I cannot find the book anywhere in the house, but I'm sure that in Michael
Murray's biography of Marcel Dupre there are extended comments about that
recording session. To start off with, after recording the St.-Saens
Symphony 3 with Paray in Detroit, the idea was to have Dupre record the
further solo organ pieces. But the Ford Auditorium was not a happy home for
an organ, so they went to St. Thomas Church in New York, which boasted the
last Aeolian-Skinner built before the death of G. Donald Harrison the year
before. But Fifth Avenue is not a great place for making records, and even
late at night, the "E" train to Queens is clearly audible in the church. As
I recall, it was stated that the recording was interrupted over and over
for all of these reasons (plus, I suppose, Dupre's age and the lateness of
the hour), and the final release contained more edits than any other
recording. (I recall one horrendous one in Dupre's own Triptyque, which
never made it past its one LP appearance on SR 90169 -- a pity, because
Dupre's recordings of his own works are important historical documents --
and considering his arthritic hands, he could still play amazingly well in
his seventies.

Michael Fox


On Sat, Feb 16, 2013 at 11:48 AM, DAVID BURNHAM <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Thank you for your response, Tom.
> P.S. As you must be able to tell from previous postings, I am a great fan
> of the Mercury sound, and have been since the early '50s, with a few minor
> reservations which I've mentioned from time to time.  However, as I've
> typed this e-mail I've been listening to two MLP CDs - the Enesco Roumanian
> Rhapsody No. 2, the Brahms Haydn Variations and the Marcel Dupre recital of
> Widor and Franck;  one weakness I find on these and have noticed on other
> MLP releases is the very poor editing, particularly on the Dupre recital;
> no effort seems to have been made to smooth out these edits.  All the MLP
> CDs are coded "ADD", which should mean that these recordings were either
> mixed down or edited in the digital domain but if that were the case, I
> don't understand how so frequently the orchestral or organ ambience
> suddenly disappears on a musical entry, or there's an audible thump or
> click on an edit, probably caused by a magnetized blade.
>
>
>
>