John Culshaw

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the English comedian and impressionist, see Jon Culshaw.

John Culshaw (born Southport 28 May 1924, died London 27 April 1980), was a pioneering classical record producer for Decca Records. Along with Fred Gaisberg and Walter Legge he was one of the most influential and important producers of classical recordings.

John Culshaw underwent no formal musical education beyond childhood piano lessons, and began his working life not with Decca but in the Midland Bank in Liverpool. After wartime service as a navigator with the Royal Naval Air Service (the Fleet Air Arm) he joined Decca in a junior capacity in the company’s London office in November 1946, initially writing promotional material. By 1947 – having acquired an impressive grasp of music history, as he showed to good effect in his first book, a short biography of Rachmaninoff – he had been given the chance to produce classical sessions for Decca’s rapidly expanding catalogue. At Decca, the musicians whom he recorded included Ida Haendel, Eileen Joyce, Kathleen Ferrier and Sir Clifford Curzon. In 1948 he first worked with Georg Solti. From 1953 to 1955 he headed the European programme for Capitol Records, before returning to Decca, where he concentrated on the emerging stereophonic recording technology.

By 1958 Decca, with its unequalled technical team, was in a position to embark on a complete studio recording of Wagner’s Ring cycle. Culshaw engaged Solti, the Vienna Philharmonic and a top-flight cast, and the engineers surpassed themselves. The set was received with rapturous acclaim; to the astonishment and envy of Decca’s rivals Das Rheingold and the subsequent instalments of the cycle were best-sellers. The cast included the veteran Kirsten Flagstad in one of her last and greatest recorded performances, Birgit Nilsson, Hans Hotter, Gottlob Frick, Wolfgang Windgassen and Régine Crespin, with even minor roles sung by such stars as Joan Sutherland.

In these productions – as in his only slightly less famous Decca releases of Richard Strauss's operas Salome and Elektra, also with Solti and Nilsson – Culshaw put into practice his strong belief that a properly made sound recording should create what he called ‘a theatre of the mind’. He disliked live recordings (such as those attempted at Bayreuth) because to him they were technically flawed and – crucially – were merely sound recordings of a theatrical performance. He sought to make recordings that compensated for the lack of the visual element by subtle production techniques, impossible in live recordings, that conjured up the action in the listener’s head.

He also went to unprecedented pains to ensure that Wagner’s musical requirements were met. Thus where in Das Rheingold the score calls for eighteen anvils to be hammered during two brief orchestral interludes, Culshaw eschewed the usual electronic fabrication and arranged for eighteen anvils to be hired and hammered. Similarly, where Wagner called for steerhorns Culshaw arranged for them to be used, instead of the tamer sound of the trombones used at Bayreuth and elsewhere.

As well as his success with Solti in Wagner, Culshaw produced outstanding recordings of Britten’s music conducted by the composer, with whom he maintained an excellent relationship despite the latter’s notorious oversensitivity. With Herbert von Karajan he produced many of the conductor’s best opera sets, which still sell steadily forty years later.

By 1967 Culshaw wished for a change, and moved from the record industry to television, becoming BBC Television’s Head of Music. He left the BBC in 1975 and worked freelance as as record and stage producer, writer and broadcaster until his death in 1980 from a rare form of hepatitis.

[edit] References

• Culshaw Ring Resounding Secker & Warburg, 1968 - Culshaw's account of the recording of Wagner's Ring cycle. ISBN 0-436-11800-9
• Culshaw Putting the Record Straight Secker & Warburg, 1981 - Memoirs posthumously published. ISBN 0-436-11802-5

[edit] External Link

Link to talk by Culshaw on Die Walküre An audio file from a Metropolitan Opera broadcast intermission feature (scroll to "From The Archives - March 1, 1975 - John Culshaw discusses Die Walküre; you will need Real Player to hear this)