, extraneous noises such as subways or outside ground and air traffic, musicians coughing, even distortion - vanishing in the general swooshing of the vinyl on the turntable....If the splice is too sticky, the tapes has to be thoroughly cleaned. If the oxide has fallen off, another copy of the master must be raided to supply the affected area. If a

Maria Callas with EMI producer Walter Legge during a break recording Ponchielli's La Gioconda. Legge is one of the few people whom could try to produce on vinyl what the Callas voice sounded like in person. An engineer working on the project today, would be working with a ghostly memory of the soprano if they had heard her live at all.

splice is too crude (as occasionally happened), it has to be targeted for attention later in the process. Then the analog master is converted to digital. Any digital cleaning up of poor

Kiri Te Kanawa Celebrates Over 50 Years Of Recording

"New Zealand soprano comes up with a staid celebration of 50 years in the recording studio. Te Kanawa's creamy lyric soprano was not made to evoke the malevolent sea monsters of Te Taniwha. Max Cryer's liner notes for Dame Kiri Te Kanawa's Waiata make an engaging read. He provides another succinct introduction to the thorny issue of "Maori song" (as he did for Te Kanawa's 1999 Maori Songs) followed by notes on individual tracks. This is a celebration of the soprano's half-century recording career, enlisting the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and the University of Auckland Chamber Choir, in arrangements by Carl (Piano by Candlelight) Doy. In time for Christmas, Waiata is an unabashed stocking-stuffer, offering minimal rewards for those with a respect for the achievements of this singer. Beside it, her earlier Maori Songs CD, which occasioned a few giggles and squirms in its time, takes on classic status. It had stronger songs and Te Kanawa's voice was 14 years younger. Its ethnic trimmings of kapa haka groups (including Mahinarangi Tocker and George Henare) and a wash of taonga puoro now seem positively piquant. Waiata is a staid affair. Doy's arrangements have fleeting moments of inspiration, with a few impressive Mantovani string clusters, but tinkling piano and churning rhythmic ostinati try the patience, along with overlooked production glitches."[Source] In addition to the new release of Waiata by Sony (set globally for March 2014), other labels such as Warner Classics (featuring former EMI Classics material) and Decca (featuring former Philips Classics material) are reissuing box-sets of their own to commemorate the occasion. Check out the beautiful editions after the jump. 

Montserrat Caballé Reissues Still Missing Major Recording

If you need your Montserrat Caballé thirst quenched, turn to EMI and Sony for recent reissues from the soprano's back catalog. With the numerous compilations that have been released, there is still a vital recording missing: 15 Strauss songs with Alexis Weissenberg on piano. A number of years ago, EMI Classics issued the 1979 recording of Canto a Sevilla by Joaquin Turina and Canciones negras by Xavier Montsalvatge on CD. The other half of the original 2LP set, however, has never seen the light of day on CD or MP3. Why? Not to mention the lack of originality with cover art on the above re-issues. Are there really only two photos of this great artist in the files of these record companies to use?