Tony Duggan writes:

>However, "full impact" must also surely take into account the way that
>the music is conveyed in the interpretation.  I get "the full impact" of
>Mahler's Ninth in the 1938 recording by Walter but only in that area of
>interpretation, certainly not in terms of sound, I'm more than prepared
>to admit.

I'm afraid people who reject recordings based on date of the master
tape are missing thousands of potentially satisfying performances.  Only
one example, the CSO/Reiner recordings made from 1954 onward are amongst
the finest performances within their repertory in addition to being
standard-setting recordings in the days of early stereo.  Made with basic
minimilist CM microphone techniques, these techniques have changed very
little in 45 years.  The result is that the acoustical perspective of these
recordings stand up extroadinarily well to later recordings.  I personally
made mono recordings in many Boston area venues during the mid '50s on both
budget and state of the art equipment which give way very little to modern
recordings save for somewhat higher levels of background noise.  The
performances get through real well!  My experience with many of today's
commercial compact disc rereleases of late '50s -and before- recordings
(from RCA, Columbia, Vanguard and numerous other sources) carefully
transfered to digital from original session masters, are technically
satisfactory in nearly every way.  My wish is that many more wonderful
mono recordings of the pre stereo era be made available via modern digital
transfers.  After all, it is the performance that counts the most.  Good
sound is a bonus.

Bernard Gregoire
Hingham, MA