10 June 2019

Brahms - Ein Deutsches Requiem - Wiener Philharmoniker, Walter (1953)




JOHANNES BRAHMS

Tragic Overture, op. 81

Ein Deutsches Requiem, op. 54

Irmgard Seefried, sp
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, br


Edinburg Choral Union
Wiener Philharmoniker
BRUNO WALTER

Live - Edinburgh Festival
September 8, 1953



EDR is available on a CD Andromeda,
but here you can find also the Tragic Overture
performed during the same concert.

Brisk tempos as in the NYPO studio recording
realized by Walter the following year (20, 28 & 29 december 1954).
So, the overall duration is just over 79 minutes.

Flac







7 comments:

Guido said...

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1PEfq0tIud3IieFuidOPFgmu-O3r91C62

5000Fingers said...

Thank you!

RecordHunter said...

Thank you. Never tire of hearing Walter conduct

Anonymous said...

I was delighted to hear this rare Bruno Walter live concert, especially as the performance of the German Requiem is SO superior to the one that Walter recorded for Columbia and -- as I've read -- originally *refused* to award his approval for release; I well remember when the first CBS budget priced LP issue on the Odyssey label came out in the 1970s; but could understand the conductor's reluctance (as it seemed deficient in many respects.) Here, the 1953 live Edinburgh Festival performance is surely more characteristic of the younger Walter in live concert, with a taut approach and vigorous tempi: one can only characterize this performance as being "strong" in a way that the Columbia record did not present.

However, the upload on this blog (as useful and desirable as it is) seemed to me to be improvable with even a brief, casual edit. This evening I applied myself to TRY to reduce the extreme treble boost (around 3 kHz) in the Requiem; the inconsistent levels (due to heavy audio compression); and the utterly different sound of the Tragic Overture, with boomy bass and hiss: the polar opposite of the timbre of the Requiem. I made some slight headway in reducing the extreme difference of tone of each work. Certain flaws remain that might take DAYS to fix: some pitch flaws in the Requiem; certain strident resonances; and a bit of remaining tape hiss in the overture. But, this is a start...

I personally am not fond of image plus cue files; most media players do not render the tracks accurately from them (or at all--Winamp won't parse them); and VLC did NOT produce the correct track transitions from the original cue file (which seemed several minutes off.) I rendered the works in separate FLAC tracks and, to reduce file size, I converted the monaural two-channel FLAC files to mono ONE channel files. Most modern burning programs will convert on the fly to the 2-channel format required for the CD Redbook standard.

The upload is also in FLAC and is a LIMITED TIME file by Zippyshare, which will PROBABLY not keep it more than 30 days (unless there are sustained download requests.) I emply this free service with some trepidation, as various users complain that it often supplies nasty adverts or questionable "utilities" that CLAIM your hard drive needs fixing! Ignore these things, by all means, and ONLY get and save the zip file of the music! To DL, click ONLY on the red 'radio box' on the right of the screen that says DOWNLOAD NOW, with an arrow; anything else is "junk".

https://www81.zippyshare.com/v/KQoZneyC/file.html

8H Haggis

Brent said...

It's so good to see you back in harness. Thank you for your wonderful posts, both past and present.

One note, the opus number for the requiem is 45, not 54 -- dyslexia strikes again (something it does to me all the time).

Anonymous said...

1 Just discovered the website and, having lost my entire collection to a hard-drive disaster am absolutely thrilled at what I've found here. Magnificent. Thanks Guido. And for the notes that you include.

2 to 8H Haggis. Your hard work is also very much appreciated BUT I recommend using JDownloader (free) which eliminates any chance of the adverts and usually has much faster download rates than using the radio button. JD will also download from uptobox and most of the services used by the classical music blogs. Hope this helps someone out there.

Guido said...

@Brent

45 ;)

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