为什么CBS旧版的Bruno WalterCD唱片如此“好声”呢？从下面的这篇McClure采访中，我们可以知道，原来录音之后，McClure一直保存着由他和Walter两人监听之后确认最原始的3轨录音母带，在80年代制作CD的时候，McClure重新启用这批母带，并且亲自把其转为双声道立体声，所以出来的声音当然是不同凡响了。McClure亲口说，不单只启用原始母带重要，并且3转2声道的后期制作是至为重要的，因此这也就解释了，为什么现在Sony再版的声音产生了可闻的转变。
采访录有点长，转摘自Classic Record的新闻报道，当然采访的记者也是Classic Record的人员了。从中我们还知道，McClure在90年代仍然健在，但是已经不为Sony卖力了，而是跑去为Boston Pops/BSO当录音工程师了，所以现在Sony再版中没能再看到McClure的身影了，实为遗憾。
原文：
The Classic Interview:John McClure
I had heard many wonderful stories about the famous Columbia producer John McClure and finally made contact with him earlier this year as we prepared to reissue titles from the Columbia Classical catalog. I was shocked to learn that Mr. McClure was not only responsible for nearly all of the famous Bruno Walter recordings done in Hollywood, CA. in the late 1950's and early 60's but also that he had also produced many Ormandy records, 35 records with Stravinsky, and some 200 Bernstein recordings! I contacted Mr. McClure, who is still quite actively recording and mixing with the Boston Pops and others, to ask him about the recording of the Brahms fourth Symphony with Bruno Walter with he produced and is being released by Classic records this month as the first in "The Legendary Columbia Classical Reissue Series". John kindly faxed me an article he had written for High Fidelity magazine in 1964, entitled "An Education and a Joy" - Bruno Walter's last years in the recording studios, as a close working associate remembers them, to prepare me for the interview that follows:
H: Reading the article that you wrote in High Fidelity in 1964, it seems that you had gone out and effectively presented the idea to Bruno to start recording again and I guess he was convalescing from...
M: Yeah, he had a heart attack during a preparation for a concert and recording of Mahler's Second Symphony at Carnegie Hall. I think Dave Oppenhiem had recorded several movements of that project but then Bruno had a heart attack and wasn't able to complete it.
H: Did he have a heart attack during the session?
M: I don't think so. But around that time I think Bruno had done the 4th and 5th movements of the Mahler 2nd and the other three were not recorded. Dave Oppenheim, just after he'd brought me out of Columbia where I was a tape editor, said "Here sit down with these and put together a splicing plan, splice these up (they hadn't been touched since they had been recorded), take them out to Bruno Walter to see what he thinks and then at the same time why don't you talk to him about resuming recording.
H: Oh I see
M: So I did that and he agreed under certain stipulations - that he wasn't going to leave California, and that we had to bring musicians to him. I thought it was wonderful on the part of Columbia that they would actually do that. I guess he was considered to be, even at that time, a very important artist at Columbia.
H: I think I told you we're putting out the Brahms 4th with Walter and the Beethoven Eroica is scheduled for December. Now, from your recollection, and it probably varied across recordings, was there a lot of editing that had to be done on those performances?
M: Not much, you see we never really recorded more than a movement or two short movements in a day. There are a lot of movements that were done in just one take and some with just one or two edits. On some of the more difficult music there might be 4 or 5 edits in a movement but much less than are done currently in recordings.
H: Now was Walter included in the process of deciding on takes to use and so on?
M: Oh yeah he had input where to splice and what pieces to use. We'd listen back to everything as we did it in the control room.
H: So playback was pretty important to the recording process.
M: Yes, playback was important. Bruno would listen and say: "Well that's no good, don't use that, use this" or "Oh, I do that again".
H: So actually as the session was going on, you would record a part he'd listen to it and decide to re-record a section instead of after you've an entire performance?
M: Yes and I also used to get letters from him after the session - sometimes a week, sometimes a month later - saying "It just occurs to me that bars 120 through 125 there was something suspicious in the typani or something like that, would you go back and take a listen and reassure me?" I'd do that and then I'd put together a test edit and send it out to him and he would criticize it. He'd say "this is fine, this is fine, I still am unhappy with the trio, check other takes...if the other takes aren't better we'd better redo it at our next meeting".
H: Was that level of involvement typical of other conductors that you had worked with before? Was he more or less involved than others like Bernstein or Ormandy ?
M: Ormandy would listen to a finished tape - he was quite easy about this because he was very involved in the playback at the session. He'd carry on a full conversation with somebody...you'd think "Oh my God he's not even listening" then he'd point "That's no good", in mid-sentence he'd say: "That's no good we'll redo that". With Bernstein, we would listen to playbacks and then we'd definitely have to make changes. Sometimes he'd come in and listen to the playback and suggest changes in balance. He was always trying to highlight stuff to make sure no one missed the point of this solo or that solo - sometimes to the detriment of the overall perspective. I would say that they were all pretty much involved.
H: Which is an interesting contrast with what I learned from the Berniker experience when he was recording jazz musicians. There was much less involvement on the part of the musicians and the producer had a lot more rein to say this is it, this is right, this is what we're going to go with. As opposed to here, where it seems that conductors had uniformly more involvement.
M: I preferred that the artist be very much involved because I didn't have that much faith in my musicianship. I was not a trained conductor and I hadn't studied conducting and I wanted their inputs very badly. I was afraid I'd miss something so I always pushed my people to stay involved.
H: Which is a wonderful thing I guess because you learn as you go along from these great masters and teachers really. So, do you recall what the first in the series of sessions after he had agreed to return to recording in Los Angeles?
M: I think we started with Beethoven Symphonies 1 and 2. Those were the very first sessions.
H: And how long had he been off from recording?
M: A couple of years.
H: Oh really? So he had not conducted formally in a couple of years?
M: Yes, that's right. The only time he ever came back to New York and worked in New York is when we did the Mahler 2nd with the Philharmonic, that was in Manhattan Center. The rest of the time he worked out there.
H: What was his demeanor with respect to the orchestra? I mean you hear stories about conductors like Reiner, where it is well documented that he...
M: And Toscanini, sure...
H: That they were just absolute authoritarians and the orchestras feared them.
M: Yes, that's right.
H: I guess that is one way to rule - no judgment there about whether it's good or bad. How do those situations contrast with Bruno Walter?
M: Well, it was always a cooperative thing, you know, he would make suggestions. He was very stubborn about what he wanted, but it never got didactic and it never got authoritarian, it was "Come, come, come my friends"
H: As opposed to a show of power where Reiner would throw someone out of the orchestra...
M: Oh, yeah, never.
H: So he was much more I guess, and this is based on some other stories I've heard as well, of what you might think of as a cultured gentleman.
M: Oh yeah, I think it's possible that his personality over the years had mellowed somewhat. I understand when he was on the make as a conductor in his twenties...and desperate to get ahead, not having proved himself, he probably had a different kind of personality. He probably was more opportunistic. There's the famous story of when he was repeteur for Mahler in the Opera and the rehearsal pianist was having a horrible time trying to play from this orchestral score, and Mahler asked him, "Can you play this prima vista", and he [Bruno Walter] said "Of course," and just sat down and played the thing right from the full score.
H: So you started with the Beethoven First and Second?
M: And we worked our way basically chronologically up through Beethoven , and then when the nine Symphonies were complete, then we started the other stuff - the Brahms, the Wagner, and then at a certain point we tackled Mahler...and when that worked he asked me if I was familiar with Bruckner. I told him at that time not excessively. I had everyone's opinion that Bruckner was just interminable and long winded and kind of dull. He said I'm doing a concert of Bruckner fourth with the LA Phil, and you should come and listen". I came and listened, and I was quite blown away by it, of course. Then we started by doing Bruckner 4 and 7, culminating in the greatest one, the 9th of which we also have rehearsal documentation.
H: Yes, and that's one that is certainly on the list of recordings to do. So the Brahms came some time after you had...
M: finished the Beethoven...
H: Was the orchestra pretty well determined at that point?
M: Yes, it changed very little. The first dozen men I think stayed, Izzy Baker was the concertmaster. I'll never forget when we did Histoire de Soldat with Stravinsky, Izzy came in - I don't think he'd studied it. I don't even think he looked at the damn thing, and he stood there, you know, chewing gum...and tossing off the Histoire de Soldat like he'd been playing it for all his life. Quite amazing. But they all stayed pretty much the same. Most of them from the L.A. Phil, and then the sections would be filled out from the studios.
H: Over what period did all these cycles go...the Beethoven, and then the Brahms, and the Bruckner and so on? What years and how many years?
M: We started in '58, I was out there in '57 looking for the hall. We started recording in February each year. I would just move out there with my family and I would try and run the department in NY by telephone. I think it took us maybe two years, possibly three years to do the Beethoven's...the four Brahms the next year....then we started doing the Wagner and the Mozart's - the last 6 Mozart's...I'm just sorry we never got to the Schumann's...and then there was the Fideleo..
H: Was it the case that Bruno and the orchestra jelled over time or did they really just hit it from the beginning?
M: Pretty much from the beginning. We really didn't have orchestral problems. Occasionally, like the opening of the Academic Festival Overture we did three different times because the accents just weren't the way he wanted them. So he didn't just settle. But I would say that they worked well together right from the very first session.
H: Now, about the hall that you used out in Hollywood - the American Legion Hall. I guess it still exists?
M: It still exists but now they do drama theater there. There's been a long running show that's been in there for like five years. It's an impressive place.
H: Well, I can tell you that the sound that you got was top rate as far as I'm concerned.
M: Yeah, it was really hard to make a mistake in there. It's just like Abbey Road in London...you just put up a couple mikes, and you look like you know what you're doing!
H: The sound is just really astonishing. However, in contrast, the sound that you get off of the original LP's just really leaves a lot to be desired.
M: Oh, I know, I know. I fought battles with our engineering department over the years. They had little things they put in the circuits, you know...."you have to do this otherwise you're going to have over cutting on the bass in the grooves"...and "we have to do this to compensate for this" and "our cutters have a difficulty unless we just put this little thing in it" it was really difficult to argue if you weren't a really well-versed technologue you know, and I'm not. You can cut them to sound ten times better now than you ever could then.
H: Well, yes it's interesting to have you confirm that. What we do is use the three-track session tape, and we cut directly from that. However, we use an original LP to decide how much center channel you mixed, you know, because we don't want to change the producer's perspective on the balance and so forth - we really just want to go from a more pure source and without limiting and compression. But what we noticed is that in order to duplicate what the original LP sounds like you have to do really heavy equalization
M: Really?
H: Yeah, I mean heavy equalization. And in the following way to, you have to punch up, I would say in the 6.5 to 10 K range. It's almost as if they were trying to make it "hi fi". You know where they were trying to make it sort of sizzle, as opposed to what the session tape sounds like - really natural and really wonderful and live...
M: I'd have no idea what the original session tapes sounded like because - you've got realize that we were mixing them to our two track machines that were really kind of weird and kind of noisy.
H: So there wasn't, as far as you're concerned, any sort of apparent attempt on the part of Columbia to hype the sound? Were you involved in all of the mix downs and the equalizations, and did you approve things like reference disks and so on?
M: Oh yes, definitely. I don't remember punching up high-end so much. I don't know at what point that came in...
H: That may be a side effect of the cutting gear or the mastering gear of the age...its hard to say.
M: and the monitors
H: yeah it's true. Obviously if you had monitors that were somewhat dull
M: You'd brighten it up and it'd sound fine, oh absolutely. I think you can get a better idea of what original sound was like by listening to the CD's rather than to original LP's.
H: Oh absolutely, and I think uniformly people have suggested that the CD transfers are just far superior to what was originally done and it probably was just a function of the equipment.
M: If we'd only had an Arthur Haddey at that time, it would have been a whole different story.
H: You know, and that's a very good point actually, because...
M: But we didn't. We had an engineering department that wouldn't presume to tell us how to work - but then they kept whole parts of this a total mystery to us.
H: Which is an interesting thing because, in my opinion, when you look back and compare Columbia pressings, with RCA or Decca , Columbia does come in second place. However, when you compare the recordings and the artists, Columbia was absolutely first rate - Period. Take the Brahms 4th, which wells up a particular soft spot in my heart. The recording is amazingly natural. In fact, overall the recording needed very little EQ - just a little bit in the bass and just a little bit on the very top ( up at 17.5 or 20K) to add a little bit of air that may or may not have ever been there or may have deteriorated somewhat. Everything else was flat.
M: Good.
H: And it just sounds wonderful and natural and live. I mean, it's just sensational. And especially the tone - however they mic'd it, particularly the double basses.
M: Radio Recorders, which was an independent company, furnished all the equipment.
H: Bernie Grundman, who does our mastering, and I were listening to the double basses, and the amount of authority that you can actually feel. You know when you hear a double bass played live there's a it's more than just an aural impact, there's a physical impact as well, you can feel..
M: A little sub-harmonic kind of a...
H: yes, on the skin, and you can actually, feel it as it comes off of the tape...I mean you can just feel the texture of the bass notes and it's really superb.
M: Great.
H: Well it's interesting that you mention this Radio Recorders issue because they did many of famous Verve recordings in their studios on Santa Monica Blvd. in Hollywood.
M: They did, that's right ,they had a bunch of studios on Santa Monica Blvd. Harry Roberts was in charge of that at the time...he was a nice guy. I just saw a picture of him like a year ago, he was in his 80's and talking about some of their early sessions. We had a whole bunch of different mixer guys...we had Lowell Frank and we had Alan Emmig among others.
H: Now were these Columbia people?
M: These were, I think Lowell Frank worked for CBS, and Alan Emmig did too. Later on we switched to Wally Heider, who furnished the equipment.
H: Well that's interesting. Now, about the Brahms 4th. First, how did Bruno Walter feel about Brahms?
M: Oh, well, you know, the same way he did about Beethoven...
H: Very important.
M: Oh yeah, you can tell what's important to him by the order in which he recorded stuff.
H: I see.
M: I mean, that was all picked by him.
H: Yeah, I see, and of course the Beethoven's were first.
M: The Beethoven's, and then we did the Brahms' and then we did the Mozart's and then the Wagner's and Mahler's and Bruckners and...
H: I get the feeling from talking to you and others, and reading what you and others have written that Bruno brought a certain calmness to things, that he really knew what he was doing, and he really knew what he wanted, and it was just a matter of getting it.
M: I think that is true.
H: Any personal notes on Bruno Walter the man? Was he a particularly warm person?
M: Oh yeah, very much so, he was always teaching me German. My German was fair but not great and he was always teaching me how to do that. I remember particularly he'd try to get me to do the German 'r' back in the throat..."you have to loosen the uvula and let it just flap" he'd say - "Now here's a good exercise for you - say 'hard rrrroll...I want a hard rrrroll" and he'd drill me. He and Delia, his companion - the soprano - she was very sweet. She went everywhere with him, she'd come to the sessions and they'd go out almost every night to Santa Monica and walk along the palisades there. We (the family) would meet them sometimes and walk along with them and they'd always be trying to teach me vernacular. That was fun. His daughter Lottie was a big, like almost six feet, tough-talking wise-cracking kind of a woman. I really liked her a lot.
H: He was not that big, is that right?
M: No, he was tiny. He and Schoenberg and Stravinsky were all about 5' 4", 5' 3", something like that.
H: You know it's funny, because when I look at pictures of Stravinsky because his face is so gaunt, I get the impression that he's tall - but he was a very slight guy, huh?
M: Very tiny.
H: Now was Bruno the type that really enjoyed life, relished it, enjoyed it, took advantage of it?
M: Oh, yeah, they'd go. They would take trips all over California and he just loved that. Of course, so did Stravinsky. Stravinsky and Bob Craft and Vera would go to New Mexico out to the Santa Fe Opera. Often they'd drive down into Texas and New Mexico. They drove to San Francisco and they'd go to the State and National Parks. They were very much into that whole western scene. Bruno Walter and Delia would make me little lists of places I had to see. Once I had to go down and visit Joseph's Szigeti and his wife down in Palos Verdes and they fixed us Goulash which was great - and Borscht.
H: Now did Bruno and Szigeti ever do any work together?
M: Well I'm sure they performed together in concerts. I think, at the point I started recording Bruno that Szigeti was already very frail and shaky and his pitch got worse and worse as he got older.
H: Now when you were recording Bruno Walter you were out in LA for how many months at a time?
M: Two months, January - February.
H: Of each year?
M: Yep. Kids weren't in school yet so we'd just all pack off and just go out and live in a motel there.
H: Hey, it's a that's a wonderful time of year to be in Los Angeles.
M: It was the rainy season...
H: When you were back in New York you were working with Bernstein and Ormandy?
M: Yes, Bernstein, Ormandy, Mormon Tabernacle...
H: Did you do any of the Stravinsky's? < P> M: I did all of the Stravinsky's
H: You did ALL the Stravinsky recordings?
M: Like 35 LP's. They (Sony) just came out with a whole box of CD's. I remixed it all for CD and resequenced them and it came out to 24 CD's. There's a project for you - you want to hear some good sounds? The Firebird and Petrouchka which we did in the same hall with the same orchestra as Bruno Walter - those were just fantastic. I think the Sacre was the first thing I ever did with him
H: Really?
M: And that was in the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn right after a concert that he'd given in New York. That was just after Oppenheim left and I inherited Stravinsky and everybody else. And then when we saw how well the Bruno Walter stuff had gone out there, then we started recording out there a lot.
H: Now, how was Stravinsky as a conductor?
M: If it was stuff he was familiar with, then he was excellent.
H: So his own stuff?
M: Well, on his own earlier stuff that he had conducted in concerts a lot he was just fine. His Petrouchka and Firebird are right up there with the best. And a lot the 80's pieces, and stuff that he knew like Apollo and Orpheus. Now from Agon on he started edging to serialism. He was much less familiar and much less competent...and it took a lot longer like pulling teeth to get some of that Sermon - Abraham and Isaac and Movements. it was really difficult. But his earlier stuff he did just fine on.
H: And you did a fair amount of work with Lenny (Bernstein) as well?
M: About 200 hundred records.
H: Oh my god - two hundred.
M: It starting in '59 with the Billy the Kid and the Shostokovich 5th in Boston, which was the first record he made for us under the new contract. They just had done this tour of Russia and came back into Boston, it was the port of entry so we had a session in Symphony Hall. First time I met him, first time I met the Philharmonic, first time I ever worked in Symphony Hall...
H: Trial by Fire!
M: Yeah. I was lucky.
H: That's amazing.
M: And from then on we worked in New York...first at the St. George Hotel and then at the Manhattan Center and then sometimes at Avery Fisher, unfortunately.
H: Now the St. George Hotel that was it was a pretty good recording venue.
M: It wasn't bad.
H: So, during those days there was a lot of recording going on?
M: Every week during the season we recorded. In those days a session was like a three hour minimum call, but then you just kept adding units and sometimes we'd go 7 - 8 - 9 hours straight until we just couldn't stand up...and then we'd quit, and that was...
H: amazing!
