Witches’ Brew gathers orchestral music of sorcery, menace and supernatural motion into a programme with the irresistible logic of a late-night tale. Alexander Gibson and the New Symphony Orchestra of London begin from vivid theatrical material. Malcolm Arnold’s Tam O’Shanter Overture races through drunken adventure and pursuit, its quick changes of character giving the orchestra ample opportunity for wit as well as danger.
The darker colours continue through music associated with fantastic creatures, witches and demonic dance. Mussorgsky’s writing brings rough elemental force; Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre makes the violin a sinister master of ceremonies; Humperdinck and Liszt add their own visions of flight and temptation. The attraction of the album lies in its sequence. These are not detached orchestral showpieces placed at random, but episodes in a changing dramatic landscape. Sudden percussion, darting strings and brass eruptions keep shifting the imagined scene. Gibson keeps the character of each composer distinct while sustaining the programme’s mischievous, nocturnal atmosphere. For collectors of classic orchestral albums, Witches’ Brew also represents the art of programming at its most imaginative: repertoire, title and visual identity all invite the listener into the same world.
The single-disc format preserves its compact spell from opening chase to final apparition, with every scene in place.
This edition: Ultra Tape, and what you need to play it
Analogue Productions issues this recording in its Ultra Tape series: a ¼-inch analogue tape running at 15 ips with IEC equalisation, in two-track (half-track) stereo. Each copy is made in real time from a copy of the original analogue master tape, transferred on an ATR-modified Ampex machine with flux magnetic heads, and it arrives in a custom slipcase.
Playing it needs a reel-to-reel machine that runs at 15 ips and reads two tracks. The format leaves out the steps a record takes between master tape and groove, which is the reason collectors reach for it.
Customer question: Buying Analogue Productions records in Europe
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