111049-50 bk VdRequiem 6/19/06 9:04 AM Page 8 Producer’s Note The Requiem was transferred from a single set of German LP pressings. The Aida Prelude came from a postwar yellow-label Deutsche Grammophon shellac pressing, while the remaining items were transferred from British VERDI HMV 78s (save for the Respighi, which came from laminated Australian HMVs). The Aida is apparently rather scarce; it was the only one of Sabata’s Berlin recordings to have been omitted from Pearl’s otherwise complete CD reissue of several years ago. Messa da Requiem Mark Obert-Thorn R DE SA TO BA IC T V A Mark Obert-Thorn Mark Obert-Thorn is one of the world’s most respected transfer artist/engineers. He has worked for a number of 195 ing specialist labels, including Pearl, Biddulph, Romophone and Music & Arts. Three of his transfers have been 4 Record nominated for Gramophone Awards. A pianist by training, his passions are music, history and working on projects. He has found a way to combine all three in the transfer of historical recordings. Obert-Thorn describes himself as a ‘moderate interventionist’ rather than a ‘purist’ or ‘re-processor,’ unlike those who apply significant additions and make major changes to the acoustical qualities of old recordings. His Elisabeth Schwarzkopf • Oralia Dominguez philosophy is that a good transfer should not call attention to itself, but rather allow the performances to be heard with the greatest clarity. Giuseppe Di Stefano • Cesare Siepi There is no over-reverberant ‘cathedral sound’ in an Obert-Thorn restoration, nor is there the tinny bass and piercing mid-range of many ‘authorised’ commercial issues. He works with the cleanest available 78s, and Chorus and Orchestra of La Scala, Milan consistently achieves better results than restoration engineers working with the metal parts from the archives of the modern corporate owners of the original recordings. His transfers preserve the original tone of the old recordings, Victor de Sabata maximising the details in critical upper mid-range and lower frequencies to achieve a musical integrity that is absent from many other commercially released restorations. 8.111049-50 8 111049-50 bk VdRequiem 6/19/06 9:04 AM Page 2 to compose by this stage. 1868. Verdi wrote to his publisher Ricordi suggesting a What was so special about Victor de Sabata? As number of his fellow Italian composers should each Tito Gobbi remarked in his autobiography My Life contribute a movement for a commemorative Mass. (London, 1979), “De Sabata had an unrivalled talent for Although the work was completed, the performance breaking down the score into its component parts so failed to take place owing to various complications and Great Choral Recordings that he had each group of instrumentalists playing like it would be over a hundred years before a première did individual soloists”. He had acquired a brilliant occur. Verdi’s contribution was the final section, a Giuseppe reputation in both operatic and symphonic repertoire, Libera me. an impassioned and dynamic interpreter who excelled Four years later the distinguished writer VERDI particularly in Verdi and Wagner. Other composers in Alessandro Manzoni died in Milan in May 1873. Verdi (1818-1901) whose music de Sabata excelled included Debussy, had always greatly admired the writer as a symbol who Giordano, Montemezzi, Puccini, Ravel, Respighi, contributed to the unity of Italy and decided to write a Sibelius, Richard Strauss, Tommasini and Wolf- Mass to commemorate the deceased. The composer Messa da Requiem Ferrari. He also had a great fondness for Boito’s took nearly a year to compose his work, which also Mefistofele and Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila. included the earlier Libera me. Rehearsals began in De Sabata was blessed with a fabulously exact and early May 1874 with the first performance taking place Elisabeth Schwarzkopf . soprano critical ear, and Herbert von Karajan said of him: “there on 22nd May in the church of San Marco in Milan, one Oralia Dominguez . mezzo-soprano was a change in the music without him speaking a year to the day following Manzoni’s death. Variously Giuseppe Di Stefano . tenor word”. Fellow musicians have also commented that described as “Verdi’s best opera” and a “monumental Cesare Siepi . bass de Sabata was one of the kindliest of men who never opera in seven acts”, it is an intensely dramatic and uttered a disparaging word about any musician. Some moving work with a raw and terrifying edge to it: the Chorus and Orchestra of La Scala, Milan members of the London Philharmonic, however, work could only have been written by an Italian. Vittore Veneziani, chorus master described the conductor as “a cross between Julius The concluding tracks come mainly from Victor de Sabata Caesar and Satan”. nineteenth-century Italian operas, all at that time to be My father, the English bass Norman Walker (1907- heard regularly in Italy. How poignantly de Sabata Recorded 18th-22nd and 25th-27th June, 1954 in the Teatro alla Scala, Milan 1963) who sang in the Verdi Requiem under de Sabata captures the delicacy and morbidezza in the two Matrices: XBX 160 through 163 on a number of occasions, would vividly recall that La traviata preludes. Contrast that with the passion and First issued on Columbia 33CX 1195 and 1196 during the 1951 performance of the work given in York excitement of two dramatic overtures of works set in Minster such was the dynamic level achieved by the Sicily and Switzerland. Respighi’s colourful evocation Reissue Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer: Mark Obert-Thorn conductor, chorus and orchestra in the Dies Irae he was of Rome’s fountains is most evocatively captured. Then Special thanks to Maynard F. Bertolet, Langdon F. Lombard and Don Tait for providing source material convinced the roof of the building would cave in. the sharpness and wit of two delightful Wolf-Ferrari’s Away from music de Sabata loved comedy and bons-bouche are enchanting. It is also interesting to slapstick, thus his love of circus performers and the note that when Toscanini made his final European antics of clowns. He loved films such as Kind Hearts recordings at La Scala in the summer of 1951, he too and Coronets (with its black humour) and Fantasia. should choose the two La traviata Preludes and the The antics of the Marx Brothers and their films were an Overture to I vespri siciliani, the producer should be especial delight. His son-in-law is the Italian conductor none other than Guido Cantelli (1921-1956), the Aldo Ceccato (b. 1934). protégé of these two most distinguished forebears. The origins of the Messa da Requiem germinated following the death of Rossini in Paris in November Malcolm Walker 8.111049-50 27 8.111049-50 111049-50 bk VdRequiem 6/19/06 9:04 AM Page 6 observing a single breath. At the conclusion the from all his La Scala commitments, as he had by then CD 1 73:41 CD 2 79:15 musicians en masse stood up and applauded in homage. retired to his home at Santa Margherita Ligure where he Examples of his prodigious memory were recalled years died on 11th December 1967. Messa da Requiem 1 VI Lux aeterna 7:01 later by former players who remembered de Sabata De Sabata made his first recordings in December singing the second oboe part accurately and in tune 1933 for the Italian Cetra label [Naxos 8.110589]. Then I Requiem e Kyrie 11:24 VII Libera me 14:13 throughout the rehearsal without a note of music in front followed a series in Berlin for Polydor during April 1 Requiem aeternam 6:36 2 Libera me 2:39 of him. He was also able to correct errors in well-worn 1939 that included Brahms’s Symphony No. 4, Richard orchestral parts in Beethoven’s Eroica and Dvorˇák’s Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung, Respighi’s Feste 2 Kyrie eleison 4:47 3 Dies irae 2:20 New World Symphonies. His seasons with this London Romane, Kodály’s Dances of Galánta, the Prelude and orchestra included memorable cycles of the Beethoven Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and the II Sequenza 40:25 4 Requiem aeternam 3:35 symphonies, an unforgettable concert performance of Prelude from Aida (included on this CD). The 3 Dies irae 2:13 L’enfant et les sortilèges, and on several occasions, conductor’s only major wartime recording was of 5 Libera me 5:39 incomparably fiery readings of Verdi’s Requiem. Mozart’s Requiem in December 1940 for the Cetra 4 Tuba mirum 1:53 London was indeed fortunate to enjoy the visits of de label. Following de Sabata’s success with the London Sabata in the years 1946 to 1951. Philharmonic Orchestra in April 1946, the Decca 5 Mors stupebit 1:29 In September 1950 de Sabata brought the La Scala Record Company undertook the Eroica Symphony, Company to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Sibelius’s En Saga and Valse triste, Le Carnaval 6 Liber scriptus; Dies irae 5:25 and conducted blazing performances of Otello and romain and Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries from Die Falstaff, as well as the Requiem, all by Verdi, the like of Walküre. EMI, not to be outdone, recorded de Sabata in 7 Quid sum miser 3:47 which had not been heard in that building for many a Rome in January 1947 and February 1948. These year. The brilliance, drama, terror and excitement of the sessions brought forth Debussy’s Jeux and two of the 8 Rex tremendae 3:55 opening Storm Scene in Otello almost had the audience three Nocturnes (Nuages and Fêtes), Beethoven’s cowering in their seats.