Availability
CD: ’L'Association Blanche Selva

What a shame. This is a fine selection of recordings, thoughtfully complementary to Malibran’s Selva disc (see review) which has been compiled with intelligence, given Selva’s august position in the annals of French – and international – pianism. The Franck violin sonata recording with Joan Massia has never, to my knowledge, been released in any form since its appearance on 78s in 1930. It joins the Malibran transfer of the Massia-Selva recording of the Spring sonata, similarly unissued until then. Given the paucity of recordings by Selva – she died before a long run could be undertaken – this represents her entire discography as far as I’m aware.
 
The shame concerns the transfers. It’s one thing to go to the trouble to decide to restore these important recordings but another entirely to do it like this. The pity of it all is that the commercial realities – financial imperatives, copyright extension fears, sub-prime belt-tightening – mean that recordings such as these may only get one shot in the marketplace. Internet groups are good at disseminating rare material such as this – I’ve seen the Sammons-Murdoch Grieg Violin Sonata No.2 produced by a well known and admired transfer engineer who envisages no commercial opportunities for releasing it - and it’s one of the great performances of the work; similarly the rare, excellent Catterall-Murdoch Franck sonata has been made available as a good download. This little detour is to make one simple point; if you are going to misjudge your transfers – as these Selva ones have been and as were, say, the Hallé historical reissues and plenty of others – no matter how awful the restoration work it means that the chances of a competing and far superior transfer appearing will be exceptionally small. There’s no point any other transfer engineer pursuing a very small rabbit down a very small hole.
 
One final point. If you do ever listen to this disc then for the love of Mike don’t think that 78s sound like this. I’ve got the Massia-Selva Franck set on Columbia and it’s not at all bad as a recording. The noise suppression computer however has been switched on like a cement mixer and has done its absolute worst – the result is indescribably horrible. I really can’t be bothered to tell you about the Catalan Massia’s singing but essentially limited tone, the on/off vibrato, his occasionally laboured lower (gut, I think, not metal) strings. Nor really that the balance is skewed in favour of Selva – she was a powerful, squat woman and Massia a tall elegant slim man and they play like they look. Ought I to dare to hope that someone will retrieve the Cantrelle/Descaves 1928 set of the Franck, alongside the Catterall mentioned above? Well, not if it’s done like this. 
 
The other pieces are equally sad examples of what happens to 78s when engineers understand them. The pieces associated with Selva and played by other notables are certainly worth resurrecting. How could the Rosenthal, say, not be worth revisiting? But the poor, scratchy copies used, the treacle of noise suppression, the blasting in fortes and wrong sized styli used to do the work all vitiate the good intentions. Only the Dukas escapes censure to a degree - always wonderful to hear Lefébure, especially in this masterpiece.
 
But to think that the Association Blanche Selva and the Centre International Albert-Roussel have put their names to this disc. Sacré bleu.
 
Jonathan Woolf
 

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