Recording Pioneer Who Led Classical Music's Hi-Fi Wave
Just 23 years old when she recruited the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for a recording contract in 1950, Wilma Cozart Fine went on to create hundreds of orchestral albums that set the standard for classical-music recording for decades.
Mrs. Fine, who died Sept. 21 at the age of 82, led Mercury Records' classical-music recording business in the 1950s and 1960s, at a time when senior female executives in the industry were rare. She initiated and produced the label's "Living Presence" series that ultimately grew to a catalog of more than 400 classical recordings.
The first Chicago Symphony session, Mussorgsky-Ravel's "Pictures at an Exhibition," was recorded by sound engineer C. Robert Fine, whose single-microphone technique yielded sound as realistic as existing technology allowed. The result inspired a critic in 1951 to declare that "one feels one is listening to the living presence" of the orchestra. Mrs. Fine (then known as Wilma Cozart) adopted the term "Living Presence" as the series' moniker.
She and Mr. Fine were married in 1957, and the couple collaborated on recording projects until Mrs. Fine left the business in the early 1960s.
"We always tried to make our recordings... as close to the composer's intentions as we could," she told The Wall Street Journal in an interview in 1997.
Despite more than half a century of technical innovation since Mrs. Fine's first recordings, her work is still considered exceptional for the clarity and realism of its sound.
"Mrs. Fine established a library of remarkable recordings which, even today, stand among the finest ever made," Kalman Rubinson, a contributing editor at Stereophile magazine, said in an email. Recent reissues of the material, Mr. Rubinson added, reveal "a spacious and transparent view of the performance that has rarely been equaled."
Under Mrs. Fine's leadership, Mercury signed the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Rochester, N.Y.-based Eastman School of Music's wind ensemble and the Minneapolis Symphony under conductor Antal Dorati, who recorded Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" complete with actual cannon fire recorded at West Point. The mono and later stereo recordings of the performances were huge commercial successes....
Read entire article at The Wall Street Journal
Mrs. Fine, who died Sept. 21 at the age of 82, led Mercury Records' classical-music recording business in the 1950s and 1960s, at a time when senior female executives in the industry were rare. She initiated and produced the label's "Living Presence" series that ultimately grew to a catalog of more than 400 classical recordings.
The first Chicago Symphony session, Mussorgsky-Ravel's "Pictures at an Exhibition," was recorded by sound engineer C. Robert Fine, whose single-microphone technique yielded sound as realistic as existing technology allowed. The result inspired a critic in 1951 to declare that "one feels one is listening to the living presence" of the orchestra. Mrs. Fine (then known as Wilma Cozart) adopted the term "Living Presence" as the series' moniker.
She and Mr. Fine were married in 1957, and the couple collaborated on recording projects until Mrs. Fine left the business in the early 1960s.
"We always tried to make our recordings... as close to the composer's intentions as we could," she told The Wall Street Journal in an interview in 1997.
Despite more than half a century of technical innovation since Mrs. Fine's first recordings, her work is still considered exceptional for the clarity and realism of its sound.
"Mrs. Fine established a library of remarkable recordings which, even today, stand among the finest ever made," Kalman Rubinson, a contributing editor at Stereophile magazine, said in an email. Recent reissues of the material, Mr. Rubinson added, reveal "a spacious and transparent view of the performance that has rarely been equaled."
Under Mrs. Fine's leadership, Mercury signed the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Rochester, N.Y.-based Eastman School of Music's wind ensemble and the Minneapolis Symphony under conductor Antal Dorati, who recorded Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" complete with actual cannon fire recorded at West Point. The mono and later stereo recordings of the performances were huge commercial successes....