A GRAMOPHONIST'S CONFESSIONS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3133, 4 September 1922, Page 7

A GRAMOPHONIST'S CONFESSIONS.

(By Orlo Williams, M.C.)

After a long recalcitrancy I have become the possessor of a gramophone, and T have had it long enough to test the joys and sorrows of gramophony. In spite of the fact that the trumpet of an itinerant gramophone outside ray window iis now nasally intoning some ditty about a "neootiful narden of noses," I do not regret the invention of the gramophone. Since the days when I recorded my own dulcet tones upon the wax of an Edison-Bell phonograph, I hare always hoped' that these mechanical recorders of sound! would be batter than they were; now, as I think we can say without exaggeration, they arc. Even the less perfect of them enable you. in some sort, to carry music about into all kinds of dreary, unmusical spots, which prove their worth and unmistakably enhance their beauty. The portable instrument that rendered to me excerpts from the "Mikado" as I wait as a guest on. the dug-out of H.Q., -th Brigade R.F.A., on the coast near of Shakespeare's spacious stage directions —might have excited only moderate admiration in a London drawingroom, but on that moonlight night. with sparse comments from a howitzer in a pit near bv, it was ravishing. We all know, too, how great a solace was the "Destiny" Waltz to Colonel Bramble. But ray own gramophone datesfrom the Treaty of Versailles, or thereabouts, and has been subjected' to something stiffer than the easy critical testsof war time. Tt was bought to render the best, possible music to an exceedingly critical! audience of two, and, on the whole, it boa fulfilled its task very creditably. Its! owners would have kept it on no other terms, and have never spared its feelings, but the fact that they continue to buy new records prove that it has made its place in the homo. It has made its place -in the home not as an educator, not as a grinder of dance tunes, not as an adjunct to music, but as a source of music in its highest sense. To that view of a gramophone only do these- confessions relate. At the same time, it would bo misleading to omit the confession that the gramophonist must collaborate with his imagination. In this selective use of the imagination the power of individuals varies considerably. Some, for instance, can become completely oblivous of needle-scratching; others feel it acutely. Manufacturers have undoubtedly made great progress in eliminating that noise, but some times at the cost of musical quality. 1 tested the other day a new instrument which, it was claimed, completely eliminated the noise of tho needle. The claim was fairly well justified, but the result upon the human quality of voice records wasunfortunate. It produced the impression that the singer was sending his, or her, voice through a filter of cotton wool, whereas on niv own instrument, though it scratches vilely, Hosing sounds like Rosing and Selnia Ktirz iSelma Kurz. Again, there are those who cannot bear to hear strings upon the gramophone. "The string quality is -. lost,'' they say, "and the sound is of bastard flutes.'" I disagree; but the imagination must help just a little. Auto-suggestion is very valuable to a. gramophonist, and only with its help will he get the highest pleasure from that) supremely good record of Kreisler and Zimbalist playing tho slow movement of Bach's double concerto. It is my opinion, at all events, that, so far as instrmental records are concerned, the imagination has less work to do when chamber music is being listened to than with any other class of record. All the parts come out clearly, and there is far less sense of a great body of sound compressed into an inadequate space. For those who take pleasure in chamber music;—and few pleasures are more exquisite—these records keep their interest better than any. The brilliant operatic aria, which gives ecstasies at its first few performances is apt, after a. time, to linger neglected in the album, discarded in favor of something new; but the good record of a string quartet is a permanent addition to a collection, to bo taken out again and again. The Mozart r/uinet in G minor, played by the London String Quartet (Columbia), Mozart's quartet in I) minor, by the same quartet (Vocation), and the Plonzaley quartet records (H.M.V.) never grow wearisome. They assort with many moods, and convey, as nearly as one could expect, the perfection of the music that they render. The one annoyance to which the enthusiast for chamber music is subjected is curtailment of movements clue to the limited size of records. One longs for mechanical invention to overcome this drawback, since—for example —it is hardly worth listening to Schumann's pianoforte quintet, when all the recapitulation, of tho first movement is omitted. There is a great trade done. I have no doubt, in orchestral! records. They are highly educational, especially with miniature scores; but the imagination has l very hard work, especially where the orebesttrattion is l full, as in "Scheherazade." There is immense room for improvement in orchestral' recording. both in catching more precisely the timbre of instruments' and in producing the proper balance of sound. At present the drum is almost inaudible, and trombones are hideous. One has only to compa.ro the Scherzo of Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Nigsht's Dream," so pure and lively, with "Scheherazade," Beethoven's Fifth Symphony by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, or even "L'Apres-midi d'un "Fanne," to see how confusedly a full modern orchestra comes out. For the present, it seems to me, the small orchestra., with as little brass as possible, gives the best results, though one may continue * to accept the uoisiier article as an im*w|>ressionistie sketch. However, the imagination will just stretch far enough to transmute the gramophonic blare of a modern orchestral' truth into the real thing, but, with, the best will in tho world, my own imagination boggles at every piano record I have heard. Now and then they ripple on pleasantry for a few bars tin the treble, then down conies a left hand in the bass, with a .sound like a guitar that has been left out in the cold. Until recorders can catch the elusive vibrations of a piano string, piano records will find no place in my collection. And there—l have; left myself no space to say anything of the best records of all, the voice records. Some of them are magnificent, but I must content myself with saying two things that need saying. One is that the diction of most singers into gramophones is very bad. Every one of them should listen to Frederick Banalbw's performances of the Beggar's Opera, songs, in which each word! is clear as a boll. The second is that there should be somebody to get records of truly great singers on historic, not only on commercial, grounds. Enthusaistic crowds (locked to hear Elena. Gerhardt's "' marvellous singing of German Tieder. \ 'M* think I am right in saying that not one U of these lieder sung by her—and fewsung by anyone else- —is obtainable in England. Yet every student of singing should be able to bear them.