Command's new Brahms Second is a major effort to make a record that sounds like a real orchestra rather than a copy of one. Like the recent Scheherazade from London (High Fidelity, Sept. 1961), it is successful because emphasis has been placed on good musical and engineering practices rather than on creating sensational effects. Because of this, only those with truly fine equipment will be able to appreciate the exact degree of the engineers' triumph.

The easiest way to describe this release is to say that it reproduces an interesting and effective Steinberg performance with minimal alteration of its musical values. The engineering as such never obtrudes upon your consciousness. The effect of the recording is very open and natural, with the frequency emphasis exactly what you would expect from a live performance. This absence of peaky highs and beefed-up bass not only produces greater fidelity, but it eliminates listener fatigue. A contributing factor is the perspective, the uniform aesthetic distance which is maintained. The orchestra is far enough away from you that you miss the bow scrapes, valve clicks, and other noises incidental to playing. Yet you feel the orchestra is near at hand, and the individual instruments have the same firm presence associated with listening from a good seat in an acoustically perfect hall. Command has achieved the ideal amount of reverberation. The music is always allowed the living space needed to attain its full sonority; yet the hall never intrudes as a quasi performer. The timbre remains that of the instruments unclouded by resonance.