Decca

The first thing that makes Decca interesting to me is that the name describes more than a record label. It also became a shorthand for a particular way of recording an orchestra, especially during the great stereo era. A very good way to hear that history is *The Decca Sound*, the major Various Artists compilation issued by Decca in 2011. The original edition stretched across 50 CDs, while the five-CD *The Decca Sound – Highlights* offered a more manageable selection from the same archive. Decca officially released the highlights set on 3 October 2011, drawing together recordings made across different decades, conductors, orchestras and recording technologies. For me, that variety is exactly what makes this collection useful: instead of presenting one interpretation of classical music, it lets me hear how a label developed a recognisable recording character while working with very different musicians.

More than a collection of famous performances

Decca’s reputation for recorded sound was not created by simply placing good microphones in front of good orchestras. The company’s engineers were closely involved in developments such as ffrr, Full Frequency Range Recording, and later the famous microphone arrangement generally known as the Decca Tree. Decca itself still refers to the period when ffrr, ffss and the Decca Tree were central to its recording work, and that technical history matters because the results can actually be heard in many of these recordings. I do not listen to this compilation as a demonstration disc, though. What interests me is how often the engineering helps me understand the performance. An orchestra can sound large without becoming a wall of sound, individual sections remain understandable, and the recording space often has a convincing sense of depth rather than simply spreading everything from left to right.

One of my favourite examples is Emmanuel Chabrier’s *España* with Ataúlfo Argenta and the London Symphony Orchestra. The recording was made at Kingsway Hall around the turn of 1956 and 1957, with Erik Smith producing and Gordon Parry engineering. This is exactly the kind of recording that explains why old Decca material continues to attract listeners with serious systems. The percussion, brass and strings all have their own physical position, but I never feel that the recording has been pulled apart to show me where everything is. More importantly, Argenta keeps the music moving with wonderful rhythmic energy. There is colour everywhere, but it never becomes heavy, and when the orchestra becomes more animated I hear the performance growing naturally rather than simply becoming louder. That combination of musical excitement and stereo imaging is much more valuable to me than spectacular sound for its own sake.

Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, *From the New World*, brings another side of Decca into focus. The collection includes the Scherzo with the Vienna Philharmonic under István Kertész, with production credits including Ray Minshull and Erik Smith and recording engineer Peter Attwood. I like this selection because it quickly exposes whether a system can keep an orchestra organised when the music becomes busy. The strings need speed, the brass must have weight without dominating, and the quieter passages need enough separation to make the changes in orchestral colour obvious. What impresses me most is the sense of momentum. I can concentrate on the placement and depth between my speakers if I want to, but after a few minutes I usually stop analysing because Kertész’s performance takes over. That is always a good sign for me. A technically impressive recording should eventually make me forget about the technical side.

Voices, scale and the Decca approach

Wagner takes the idea much further. The selection from *Götterdämmerung* conducted by Sir Georg Solti with the Vienna Philharmonic includes Birgit Nilsson as Brünnhilde and Gottlob Frick as Hagen. The complete *Götterdämmerung* recording was made during 1964 as part of Decca’s enormous Solti *Ring* project, with producer John Culshaw playing a central role and Gordon Parry serving as chief engineer. This is where Decca’s approach becomes especially interesting to me because the recording is not merely documenting singers standing in front of an orchestra. It uses the stereo medium to make the dramatic relationships understandable. Nilsson’s voice has remarkable presence and power, yet the orchestra remains a real participant rather than becoming accompaniment underneath her. The scale is huge, but voices remain located within a believable acoustic space, and changes in distance and orchestral weight contribute directly to Wagner’s drama.

That recording also shows why I think the phrase “Decca Sound” can sometimes be misunderstood. There is no single tonal balance or sonic trick running through every recording in this compilation. Recording venues, engineers, orchestras and technology changed enormously over the decades represented here. What I recognise instead is a consistent concern with proportion. Large forces are allowed to sound large, but small musical details are not sacrificed to achieve that scale. Voices have body rather than just clarity, strings can sound smooth without losing texture, and percussion arrives with impact without sounding detached from the orchestra. On revealing speakers or headphones, some recordings inevitably show their age more clearly than others, but I would rather hear the character of an original recording than have everything polished into the same modern sound.

The size of *The Decca Sound* is also its one weakness. The 50-CD edition is a historical survey rather than an album I would expect anyone to hear from beginning to end, and even the five-CD highlights version covers such a broad range that there will probably be performances that interest one listener far more than another. For me that is not really a problem, because I use Decca as a doorway into individual recordings. If the Argenta *España* catches my attention, I want to hear more Argenta. If Kertész and the Vienna Philharmonic convince me in Dvořák, I want the complete work. And the Solti Wagner recordings can easily become a listening project of their own. In that sense, the compilation succeeds because it encourages exploration rather than trying to be the final word on anything.

What I value most about Decca is therefore not simply its famous engineering reputation. *The Decca Sound* shows me what can happen when recording technique serves performers with strong musical personalities, from Argenta’s brilliant Chabrier and Kertész’s energetic Dvořák to the enormous dramatic scale of Solti’s Wagner. There is plenty here to challenge speakers, headphones, amplifiers and DACs, especially in dynamics, stereo imaging and depth, but those qualities matter because they make the performances easier to follow. For me, that is Decca at its best: ambitious recording work that gives the musicians room to communicate clearly, without turning the recording itself into the main attraction.

HiFi’ve, Ronald – Your EarFluencer