Elisabeth Schwarzkopf & George Szell - Strauss: Vier Letzte Lieder (2012) [Hi-Res]

Esteemed interpreter Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of conductor George Szell deliver a landmark reading of this Strauss’ masterpiece. Schwarzkopf’s gorgeous vocal gifts add a new dimension to the pieces, while the warm maestro brings forth a technically flawless performance by the ensemble. The extraordinary attention to detail is lush and passionate. There is no finer rendition of these beloved works.

Four engineers at Abbey Road Studios in London have remastered these historic EMI recordings from their original analogue sources for release in pristine hi-def. Between them, Simon Gibson, Ian Jones, Andy Walter and Allan Ramsay have many years of experience remastering archive recordings for EMI and other record labels. The process always starts with finding all of the records and tapes in EMI's archive in London and comparing different sources and any previous CD reissues. We consult each recording's job file, which contains notes about the recording made by the engineer and producer. For example, this sometimes explain why there is more than one set of tapes to choose from. All of the tapes are generally in good condition and we play them on our Studer A80 π inch tape machine, after careful calibration of its replay characteristics.

In order to have the best digital remastering tools at our disposal for the remastering, we transfer from analogue to the digital domain at 96 KHz and 24-bit resolution using a Prism ADA-8 converter and capture the audio to our SADiE Digital Audio Workstation.