The girl from Ipanema – so what key do you play it in?

[astrotoy]

There is a story about a famous classical pianist Wilhelm Backhaus who had phenomenal powers to transpose on the fly.  He was scheduled to play the Grieg A minor piano concerto with an orchestra.  He came in for the rehearsal the afternoon and found the piano was a semitone flat.  So he played the concerto in the rehearsal in Bb minor!  By the time of the concert that evening, the piano had been brought up to pitch (or maybe a substitute piano) and he played the concert in the correct key. 

(For non-musicians, A minor is the relative minor to C major - no sharps or flats, the easiest minor key to play, while Bb minor is the relative minor to Db major (five flats) one of the most difficult minor keys to play.)

 

For audiophiles, Backhaus did the very first recording of a concerto in 1909, the same Grieg Concerto in a very abbreviated form.  My friend, retired Decca engineer Mike Mailes, engineered one of Backhaus's last recordings, the Brahms second piano concerto, in April of 1967, done in Vienna when Backhaus was 83, two years before his death.  Mike told me this recording was one of the highlights of his career. 

 

Larry

[astrotoy]

I am fortunate to have a very nice 15ips 2 track tape copy of the Getz/Gilberto album.  Spectacular sound.  It has the full version of the song with Joao Gilberto playing the guitar and singing the original Portuguese lyrics and then his wife Astrud follows singing the English lyrics.  Not sure whether it is common knowledge, but after the album was released,  Astrud Gilberto moved to the US, left her husband for Stan Getz and toured with Getz.  

 

According to wiki the "Girl" was about 17 when she inspired the song in 1962.  There is a nice photo of her in the wiki article taken in 2006 when she was 61.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_from_Ipanema

 

Larry

 

 

[astrotoy]

On 8/17/2020 at 1:54 AM, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

Wow, that's interesting ! I have the HDTracks version and the sound is not great, but still listenable.It suffers some compression (DR 12? so not massively bad by measure) and maybe got rematered/Eq ? There is a upper bass muddiness and something wrong with the timbre of Astrud's voice (beyond sibilance) and Getz sax also is not right. The sax jumps out at you at times. I am being picky but wonder if you have heard this version compared to the tape copy?

Cheers

David

Edit - This probably explains a bit, from the CD

 

"Numerous friends have recommended that I obtain this recording for my collection.Eventually, I yielded to their entreaties, and to temptation, and bought the album.

 

To be honest, I was not impressed at my first auditioning. The sound quality was clearly not five-star, though the music was very nice. My taste suggested that the two vocalists lacked in professionalism: the acoustic harmonics of the female voice, recorded in a separate chamber, were so dissimilar from the other elements of the recording that I was left with the impression her part was like a lump of ice-cream offered as a side-order to a hot entrée. On the other hand, Stan Getz was in great shape, tip-top prime-time shape,and that was the best thing in the album.

 

On later occasions, I listened again and again to this album, at the request of visiting friends. I began to enjoy it for its very natural singing, and the group's successful creation of an intimate, cozy atmosphere. I began to listen to the music, and forget the sound discrepancies.

 

Last year, I met with a senior executive of Universal Music to acquire a few titles from the Verve recording vault, and he recommended this album, along with We Get Requests. I gladly accepted his offer.

 

In the months since then, this album has been twice re-mastered at Flair Studios, JVC, Tokyo! I worked quite hard with Takeshi Hakkaman, the brilliant young engineer who is the master of the superb K2 HD sound. We tried to minimize the nasal quality and chattiness of the male voice, and the wiry elements of the female. At the conclusion of our first attempt, we thought we had succeeded. However, when I afterwards listened to the CDR at home, I felt we needed still further improvement. I asked Takeshi to return to the task.

 

The version on this album is thus, finally, re-mastered to the best sound we could achieve.

 

Please listen to what we have done. I love it; I hope you will, too.

 

Winston Ma

Spring, 2009"

 

Besides a tape (which had the channels reversed from the CD) I do have the FIM version which Winston Ma did.  Winston hired the best mastering engineers and with his keen ears and mind would spend lots of time (and money) to get the best out of each master tape.  (BTW, the FIM version has Astrud's voice on the right).  I had the pleasure of working with Winston when he commissioned me to write a book about Decca Records (classical) for FIM in 2013.  Four CD's of some of the greatest Decca recordings were included with the book and we had two great multi Grammy award winning engineers (Michael Bishop and Robert Friedrich) doing the mastering under the watchful eyes (and ears) of Winston.

 

Larry