Tchaikovsky - Symphony No.4 (Lorin Maazel)

Back in the day, record companies - well some record companies - tried many different methods to get better sound off an LP record. The LP wasn't all we had - there was the ubiquitous compact cassette. Making your "mix" tapes with a quality blank cassette on a good deck could get surprisingly good results, but pre-recorded tapes were a lottery - most not equaling their vinyl counterpart. So LPs were cut at 45rpm, or cut direct-to-disc. New production methods made LP manufacture better (eg Teldec's Direct Metal Mastering system).

Then along came digital recording. The saviour of the music industry (until it became apparent that perfect digital copies could be made - and the slippery slope from that just keeps getting steeper).

Digital recording systems existed before there was a means of mass distribution, so for a while, LPs were made proudly proclaiming "digital recording". One company to embrace the new technology wholeheartedly was Telarc. This independent company - sadly no longer in existence - produced some excellent digital recordings, including this 1979 recording of Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony with The Cleveland Orchestra. This was four years before the launch of the Compact Disc - a product not entirely welcomed by the "audiophile" community. The undoubted convenience of the CD and it's "perfect sound forever" slogan made it a commercial success, but those with really good LP playback systems knew that the CD wasn't an advance in sound quality.

Over the years CDs actually got worse, especially for pop music, when it was realised you could make your tracks sound louder on the radio by compressing the CD sound - the so-called "loudness war". Yes, the discs were playable, but the sound was rougher and by compressing the music you compressed the life out of it. Luckily this never afflicted classical music CDs.

But back to 1979 - Telarc's production team excelled themselves time after time with their releases, but the physical limitation of the LP playback system were a problem. I've never heard it on LP but Telarc's 1812 Overture, with its canon fire and massed orchestral forces, sometimes forced the stylus out of the groove in terror as it tried to negotiate the extreme groove modulations. This problem must have been on the cutting engineer's mind with the start of Tchaikovsky's 4th, especially the fortissimo chord 43 seconds in (in the video). The groove pitch at the start of side 1 is the widest I've ever seen, and you can see the chord - and a second one a short while after - as a lighter section of the groove as it passes under the stylus.

Whatever the technical problems and solutions, and irrespective of the type of recording, the resulting sound bears favourable comparisons with Decca and EMI recordings the 60s and 70s, and the performance from The Cleveland Orchestra under Lorin Maazel is top notch. . . .

Cartridge: Soundsmith Zephyr MIMC Star

Phono amp: Graham Slee Accession + Elevator EXP

Turntable: PTP Audio Solid12 + SME M2-12-r tonearm