Everest Records: From the Dawn of Stereo LPs to Today’s Digital
Downloads -- Bert Whyte’s Recordings Stand the Test of Time
I
first became acquainted with Everest recordings through the Ninth
Symphony of British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. I’d come to love
his previous eight symphonic works through the recordings by Sir Adrian
Boult and the London Philharmonic Orchestra on the English label Decca,
through they were released on London in the US at that time to avoid
confusion with the American Decca label. Imagine my surprise when the
Ninth Symphony came into the local shop and it was on Everest, a label
from Belock Instrument Corporation, which made electronics for missiles!
It arrived with two or three other releases, all of them distinctly
packaged in art that was predominately silver. Though the somewhat crude
or camp covers were full color, the basic cover trim and backs were
silver, with black type for the notes. There was also a silver dowel for
pulling out the sleeve that held the disc. The label’s intention was
obviously to create a disc housing that would be elegant and shiny, a
marriage of artistry and technology, but I always thought it looked
cheap and clumsy. At first, as was the custom during the transition
period of the late '50s, Everest issued releases in both mono and stereo
versions. Pictured here is the Vaughan Williams Ninth with its Vanguard
CD reissue cover.
Everest
was a new company, founded by engineer Harry Belock in an effort to
produce quality stereo recordings of music that could be found only on
mono discs. Everest recordings therefore appeared at the dawn of stereo
via LP. Belock’s partner, recording engineer Bert Whyte, was new to me
as well, but he would go on to become a legendary engineer. Though
Everest produced some popular and jazz recordings, it was primarily
known for its classical catalog. Belock and Whyte signed up some
impressive artists for their new venture, including conductors Sir
Adrian Boult, Leopold Stokowski, Walter Susskind, and Sir Eugene
Goossens, leading the London Symphony, London Philharmonic, and the
Stadium Symphony of New York (a stealth name for the New York
Philharmonic to avoid contractual problems). They’d branch out later to
include William Steinberg and the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Houston
Symphony (led by Stokowski), the Rochester Philharmonic, and others.
Belock recorded Stokowski in works long associated with him, but he gave
Boult rein to tape music he wasn’t usually associated with, including
the Mahler first symphony, the Shostakovich sixth symphony, and the
Hindemith Symphony in E Flat. The results were some of Boult’s best
recordings. The Everest team also recorded many composers conducting
their own music, such as Aaron Copland, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Carlos
Chavez, Sir Malcolm Arnold, Ferde Grofé, and Arthur Benjamin. When all
was said and done, the catalog contained only about 100 titles, though
it was considered a choice collection, especially considering the superb
recorded sound.
That
sound was not apparent at first, however, as the first stereo LPs were
fraught with problems. They were often made of a vinyl compound that if
not styrene, behaved like it. The discs were solid and inflexible, and
if you tapped the edge on a table, they resounded with a metallic
pinging sound. Loud passages were distorted and soft ones were almost
obliterated by noise. Later releases were pressed on excellent vinyl,
and the earlier ones were eventually re-pressed. The initial recordings,
by the way, weren’t recorded using three-track 35mm magnetic film as
current hype would have you believe. The early, and possibly best,
recordings from Everest were captured on half-inch three-track magnetic
tape.
The
two (unrelated) Solomons
The Everest catalog was
picked up quickly for the stereo four-track reel-to-reel craze of the
1960s, and we could finally hear just how good the recordings were. Tape
offered wider dynamic range, greater frequency response, and an absence
of inner-groove distortion and annoying surface noise, as well as longer
playing times. The catalog garnered a cult-like respect, and Burt Whyte
became a recording guru. His recordings had such wonderful clarity,
depth, and superb stereo separation that they ranked with Mercury Living
Presence and RCA Living Stereo. (As a matter of fact, when Everest
disbanded, Mercury picked up some of its 35mm equipment!) But then
things changed. Reel-to-reel tape gave way to the cassette, and the
waning Everest catalog was acquired by Bernard Solomon, resulting in
absolutely atrocious vinyl and cassette copies that sounded little like
the originals. Everest released titles that had nothing to do with its
original recordings; they were merely stamped with the Everest logo.
Gradually these awful Everests faded away, leading audiophiles to wonder
if the magnificent recordings of Bert Whyte would ever surface again. In
the 1990s, Vanguard’s Seymour Solomon picked up the catalog and had new
masters made directly from the original tapes, dithering them to 20-bit
resolution and releasing them as "Ultra Analog" CD recordings. During
the LP era, Everest’s vinyl discs had been engineered with short sides
in an effort to avoid inner-groove distortion (the Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances
and Respighi Feste Romane was
originally a two-disc set!), and Vanguard sensitively re-coupled the
works to make 60- and 70-minute CDs. These re-issues were absolutely
outstanding and would probably still suffice as a tribute to Belock’s
vision. But Vanguard ceased making discs years ago, and now if you can
even find a Vanguard/Everest, you’re liable to pay more than $50 for it.
Just before crashing, Vanguard released two SACD Everests, the Walter
Susskind-led Copland Appalachian Spring
in two-channel (with its original coupling, Morton Gould’s Spirituals)
and in three-channel, an Antill, Ginastera, Villa-Lobos disc with Sir
Eugene Goossens leading the London Symphony Orchestra. A continuation of
that series would have brought us all of the important Everest
recordings in their original three-channel format, but it was not to be.
Not
too many years ago, Classic Records gained access to the Everest master
tapes and began releasing hybrid disc sets that included CD, DVD-V, and
DVD-A versions. The DVD-A versions were three-channel (left, right,
center) just like the master recordings. Curiously, their releases have
concentrated solely on the 35mm recordings, ignoring the earlier
half-inch-tape masters, which means ignoring all of the Boult recordings
(Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No. 9and Job, and the aforementioned Mahler, Shostakovich,
and Hindemith), as well as Copland conducting his own music, two
brilliant recordings led by Walter Susskind, and Stokowski’s New York
sessions. Their main concentration has been the 35mm recordings, which
include Stokowski’s Houston
sessions and London Symphony sessions led by Sir Eugene Goossens and Sir
Malcolm Sargent. These were good performances, but once Belock started
using 35mm the artistry slipped from outstanding to excellent. The 35mm
recordings have now come to HDtracks as
24-bit/96kHz downloads. I downloaded all of them and listened with care,
comparing them, as best I could, to the corresponding Vanguard-Everest
CD releases. I downloaded the new editions as 24-bit/96kHz FLAC files
and converted them to 24-bit/96kHz AIFF so iTunes would handle them. I
had previously ripped the Vanguard CDs using the Apple Lossless format.
I could A-B back and forth pretty quickly, though of course there were
quite a few variables at work.
The
bottom line
If you have the Vanguard
Everests, there’s no need to replace them. But if you don’t have any
recordings of the Everest masters, the HDtracks releases offer about as
good a chance to hear them in two channels as you’ll get. I found that
in many cases, I couldn’t tell the new downloads from the Vanguard
discs. In others, the downloads had a tiny bit more stereo separation
and a little more "air" around the strings. It was no shock that they
sounded a little more analog, but I wassurprised to see just how well the
Vanguard 20-bit CDs held up. If you’re going to spring $18.95 each for
the HDtracks downloads (and remember that this rate is for the
original-length Everest recording, which is usually no longer than 45
minutes), you might consider seeking out the Classic Records releases.
They, too, conform to the original length of the vinyl disc, but they
also provide a three-channel DVD-Audio version, which makes them
completely faithful to the originals. If two channels are enough, the
HDtracks downloads are all excellent, though you might wonder if
material from the 1950s really benefits from 24-bit/96kHz processing.
For instance, HDTT offers the
Sargent-Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky Fifth Symphonies as 24-bit/192kHz
downloads, which is certainly overkill for titles mastered from
commercial four-track tapes! That argument aside, it’s remarkable that
recordings engineered in the 1950s can sound just as good as most recent
recordings, if not actually better. That says a lot for Bert Whyte, a
legend who, though deceased, is still delivering superb results in a
format he never knew. Let’s hope those three-track tape masters with
their five-star performances someday get the same blue-ribbon treatment
that has been accorded the 35mm ones.
If
you’re going for the HDtracks downloads, here’s a list of the ones I
feel are best:
Mozart:Violin Concerto No.3 Hindemith:Violin
Concerto Joseph
Fuchs, violin; London Symphony, Sir Eugene Goossens, conductor Everest Records / HDtracks Format: 24-bit/96kHz FLAC
Fuchs
taught at Juilliard for many years, and though he was no stranger to the
recording studio, he didn’t tape many recordings of large-scale violin
concertos. Which is unfortunate, for on this recording Fuchs plays both
pieces with lyrical, dedicated passion and precision, using his
Stradivarius to produce rich, warm, and focused tones for Whyte to
record. The orchestral partnership is no less distinguished; the
orchestral playing in the Mozart is perhaps the most elegant of any
recording of the familiar concerto. The overall sound, as usual for
Whyte, is warm and detailed, with excellent presence, wide stereo
separation, and an uncanny sense of stage depth.
Respighi:Pines of Rome/ Fountains of Rome London Symphony, Sir Malcolm Sargent,
conductor Everest
Records / HDtracks
Format: 24-bit/96kHz FLAC
I’ve
always felt that this recording has been unfairly ignored. Sargent leads
sturdy, well-paced readings that aren’t devoid of lyricism when needed.
Whyte did an outstanding job of recording the large orchestra called for
in the score. The organ, piano, and recorded nightingales are absolutely
clear and correctly balanced with the rest of the instruments.
Sibelius:Violin
Concerto / Tapiola Tossy Spivakovsky, violin;
London Symphony, Tauno Hannikainen, conductor Everest Records / HDtracks Format: 24-bit/96kHz FLAC
Spivakovsky was a firebrand
of a violinist whose careful and precise articulation could bring great
excitement to the music. Like Fuchs, he recorded few concertos, but
we’re lucky to have this performance of the Sibelius concerto, which is
assured, lyrical and rhapsodic. Having Finnish conductor Hannikainen on
the podium was a good idea, too, as he obtains singularly taut and alert
playing from the LSO musicians. The recording puts the violin in the
phantom center channel (in the center, were we dealing with the original
three-track master), with the orchestra spread to the left and right and
behind the soloist. Listen for some amazing muted horn tones that are
clearly audible in the last movement. The vital and idiomatic version of
Tapiola is much
more than a filler here.
Shostakovich:Symphony No.9 Prokofiev:Lieutenant
Kije Suite
London Symphony, Sir Malcolm Sargent, conductor Everest Records / HDtracks Format: 24-bit/96kHz FLAC
The
Ninth Symphony is one of Shostakovich’s most riotously funny and satiric
works. Sargent captures all the jokes and merriment, and Whyte’s wide
stereo separation allows the blowzy trombones to be spotlighted, a
not-unwelcome effect for this music. All of the tinkly upper percussion
in the Prokofiev is wonderfully recorded, as is the bass drum and double
bass solo.
