GREAT RECORDINGS phase 18

DEBUSSY
Images
Nocturnes
Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune

André Previn
London Symphony Orchestra
Ambrosian Chorus

3 91967 2

Stereo
DDD
Recorded 1979 & 1983
74 minutes

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"Dynamic nuances are carefully observed, there is some felicitous wind playing, and much intelligent and musical phrasing…it remains one of the finest digital recordings ever made."
(The Gramophone)

The Images and the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune were EMI’s first ever digital recording; they were taped in No.1 Studio, Abbey Road, in July 1979. (The Nocturnes date from 1983.)

Five years later they appeared on EMI’s first CD, CDC 7 47001 2.

Mike Ashman’s notes give fascinating background, particularly concerning the fact that editing was more or less impossible with the first digital tape recorders. So, as Previn noted, ‘we went out and played “Gigues”, and then all the other pieces, in one – and that’s what you hear on the record.’

The session producer, Suvi Raj Grubb, later recalled: ‘The LSO played at top form...Almost every take was of a complete movement, and the final master has fewer than ten edits – about 50 to 60 then being par for an LP.’

Incredibly, the state of this early technology and the assurance of EMI engineer Christopher Parker – a pioneer of stereo in the 1950s – mean that Abbey Roads’ present-day engineers judged that this recording required no actual remastering.