I’m amazed at the interesting things I stumble upon while googling those missing bits of iTunes tag information –and a little grateful too. For example, as much as we bitch about those Callas remasterings, EMI screwed Karajan over even worse! Karma’s a bitch, eh Maestro?
Bruckner Symphony No. 7 (EMI CDM 5 66095 2 & Toshiba TOCE-13282): This legendary recording has been in the catalog since it was issued back in the 1970’s. Its first appearance on CD (EMI CDM 7 69923 2) came through OK since the engineers inserted all the edits. But all subsequent re-masterings have omitted bars 35-38 from the finale! EMI had been told about this error before but they chose to ignore it. Subsequently, when Yoshio Okazaki re-mastered the recording for Toshiba in Japan in 2006, he perpetuated EMI’s error. The MHS CD suffers from the same defect. Happily, EMI is now acknowledging the error and is supplying corrected discs. Your defective discs can be replaced through me. Unhappily, it appears that the faulty recording was used in EMI’s recent 160 CD Karajan commemorative set! And the story takes on another amazing twist. As part of the 100th Anniversary of Karajan’s birth, EMI released a special commemorative set in Japan (TOCE-56056/59). But the recording of the Bruckner 4th in this set turned out to be the one recorded by Simon Rattle. Once again EMI owned up to the error and repressed the CD with the Symphony No. 4 with the Karajan performance, but now it seems that Bars 233-236 (8:20 - 8:36) of the 1st Movement are incorrectly repeated twice! Keep trying EMI!!
More horrors await you at the Bruckner “Discographic Den Of Horrors” (and, surprisingly, all of them aren’t from EMI). Highly recommended. Scarier than most Stephen King novels, in fact. So scary that the Bruckner Den may induce nightmares in the fanatically-inclined (aka “me”).
I had this horrible nightmare about me waking-up to find that all my Maria Callas recordings had been remastered by EMI furtively during my sleep — and now they’re all Angela Gheorghiu instead! For example, my 1953 Tosca has been so poorly remastered that Callas, di Stefano, and Gobbi have become Gheorghiu, Alagna, and Ruggero Raimondi.
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