GRAMOPHONE DREAMS
Communing with immortals
“Future generations will be able to condense into the brief space of twenty minutes the tone pictures of a lifetime—five minutes of childish prattle, five moments embalming the last feeble utterances from the death-bed. Will this not seem like holding veritable communion with immortality?” —BERLINER GRAMOPHONE COMPANY CA. 18771
Patented by German-American inventor Emile Berliner in 1887, the Gramophone,2 which later became, generically, the small-g gramophone, is a device for making permanent, direct-to-flat-disc3 recordings—of the human voice, musical instruments, or other sounds, and for playing back those stylus-inscribed discs, enjoyably, with sounds that resemble those of the original event.
Today, more than 120 years after that invention, people around the world still listen to voices and musical instruments reproduced via radially inscribed flat discs. The vividness of their effect still feels like a communion with immortals.
Most months, I begin my review explorations not by reading published specifications or absorbing manufacturer-website hyperbole but by using the component I’m auditioning to appreciate whatever music I am obsessing about at the time. This month, I was obsessed by the piano recordings of Vladimir de Pachmann, a pianist whose early–20th century performances of Chopin feel like a communion with impassioned Romantic-era pianism.
Inspired by a friend’s Facebook post showing the red label of a Victrola 78rpm disc, from August 11, 1908, that featured de Pachmann playing Chopin Impromptu No.1 (Op.29) and Prélude No.23 (Op.28), I started listening to every de Pachmann recording I could track down. I got stuck on and began repeat-playing an audiophile-quality 1967 Everest LP that I found, long ago, in the back room at Academy Records here in New York City: (Everest LP X-921). This modern de Pachmann disc contains a September 9, 1923, performance of the Chopin
