Audio: Listen to this article.
I was tipped off to this recording by Wilson Audio’s Peter McGrath, a stellar recording engineer himself, by any measure. As a self-admitted classical music novice who deems any recording with a violin as borderline classical and who also doesn’t understand classical sub-genres, I felt a bit out of my league after discussing the recording with Peter. On one hand, this probably puts me in a group with most people on Earth, but on the other hand I’m very eager to listen and learn.
Impressing a novice is usually easy. It’s much harder to impress the experts in one’s field of study or work. This is why I sat up in my chair and took notice when Peter McGrath told me about this recording. Yes, Mahler’s Third and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jascha Horenstein are enough to make most aficionados listen, but this recording is special on another level. It’s one of those rare recordings that entices casual classical fans into a “beginning to end” listening session, pausing for a brief moment to silence one’s phone midway through the opening movement.
Why is this recording so special? The answer can’t be narrowed down to a single reason, as there were so many talented professionals involved (musicians, composer, conductor, recording engineer, editor, and restoration professionals, etc…), but I believe that recording engineer Jerry Bruck played an outsized role in enabling us to enjoy this magnificent music more than 50 years after the original performance in Croydon, London on July 27, 28 and 29, 1970 at Fairfield Concert Hall.
The liner notes of this album detail much more information, such as the fact that there were two different recordings of this performance using different gear and different engineers, and I encourage everyone to read them. The really fascinating parts for me revolve around Jerry Bruck’s recording techniques. Jerry was so ahead of his time that he recorded for immersive audio 50 years before it became a thing!
Stereo listeners stick with me because you’re also in for a real treat. The way Bruck recorded this Mahler piece, and the way Peter McGrath still records to this day, makes the two channel stereo version fantastic while the four channel version ads concert hall information making it even better. Stereo listeners don’t miss out on anything “placed” in the other channels. In fact, I can listen to the four channel version with the rear channels muted, and the sound is 100% identical to the stereo version. Un-muting the rear channels is amazing because it opens the space of the concert hall in one’s listening room better than any other playback adjustment or format.
But Wait, There’s More
The stereo and four channel versions of this recording, now available through High Definition Tape Transfers, are fantastic. But, nothing I said yet explains why Bruck was so ahead of his time in my opinion, what’s immersive about his recordings from 1970, and how listeners can reproduce these recordings exactly as Bruck recorded them.
From the liner notes:
“Bruck used a unique mic set-up that captured the sessions with remarkably well-focused clarity… This experimental array was situated relatively near the orchestra, with the two front mics recording the left and right channels, another one facing the rear wall of the hall in the same plane, and the fourth pointed straight up at the ceiling. Unlike some recording set-ups that place mics in the rear of the space to capture ambient signals, Bruck captured the ambient hall sound as reflected back to the nominal listener’s ears from the hall’s rear walls and ceiling, with that nominal listener seated roughly in the center of the mic array. The intent was to capture a hemisphere of sound where the nominal listener was situated, with the “up” and rear channels consisting entirely of reflected sound (an exception is the flugelhorn solos in the third movement; that instrument was situated in the back of the hall).
… if a listener wants to reconstruct the original set-up, all that has to be done is route the right rear channel to an overhead speaker and the left rear channel to a center rear speaker; the two “hall” channels devoted to reflected sound are still intact, as recorded.
The effect of hearing all four channels is not to swamp the music in reverb but rather to add another dimension of clarity and realism, an effect that is clearly perceived when the rear channels are suddenly muted. The locational cues are of course still provided entirely by the front channels, as the direct sounds captured in those channels arrive to the listener first.”
Bruck recorded Mahler’s Third in an immersive way, capturing height information and enabling listeners with immersive audio systems to reproduce the performance extremely close to how it was captured. But, this is where we enter uncharted territory, at least for me.
The pertinent part of the liner notes for those of us attempting to play the rear and height channels as they were captured, is this, “route the right rear channel to an overhead speaker and the left rear channel to a center rear speaker.” I don’t know of many audio systems that have center height and center rear channels (home theaters yes, but not music systems). My solution to this issue is to route the audio a bit differently to my 7.1.4 system (7 ear level, 1 subwoofer, and 4 ceiling height channels).
As I said, this is uncharted territory for me, so I’m willing to admit mistakes and happy to make corrections to this technique, in service of the music. I’m testing several different channel routing options, which are easy to play given the flexibility of my immersive audio system.
Using Music Media Helper, I routed the audio in the following way for my first attempt at reproducing this as captured. Front left and right remain front left and right. The rear left channel that captured the rear of Fairfield Concert Hall is routed to both rear left and right channels. The rear right channel that contains what the microphone pointed upward captured, is routed to all four of my ceiling height channels.
I honestly don’t know if this is technically a “correct” way to do things. Perhaps I need to reduce the level in the rear channels by 50% because I went from 1 to 2 speakers, and reduce by 75% for the height channels because I went from 1 to 4 channels reproducing the sound. Or, perhaps this is something in my head that I’m overthinking. I’m eager to accept corrections.
The input to Music Media Helper was the four channel 24/192 version of the recording. The output is a 7.1.4 twelve channel WAV file with music in the aforementioned channels, and nothing in the center, side, and subwoofer channels.
For the technically inclined, the FFMPEG details are = FFmpeg Filter: pan=7.1+TFL+TFR+TBL+TBRIc0=c01c1=C11c6=c21c7=C21c8=c31c9=c3/c10=c3e11=c
Time Capsule / Listening Session
This is all about listening to music for me. All of the channel routing and thinking about how best to reproduce it as Jerry Bruck intended, is all in service of the music. I love music and go to great lengths to make listening an incredibly enjoyable experience. After about 5 seconds of listening to Mahler’s Third “immersively” I easily concluded it was worth the extra effort up front, to enjoy this time capsule of a recording for a lifetime.
Pressing play on Kraftig Entscheiden and immediately hearing the horn section and percussion sound so realistic and as if I’m sitting in Fairfield Concert Hall in July of 1970, five years before I was born, was an otherworldly experience. We’ve all seen photographs from a time before we were born, but most people have never experienced being audibly / virtually placed in a concert hall 50 years ago and listening to the London Symphony Orchestra play right in front of them, like Jerry Bruck has enabled us to on this impeccably captured and restored recording.
It’s experiences like this, playing a 1970 orchestral recording through an immersive audio system, that turn me and other novices into classical fans. I doubt I took many breaths for the entirely of the nearly 34 minute first movement! I was in awe of the music, the performance, the recording, and the experience as a whole. Just magnificent!
A huge thank you to Jerry Bruck at Posthorn Recordings, Bob Witrak at High Definition Tape Transfers, and John H. Haley at Harmony Restorations LLC, for making this possible. This is what most audiophiles and music lovers I know live for.
Purchase this recording at High Definition Tape Transfers: Mahler Symphony No 3 & Strauss Death And Transfiguration - Jascha Horenstein LSO (HDTT15476) (link)
About the author - https://audiophile.style/about
Author's Complete Audio System Details with Measurements - https://audiophile.style/system
Recommended Comments
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now