The Royal Ballet Gala Performances - RCA Living Stereo LSC 6065
The legendary box set from RCA Living Stereo recorded by Decca.
Attached to n.180 and n.181 of Audiophile Sound we publish two Cds - vol. 1 and vol. 2 respectively - of the two Lps of the famous box set The Royal Ballet Gala Performances, issued in 1959 under the RCA Living Stereo flag and sold today at prices ranging between 1,000 and 2,000 euros.
Known for years for the exceptional qualities of his recordings, the appeal of the box set also lies in the music contained in the two vinyl: a selection of the most beautiful pages of ballets written in the 900. Our first volume (attached to No. 180) offers extracts from the Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky and the most magical moments of Coppèlia by Delibes, Giselle by Adam and vivid extracts from the Boutique fantastique by Respighi/Rossini (Tarantella, Andante mosso and Can Can).
Ernest Ansermet: one of the greatest ballet directors
And all directed by one of the greatest ballet directors of the twentieth century, Ernest Ansermet. The Swiss director - who was also a professor of mathematics at the University of Geneva - was nevertheless chosen by Diaghilev himself to direct his Ballets Russes as early as the First World War! In Ansermet’s approach, the theatre is heard and breathed, with ballet as the central element of the musical performance: in other words, the score at the service of the dancers. For Ansermet, music has the role of 'caressing' the dancers' movements and accompany their expressions in a comprehensive way; at the same time it must evoke the changing atmospheres of a live performance.
These are the elements that make Ansermet’s readings so appealing. The Swiss director’s management is plastic, never rigid, elastic and at the same time precise and detailed. Ansermet recorded almost all of his Decca LP’s with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande that he himself created, a good, but not exceptional orchestral line-up. On The Royal Ballet Gala Performances instead, Ansermet is present with The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, an ensemble disciplined with brass and woods much higher technically than the Swiss training.
RCA vs. Decca philosophy
The box set of the two Lps was released in the luxurious ÄStereo Series' by RCA Living Stereo and has become a collector’s item: difficult to find a specimen in excellent condition under 1.000 euros; 18 months ago I saw one sold for more than 1.800 euros! The recordings were made by Decca in London on behalf of RCA and this explains why the box set came out on the Living Stereo label; but its audiophile fame owes it to the team of Decca under the legendary Kenneth Wilkinson and the equalization that RCA made on Decca tapes.
Even today, the experts of the Living Stereo catalogue are not 100% in agreement as to why it is so famous. Everyone agrees that this is a great recording, but the best of the American catalogue? I don’t want to go into the details, but I consider this box set to be one of the most attractive of Wilkinson’s opera omnia on behalf of RCA.
The sonic result is mainly attributable to two factors. The first is the recording location, Kingsway Hall in London. The harmonic richness of this room, combined with the solidity of the floor, gave rise to some of the most transparent and rich engravings in the Decca and EMI catalogues. The second factor is the work of Wilkinson, who succeeded in creating a brilliant mix of direct and indirect sounds that result in an exceptional sound photograph of the orchestra.
The Royal Ballet Gala Performances certainly requires our attention, both for the unquestionable quality of the digital editions that are on the market, both - and above all - for vinyl editions remastered by Classic Records and more recently by Analogue Productions. The two companies made remasterings with sound photographs different from the original edition on LP, but - interestingly - also different from each other. And it is precisely these differences between the two remasterings that underline the controversy about the box set’s position in the pantheon of the best Lps of the RCA Living Stereo catalogue.
Important to note first is the fact that although published in the RCA Living Stereo catalogue, the Royal Ballet Gala Performances box set was the product of the work carried out by the Decca team: The English engineers produced the tapes for the lacquers and that’s why the sound characteristics typical of the Decca recordings are present in these Lps. I refer in particular to the physicality of the Decca sound, the naturalness of the balance and the air between the various orchestral families (the four sections of strings, the woods, brass and percussion); but also to the more open and brilliant timbre of the records of the English house.
In my opinion, those who like 'crazy' that sound silky, sweet, "beautiful" strings, for example, will continue to prefer those original RCA as we find it on classic titles such as Venice (LSC 2313) and Scheherazade (LSC 2446). I think it’s more about tastes than objective judgments. I find that honeyy sound artificial and I don’t like it very much, but I recognize that the RCA EQ has given a very appealing timbral patina to its best titles. In fact, it is this "magic" as described in the book I Dischi dell'età d'oro by Stefano Rama (1), unfortunately passed away a couple of months ago, that many modern reissues on 180 and 200 gr cannot reproduce: for some a failure of the reissues, for others a victory because the new remastering reveal the true sound characteristics of the original master Decca.
The disappointment suffered by Classic Records
In this regard I’ll tell you a conversation I had with Michael Hobson of the late Classic Records. He told me about the moment in California when the Decca masters had just arrived from London to be used for the Venice Classic Records production. Everyone was super agitated and Hobson told me that his heart was pounding while he was holding the same tapes used in the original production thirty years before and that everyone considered a "absolutism" masterpiece, a miracle!!
They mounted the tapes on the recorder at full speed and Michael pushed 'play' and... Horror! Oh my God! The RCA sound of the original edition had vanished into thin air! Depression, disappointment, sadness, misunderstanding: how was it possible? But didn’t the master have to be "even more perfect"? (as if it were possible to improve perfection... a concept still unknown by many distributors and retailers).
I’ll tell you what happened. The RCA engineers at the time had applied a type of equalization to the Living Stereo LP, the 'touch' that had produced 'magic', the 'silkiness' of the original Venice edition. Not content with being punched in the gut, Hobson’s team immediately went to work and made a resounding mistake. Wanting to respect the sound characteristics of the master Decca and at the same time not betray the sound of the vinyl of the original box, the team decided to choose the path of compromise!: essentially a mastering halfway between RCA sound and Decca sound. Result? Another punch in the stomach, inflicted this time by the big ¿audiophile specialists' hidden behind a computer! And the criticism? Well, he went on a rampage! Disappointed and angry, the press launched a smear campaign against Classic Records and Hobson, accusing him of betraying and disfiguring the beauty of the Living Stereo sound. A ferocious campaign that soon ended on all the audiophile titles in the world.
The modern reprints: the squaring of the circle, or almost...
The late Classic Records and Analogue Productions each produced a 33 LP edition and a single; and both, especially those singles, recreate a sound texture that reveals the great qualities of the best Decca but without the velvety tone so typical of the best RCA. It was the only possible choice for the two American companies: without access to the identical systems of the time and without the transfer engineers of the time it was not possible to reproduce the manipulated sound of the original copies. However, the boxes containing the tapes have no information about the EQ applied during the transfer from the tapes to lacquer disk.
Having listened to many masters in my working life I can tell you, without hesitation, that the 45-rpm editions, when made correctly, are much closer to the master than the 33-rpm editions. To enjoy the great sophistication of the bows, the subtle and various colors of the woods, the sweetness of brass even at very strong levels, the singles are a must; also with regard to the dynamic rendering we are on another planet. And all this also applies to the casket under examination: only with the single edition we can enjoy the great merits of this recording. In fact, in comparison with the vinyl of the original edition, in the singles the crescendi are more alive, the decrescendi more obvious, and that physicality so appreciated chez Decca and RCA becomes even more material than the editions and remastering at 33 laps.
I have the box set The Royal Ballet Gala Performances by Classic Records/single in London. Although it is more than 25 years old, the sophistication of the bows is excellent, especially in terms of transparency even if not in terms of sweetness. But the solidity of the great Decca in the bass remains and the ingenious balance achieved by Wilkinson so many years ago between orchestral mass and solos should be studied by all young sound engineers. As for the sound of the strings, the hyper silky one of the original RCA edition, this is not found on the remasterings of Classic Records; however, Bernie Grundman, the transfer engineer, returns a bit 'that 'silky' ' thanks to the use of a much more sophisticated equipment than that used in the late 1950s - and in my opinion, the result is even more correct. And then there are the advantages inherent to the 45 rpm format: the superior dynamic performance, cleaner transients and the greater extension in frequencies that make everything more alive, present and timbrally more correct. The squaring of the circle?
Almost...
Unfortunately I don’t have the most recent edition of Analogue Productions. I have to make some speculation. I’ve heard about a dozen of Analogue’s new title transfers already made by Classic Records. If memory does not betray me, I would say that everyone sounds better than the old editions and therefore I have no doubt that the Royal Ballet Perfomances box set will also sound better in singles than the Classic edition. Analogue Productions also used Bernie Grundman’s metal plates. For those interested, the Analogue Productions box set costs even less than the Classic Records editions on sale on the net.
For those looking for a digital edition I recommend the hybrid SACD edition of Analogue Productions, definitely higher than that in PCM 24/96 chez Qobuz. At the same time, however, it is impossible to ignore the fact that the quality of the wood timbres that we find on the two Lps in the single versions is definitely out of the reach of the SACD; moreover, the SACD does not have the same masterful presence of brass and percussion, not to mention the way in which all the solos are 'supported' on various luxurious sound cushions created by the four sections of the strings.
CD editions combined with Audiophile Sound No. 180 and No. 181
As for our CD edition, the analogue/digital transfer was realized - it’s true - starting from second generation tapes, but - very important to underline - with a totally ¿fuoriclasse' system. Does this explain why the Cds of our new series TAPE-TO-DISC REMASTERS' sound better than other digital editions on CD? Yes, it’s possible, and I’ll explain why...
Those who think that the use of second-generation tapes is much lower are mistaken. There will be about 1.5 db difference between the original and the copy, a difference that the non-executor will have much difficulty in perceiving. But the real point is this: something is lost, yes, but so little to be insignificant in comparison to the benefits that result from a second factor, namely, the quality of the system used to make the copy of the original. Don’t think that the most renowned mastering studios - and I’m not talking about the majors' studios (often even worse) -, use super high end equipment! Apart from the Original Master Recording system, totally redone by Tim de Paravicini, nobody uses components that we could call hi-end audiophile
In our case the De Havilland Audio Tape preamplifier was used instead of the Studer A 810 cards. The A/D converter to transfer tapes to digital format was the Hapi Digital Merging with the Adio Antelope 10mx Atomic Clock clock. The wiring is all Shunyata, including the Shunyata Venom ethernet cable to connect the Merging to the computer. Then the tapes were transferred to DSD 256 and for the transition from DSD to PCM 16bit/44.1khz for our compact disc edition an atypical downsampling logarithm was used and that remains an 'industrial secret'...
Conclusions
The original edition has its merits. I do not deny it. But the new vinyl remasterings, and especially the single format ones, offer a sound photograph that respects much more the master of Decca. For the CD I have not heard a version that sounds better than our... but my ears certainly do not extend to all the new editions appeared on the planet (!).
Pierre Bolduc
Important to note first is the fact that although published in the RCA Living Stereo catalogue, the Royal Ballet Gala Performances box set was the product of the work carried out by the Decca team: The English engineers produced the tapes for the lacquers and that’s why the sound characteristics typical of the Decca recordings are present in these Lps. I refer in particular to the physicality of the Decca sound, the naturalness of the balance and the air between the various orchestral families (the four sections of strings, the woods, brass and percussion); but also to the more open and brilliant timbre of the records of the English house.
In my opinion, those who like 'crazy' that sound silky, sweet, "beautiful" strings, for example, will continue to prefer those original RCA as we find it on classic titles such as Venice (LSC 2313) and Scheherazade (LSC 2446). I think it’s more about tastes than objective judgments. I find that honeyy sound artificial and I don’t like it very much, but I recognize that the RCA EQ has given a very appealing timbral patina to its best titles. In fact, it is this "magic" as described in the book I Dischi dell'età d'oro by Stefano Rama (1), unfortunately passed away a couple of months ago, that many modern reissues on 180 and 200 gr cannot reproduce: for some a failure of the reissues, for others a victory because the new remastering reveal the true sound characteristics of the original master Decca.
The disappointment suffered by Classic Records
In this regard I’ll tell you a conversation I had with Michael Hobson of the late Classic Records. He told me about the moment in California when the Decca masters had just arrived from London to be used for the Venice Classic Records production. Everyone was super agitated and Hobson told me that his heart was pounding while he was holding the same tapes used in the original production thirty years before and that everyone considered a "absolutism" masterpiece, a miracle!!
They mounted the tapes on the recorder at full speed and Michael pushed 'play' and... Horror! Oh my God! The RCA sound of the original edition had vanished into thin air! Depression, disappointment, sadness, misunderstanding: how was it possible? But didn’t the master have to be "even more perfect"? (as if it were possible to improve perfection... a concept still unknown by many distributors and retailers).
I’ll tell you what happened. The RCA engineers at the time had applied a type of equalization to the Living Stereo LP, the 'touch' that had produced 'magic', the 'silkiness' of the original Venice edition. Not content with being punched in the gut, Hobson’s team immediately went to work and made a resounding mistake. Wanting to respect the sound characteristics of the master Decca and at the same time not betray the sound of the vinyl of the original box, the team decided to choose the path of compromise!: essentially a mastering halfway between RCA sound and Decca sound. Result? Another punch in the stomach, inflicted this time by the big ¿audiophile specialists' hidden behind a computer! And the criticism? Well, he went on a rampage! Disappointed and angry, the press launched a smear campaign against Classic Records and Hobson, accusing him of betraying and disfiguring the beauty of the Living Stereo sound. A ferocious campaign that soon ended on all the audiophile titles in the world.
The modern reprints: the squaring of the circle, or almost...
The late Classic Records and Analogue Productions each produced a 33 LP edition and a single; and both, especially those singles, recreate a sound texture that reveals the great qualities of the best Decca but without the velvety tone so typical of the best RCA. It was the only possible choice for the two American companies: without access to the identical systems of the time and without the transfer engineers of the time it was not possible to reproduce the manipulated sound of the original copies. However, the boxes containing the tapes have no information about the EQ applied during the transfer from the tapes to lacquer disk.
Having listened to many masters in my working life I can tell you, without hesitation, that the 45-rpm editions, when made correctly, are much closer to the master than the 33-rpm editions. To enjoy the great sophistication of the bows, the subtle and various colors of the woods, the sweetness of brass even at very strong levels, the singles are a must; also with regard to the dynamic rendering we are on another planet. And all this also applies to the casket under examination: only with the single edition we can enjoy the great merits of this recording. In fact, in comparison with the vinyl of the original edition, in the singles the crescendi are more alive, the decrescendi more obvious, and that physicality so appreciated chez Decca and RCA becomes even more material than the editions and remastering at 33 laps.
Almost...
Unfortunately I don’t have the most recent edition of Analogue Productions. I have to make some speculation. I’ve heard about a dozen of Analogue’s new title transfers already made by Classic Records. If memory does not betray me, I would say that everyone sounds better than the old editions and therefore I have no doubt that the Royal Ballet Perfomances box set will also sound better in singles than the Classic edition. Analogue Productions also used Bernie Grundman’s metal plates. For those interested, the Analogue Productions box set costs even less than the Classic Records editions on sale on the net.
For those looking for a digital edition I recommend the hybrid SACD edition of Analogue Productions, definitely higher than that in PCM 24/96 chez Qobuz. At the same time, however, it is impossible to ignore the fact that the quality of the wood timbres that we find on the two Lps in the single versions is definitely out of the reach of the SACD; moreover, the SACD does not have the same masterful presence of brass and percussion, not to mention the way in which all the solos are 'supported' on various luxurious sound cushions created by the four sections of the strings.
CD editions combined with Audiophile Sound No. 180 and No. 181
As for our CD edition, the analogue/digital transfer was realized - it’s true - starting from second generation tapes, but - very important to underline - with a totally ¿fuoriclasse' system. Does this explain why the Cds of our new series TAPE-TO-DISC REMASTERS' sound better than other digital editions on CD? Yes, it’s possible, and I’ll explain why...
Those who think that the use of second-generation tapes is much lower are mistaken. There will be about 1.5 db difference between the original and the copy, a difference that the non-executor will have much difficulty in perceiving. But the real point is this: something is lost, yes, but so little to be insignificant in comparison to the benefits that result from a second factor, namely, the quality of the system used to make the copy of the original. Don’t think that the most renowned mastering studios - and I’m not talking about the majors' studios (often even worse) -, use super high end equipment! Apart from the Original Master Recording system, totally redone by Tim de Paravicini, nobody uses components that we could call hi-end audiophile
In our case the De Havilland Audio Tape preamplifier was used instead of the Studer A 810 cards. The A/D converter to transfer tapes to digital format was the Hapi Digital Merging with the Adio Antelope 10mx Atomic Clock clock. The wiring is all Shunyata, including the Shunyata Venom ethernet cable to connect the Merging to the computer. Then the tapes were transferred to DSD 256 and for the transition from DSD to PCM 16bit/44.1khz for our compact disc edition an atypical downsampling logarithm was used and that remains an 'industrial secret'...
Conclusions
The original edition has its merits. I do not deny it. But the new vinyl remasterings, and especially the single format ones, offer a sound photograph that respects much more the master of Decca. For the CD I have not heard a version that sounds better than our... but my ears certainly do not extend to all the new editions appeared on the planet (!).
Pierre Bolduc