The Mercury Masters: The Mono Recordings

Limited Edition · Original Jackets Collection. A tour de force of thrilling orchestral playing and brilliant audio engineering, Antal Doráti's mono recordings are collected for the first time. Newly remastered, this collection comprehensively documents a golden era in American classical recording and most of these vividly characterized recordings appear on CD for the first time. The Hungarian conductor Antal Doráti joined the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra as it's music director in 1949, and immediately began making it into one of the orchestral powerhouses of the post-war United States. Mercury began recording the ensemble in 1952 and continued to do so until his departure in 1960. Doráti's 51 albums (24 mono, 27 stereo) are a testament to what he achieved with the orchestra during his eleven years there. They reveal a musical personality centered on dynamism, intensity, and an exceptional ability to persuasively articulate rhythms. Eloquence presents the most complete ever reissue of the Doráti/Minneapolis legacy in two 'original jackets' boxes, faithfully representing the contents of the albums as they were first issued. New remastering made or supervised by Thomas Fine, son of Mercury's long-time chief engineer and producer, as well as original remastering for CD by Wilma Cozart Fine, bring this legacy to life as never before. Thomas Fine contributes a 'sessionography' to each box detailing the technical facets of the Mercury Living Presence recordings, and Dennis D. Rooney is the author of authoritative booklet notes surveying the history of the partnership on record as well as his personal memoirs of the period. The mono box begins with a blistering Firebird Suite of Stravinsky and ends with a contemporary Hungarian pairing of unrivalled idiomatic flair, brilliance (Kodály's Peacock Variations) and lurid, controlled violence (Bartók's Miraculous Mandarin). Further highlights include the three Tchaikovsky ballets, in versions that quickly became gramophone classics and 'library choices' and stayed that way for decades. Particularly noteworthy is the first CD release of Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty recordings requested time and again for reissue. Doráti's feeling for dance is further underlined by more landmark Ballets Russes scores - Sacre, Petrouchka, Daphnis - and Viennese waltzes. The legendary 1812 Overture recording is reissued with the original 'Making Of' commentary by Deems Taylor. Taylor also narrates versions of Britten's Young Person's Guide and the Nutcracker Suite. Even rarer are the three musical stories originally released on Mercury's subsidiary 'Wing' label and narrated affectionately by Jerry Terheyden. 'Sonic spectacular' scores by Rimsky-Korsakov, Respighi and Richard Strauss leap from the speakers in Mercury's Living Presence sound, remarkably vivid even in mono. Doráti's firm sense of rhythm and form gives strong contours to symphonies from Mozart to Copland. The last two albums on the set are devoted to the two LPs Doráti recorded with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. As sequels to the Eloquence boxes dedicated to Kubelík in Chicago and Paray in Detroit, these Doráti collections comprehensively document a golden era in American classical recording.