Review: Ansermet's Stiff and Scruffy (but Complete) Decca Monos

This 26-CD box completes Decca's reissue of all of their Ansermet recordings. I have to say that his stereo remakes are, for the most part, uniformly better, but collectors will want this regardless.

[@bloodgrss]

We love Mildred more than Ansermet...

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

I should hope so.

[@bloodgrss]

Lol, no question about it, with due deference to the Maestro...@@DavesClassicalGuide

[@LyleFrancisDelp]

My theory....Ansermet was a very competent conductor who built his own orchestra in Geneva, based on his own concept of orchestral sonority and articulation. The mono years are totally forgettable, but the stereo years are the result of the combination of Ansermet's sense of transparent orchestra sound, Decca engineers' recording acumen, and the amazing sound of the Geneva Hall. This combination produced some wonderful audiophile recordings. The stereo Three Cornered Hat, in my opinion, still reigns as one of best recordings of anything by anyone ever made.

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

And the orchestra got better over time as well.

[@bradleylehman4327]

The Ansermet stereo box includes a handy chronological checklist of all these mono releases, too.

[@EddieJazzFan]

I like some of these old mono disc boxes. The Dorati mono Merc box is really good.

[@analogueanorak1904]

I’m a big fan of the Decca engineer Gill Went who took over in Geneva around 1950 onwards. He was largely responsible for the better sounding recordings in this collection using the newly available Neumann microphones from German. The sound quality massively improved and revealed the lovely acoustics of Victoria Hall. The young engineering genius Roy Wallace arrived with his stereo Decca tree in 1954 which he had put together a few months earlier to do some experimental recordings and had mixed results in Geneva for the first few years before consistently knocking it out of the park from around 1957. Some of the mono recordings by Gil Went from this cross over period are absolutely lovely and sonically superior and it is a shame that as soon as stereo alternatives are available these now get used for digital versions regardless of quality.

[@poturbg8698]

Who were the players in the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra? Faculty? Students? Both?

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

Faculty, for the most part. You had to be a member.

[@DavidJohnson-of3vh]

Since I enjoy Ansermet that is interesting to me. I have the Daphnis and Chole on 78s, and I've always liked that Danse Macabre 🙂

[@TheChongil]

Question: Why do some first movements of symphonies have extended introductions? (Beethoven 4, 7, Schubert 9) There's a rehearsal of Bohm and the Wiener Symphonike in Beethoven's 7th..and the conductor takes a lot of time on the intro and hardly any time on the main exposition.. What's the deal with intro's?

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

Because most of the time the opening of the main body of the movement would sound bad as the beginning coming out of nowhere. Try it and see for yourself.

[@leedsleeds8091]

Talking of delays.....I gather that the UMG William Steinberg box is delayed due to "production issues".

[@christopherjohnson2422]

I’m cheesed at UMG because it’s been a month and I still haven’t gotten the Gilels Beethoven cycle I ordered from UMG. I’ve never had problems before with them.

[@brianwilliams9408]

I bought the Ansermet Russian Music box a few years ago. I found that for practically everything, other conductors did it better. I bought it mainly to replace my old LP's. The Tchaikovsky ballets are fine. Not first choices, but not bad and I still enjoy them. But on the whole, I would recommend other versions of most of what is in the box.

[@ol25n]

These Decca main office things I can't really find on Spotify sadly. Old reissues show up on here a lot (the Decca 2fer of the stereo Ravel stuff for example), but Decca's big boxes I'm not seeing. I've never had this problem with Eloquence except for a disc or two of the Byron Janis Mercury edition they did. Sony is extremely good and doesn't have this problem (although they have *other* problems); they released a playlist of all of the contents of the 1958-63 stereo Ormandy box yesterday. All the albums right there. But a lot of Ansermet's stuff just isn't on Spotify if it wasn't reissued previously, either through an old Decca release or when Eloquence did the yellow boxes. I do buy a fair bit of physical product when I can't find a recording on streaming but I can't afford to get that much, money or space wise.

[@ol25n]

It might be an American distribution thing. For example Karajan's EMI Salome is on Spotify but you can't listen to it in the States on there; it's all grayed out. Or it might be a not getting released thing. I really don't know.

[@dmntuba]

Mildred is a sweetie

[@howard5259]

Thanks Dave. I'm generally a sucker for buying CDs... and LPs in a long-ago life. Play me ten seconds of beautiful sound and I'm on my way. You seem to have reviewed many huge CD sets recently, none of which I am inclined to want, good or bad. Who buys these gargantuan sets to make them worth selling? I guess people do.

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

Yes, people do.

[@user-nt4je5zi9z]

Mildred's out of control

[@williamfredscott6904]

There's an interview with Ansermet in one of those other boxes in which he says he got these other parts of Sirènes from Debussy himself. Still bizarre, though.

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

Yeah, right.

[@celmo4262]

He also used the same version of Sirenes in his stereo recording.

[@celmo4262]

He also used the same version of Sirenes in his stereo recording.

[@celmo4262]

He also used the same version of Sirenes in his stereo recording.

[@celmo4262]

He also used the same version of Sirenes in his stereo recording.