STRAUSS Also Sprach Zarathustra CLASSIC RECORDS Reiner LIVING STEREO 200g 45rpm

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STRAUSS Also Sprach Zarathustra Fritz Reiner conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra CLASSIC RECORDS 200 gram 45rpm (RCA LIVING STEREO LSC 1806) Mastered by Bernie Grundman - Pressed at RTI on audiophile grade vinyl

A Also Sprach Zarathustra (Part 1)

B Also Sprach Zarathustra (Part 2)

C Also Sprach Zarathustra (Part 3)

D Also Sprach Zarathustra (Part 4)

*(all photos are of the actual item)

• Conductor – Fritz Reiner
• Orchestra – Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The

Notes

Classic Records reissue on 4 200 gram 45 rpm one-sided discs.

• Recorded At – Orchestra Hall, Chicago
• Copyright (c) – Radio Corporation Of America

• Composed By – Richard Strauss
• Conductor – Fritz Reiner
• Engineer [Uncredited] – Leslie Chase
• Orchestra – Chicago Symphony Orchestra
• Producer [Uncredited] – John Pfeiffer

Legendary 1954 Reiner/CSO performance of a Strauss warhorse. Recorded directly to two-track analog by Jack Pfeiffer,who oversaw this Classic transfer of one of his favorite recordings and hailed this reissue as “definitive and spectacular.” A fine performance of this famous piece of music, and one of the rarest of the original Living Stereos. Transferred from the original 2-track master.

Liner Notes

The complex relationship between Stereo and Monophonic High Fidelity, so puzzling to laymen and so difficult to clarify in non-technical language, perhaps never can be fully understood except in terms of personal aural experience. It is only in direct listening comparisons between stereo and monophonic editions of the same recorded performance that we can learn to feel, rather than just comprehend intellectually, that stereo provides not merely an augmentation or enhancement of high fidelity techniques, but a psychological transformation of the listener's sonic perspectives. 

Frequency and dynamic ranges are unchanged in themselves, as are the actual tonal qualities, but in stereo all sounds gain a new dimensionality and more specific source localization within vastly expanded spatial surroundings—so that we hear not only the music itself but the very air in which it is both framed and buoyantly floated. An illusion? Perhaps— yet nothing can be more vivid or psychologically "real" than the listener's conviction that, whereas monophonic high fidelity miraculously brings an undistorted full symphony orchestra into his living room, stereophonic high fidelity even more miraculously transports him right into the auditorium where that orchestra is actually playing. 

Few demonstrations of the "world of difference" stereo makes can be more dramatically impressive than the successive playing of Fritz Reiner's superbly authoritative performance of Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra: first in the monophonic edition (LM-1806), which has been acclaimed as one of the landmarks of high fidelity recording; then in its stereo version. Everything in this fantastically elaborate score (from its floor-shaking deep "lows" to its pyrotechnical high frequencies, from its pianissimos to its heavenstorming climaxes), which has been captured so cleanly in the monophonic recording, is even more vividly evident in stereo—but with the vital "differences" that now everything can be heard not in isolation but in the authentic ambience of Chicago's Orchestra Hall itself, that now the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is spread out in its normal width and depth, and each tonal strand is more individually differentiated while the over-all sonic web assumes far greater expansiveness, weight, and an almost palpable solidity. 

In the very first 21 bars, all the features which have made this spectacular "Dawn" prologue an audiophile touchstone as the ultimate test of home sound systems' capabilities (the pianissimo low C—32.7 cps—in the double basses and organ pedal, reinforced by a bass drum "roll" . . . the successive trumpet proclamations of the "World-Riddle" theme . . . the timpani hammer-strokes, rich in explosive transients . . . and the surging crescendo to a full orchestral and organ climax of overwhelming sonority) now testify dramatically to stereo's unique capacity for conveying the awesome impression of vastly expanding volume in the spatial sense as well as that of loudness only. 

And each of the following sections in the kaleidoscopically varied score provides innumerable further illustrations of what stereo plus high fidelity can achieve in both sonic excitement and subtlety: in "Of the Hinterland Dwellers,"the muted horns' intonation of the "Credo" theme . . . in "Of the Great Yearning," the rising agitation spurred on by the "World-Riddle" theme and rushing strings and wind "runs" . . . in "Of Joys and Passions," the exultant, quintessentially "Straussian" horn passages . . . in the "Grave Song," the expressive oboe, English horn, and violin solos . . . in "Of Science," the groaning double basses which begin one of the most complex of fugues, and later the "bouncing" bowing of the violins . . . in "The Convalescent," the energetic working-up to another full orchestral climax, and the glittering glockenspiel decorations in the following scherzo . . . in the "Dance Song," the transparency of even the most richly "divided" string passages . . . in the "Night Song," the lyrical arabesques for solo violin . . . in "The Night-Wanderer's Song," climaxing the entire work, the midnight-tolling deep bell . . . and in the Epilogue, the enigmatic antiphonies of the very ending, with pizzicato basses reiterating the "World-Riddle" theme in C major against the upper strings' and winds' B major chords. . . 

The "meaning" of this ending, and indeed all the philosophical connotations of the programmatic attempt to "depict the development of the human race . . . up to Nietzsche's idea of the Superman," have been debated endlessly—and futilely. But for most listeners today such extra-musical considerations have scant interest in comparison with that of the music itself, heard for its own sake: a sonic experience in which Strauss's imagination and skill, those of Fritz Reiner and his players, and those of both stereo and high fidelity technology all combine to make Also sprach Zarathustra not only incomparably thrilling on first hearing but—no matter how often repeated—inexhaustably rich in new revelations of sheer sound sorcery. 

- Notes by R. D. DARRELL 
© Radio Corporation of America, 1960