[78-L] Speaking of Pearl...Gielgud's "Hamlet", "The Importance of Being Earnest", & "The Voice of Poetry" with Edith Evans

[victrola78s at aol.com]

Well, Professor Lennick, mystery partially solved! In comparing the two "Hamlet" sets the 1948 BBC version on Naxos sounds quite good for its time but the 1951 NBC version on Pearl" has exceptional clarity & presence. Must be because you used the RCA Lp set(which I'd not known of before). My surmise is that the NBC master was on tape, hence the quality. Was that a Red Seal set? I have the "Richard III" soundtrack set on RCA Victor Red Seal. And no, you were not credited in any way on the Pearl CD-not on the liner nor inside the booklet. Only Beardsley's name is seen. Pearl transfers in the 1990s are variable. The Stokowski Bach set of the Passacaglias & Fugues has some NR evident but the Pearl CD of Stephen Foster songs sung by Richard Crooks(c.1993, can't check now as it's not handy) sounds like a CD-R I'd have made of my own 78rpm set. Which is to say that CD has minimal or nonexistent noise reduction. Sound quality is quite good, but no NR is apparent. And my transfers are almost raw, just EQ added.

In my Amazon frenzy I also picked up the 1951 "The Importance of Being Earnest", Naxos NA234212 & "The Voice of Poetry", Pearl Gemm 9144. Both feature Gielgud & Edith Evans. I notice that the filler on the "Earnest" disc have the same Gielgud Shakespeare recordings that make up the Gielgud portion of the "Poetry" disc. Haven't compared the two discs for any differences in transfer quality yet. The "Earnest" disc has extremely variable quality in the broadcast material, which sounds fairly good through most of it but has what seem to be droputs in level. I'm guessing a tape source was used, possibly a dub of a dub? I don't have "Earnest" here, so I don't recall whose transfers get the credit. "The Voice of Poetry" gives credit to you.

Dennis "handbag!" Forkel

  Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2012 12:15:23 -0400
From: David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>
Subject: Re: [78-L] Speaking of Pearl..was Re: Pearl CD bronzing on
	"Music From The New York Stage" vol. one: 1890-1908
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I supplied Roger with a transfer of the RCA Gielgud lp set..I'm not sure if I 
was credited or even thanked (I certainly wasn't paid). Hey, early Pearl CDs 
were ridiculous when it came to production values or quality of original discs 
used, to the point where it was a joke for years. I didn't even submit my early 
masters for digital de-noising since they didn't want anything other than 
clicks removed with a razor blade. There's an Ambrose CD they did (on Flapper, 
I guess) where the first 10 tracks were transferred by one person and the 
remainder by someone else, with a drastic change in quality. There was at least 
one disc (either a McCormack or a Chaliapin) where tracks weren't always 
separated. The two sides of the Coward-Lawrence Private Lives Love Scene are 
reversed, and so it goes.

dl"