Description

Executive Producer: Jim Mulally

Jim has graciously underwritten some of Yarlung’s most successful vinyl pressings.  He has an unerring ear for great performers and has enjoyed supporting them in the format most likely to garner international recognition.  His older son just upgraded Jim’s vinyl playback system too, in time to enjoy Orion in all his glory.

This recording, particularly the way Orion handles Bach and Mozart on this album, galvanized listeners in the Rockport/Absolare room at the 2024 Munich High End Show to such a degree that Jim agreed to shift priorities for two vinyl releases he had in mind and support Orion first.  I hope you agree this was a good call.  Bob Levi, chairman of the Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society heard the test pressing and asked that Yarlung dedicate 50 copies to honor Wilson Audio, the company receiving the Founder’s Award at the 2025 gala.  Bob is persnickety about piano recordings, and an aficionado, so this was no small praise.

The album also recognizes the support Yarlung (and Orion Weiss) receive from Elusive Disc, our North American vinyl distributor.  The valiant ED team, spearheaded by James, Abey, Jason and Kevin always go beyond the call of duty to deliver Yarlung vinyl as perfectly as possible.

Michael Fremer:

Performing Bach’s “French Overture” with the requisite precision and clarity of line, Weiss wrests from the mathematical counterpoint ephemeral moments of elegance and great beauty. [In] Mozart’s Paisiello Variations, Weiss elicits a warmer, softer, authentically Mozartian, playful Spring-like tone, while demonstrating his right hand’s extraordinary dexterity and precision on the upper reaches of the keyboard….  This simply miked recording, using a pair of Neumann U-47s fitted with the original metalclad VF14M vacuum tubes and recorded directly to two-track 176k/24 bit digital, eschews the usual audiophile insistence upon bathing the solo piano in hall reverberation in favor of a more direct balance that emphasizes the Steinway’s and Mr. Weiss’s awesome dynamic expressiveness and their almost unlimited range of tonal colors. The recording also captures a superior blend of transient keyboard attack and soundingboard sustain and decay. In short, if your system can handle the piano’s prodigious low frequency energy and intense dynamics, you will be presented with a realistic rendering of a piano in all of its sonic and physical glory, with sufficient reverberant energy to place it convincingly in concert hall surroundings. More importantly, the recording compellingly communicates every deft keyboard stroke of a young virtuoso….

—Michael Fremer

musicangle.com, Stereophile

Orion Weiss combines exacting perfectionism with genuine affability and Midwestern charm; his combination of personality traits makes him a producer’s dream. And these traits, plus his ability as a pianist, win him a great number of friends and admirers, onstage and off. Orion offers high voltage electricity as a performer, linked with intellectual and musical maturity as a poet at the keyboard.

Orion arrived energized for our concert and recording sessions September 1-4, 2007 in Zipper Hall at Colburn School in Los Angeles, despite his return some days earlier from an extended concert tour in China and Japan. Following our sessions, Orion then spent tireless hours at home, on airplanes and between concerts working through our many takes of each movement to help us choose the most appropriate one. Interestingly, and perhaps not surprisingly, many of these choices settled on takes Orion performed live in our Yarlung Artists concert.  Bach’s Overture, for example, the opening notes on this disc, is our first take, the first morning of our recording session.

It gave me great pleasure to share this recording during several presentations at the Munich High End Show in 2024.  Once again, Orion, his spectacular Steinway and Zipper Hall’s natural acoustics delighted the ear. All the ambiance in these recordings comes from the concert hall itself—from the air in the hall, the wood on the walls, and so forth. We added no reverb in mastering. Orion and I spent seven hours setting the two microphones, making many adjustments, half-centimeter at a time, driving quickly back and forth to check these changes with Elliot Midwood at Acoustic Image in Studio City, until we felt the sound was “just right.” For this recording we used short (five feet) stranded Yarlung Audio silver interconnects, our customized vacuum tube microphone preamplifiers, no mixer, and recorded directly to two tracks.

We begin this album with J. S. Bach. Bach searched for perfection in all of his music: perfection reflecting the glory of God and creation, reflecting the golden ratios in nature, and revealing unity and completion. Bach’s “French Overture” takes performer and audience on an epic and wide-ranging musical and emotional journey. And Bach manages to transport us these distances without ever moving far from his home key.

Mozart’s variations on “Salve tu Domine,” a theme from Paisiello’s opera I filosofi immaginarii, share a roundness and return of earlier material and Mozart’s coda revisits the theme’s original texture.

We want to thank our friend and steadfast executive producer Jim Mulally for underwriting this vinyl release in honor of Orion Weiss and in honor of Yarlung’s 20^th Anniversary.  We also want to thank Steinway & Sons (New York) and especially David Ida in Los Angeles for making available Steinway C&A 599 for this recording and for our live concert.

—Bob Attiyeh, producer

Side A:

J.S. Bach
“French Overture” for keyboard in B Minor, BWV 831
Overture
Courante
Gavotte I-II
Passepied I-II

Side B:

J.S. Bach
“French Overture” for keyboard in B Minor, BWV 831
Sarabande
Bourree I-II
Gigue3
Echo

W.A. Mozart
Variations on Salve tu, Domine by Paisiello, K.398/416e

Executive Producer: Jim Mulally

Recording Engineer: Bob Attiyeh

Mastering Engineers: Steve Hoffman, Arian Jansen, Bob Attiyeh

Steinway technicians: Fred Fehl & Daniel Ene