During the 1950s and 60s, Mercury Living Presence producer Wilma Cozart Fine worked in partnership with her husband, recording engineer C. Robert 'Bob' Fine, to produce over 200 classical LPs with leading orchestras in the US, Russia and Europe. Their recordings were renowned for their faithfulness to the original musical event, and are still considered references for lifelike sound reproduction.
In 1989, Wilma, working with mastering engineer Dennis Drake, remastered much of the Mercury Living Presence catalogue for release on CD. For this project, Wilma and Dennis selected the dCS 900 A-to-D converter for its high-resolution, musicality, flexibility, and then-unique ability to record 24-bit files (technology that dCS pioneered).
In conjunction with the 70th anniversary of the Mercury Living Presence label’s inception, Decca Records is releasing the entire digital catalogue on major streaming services, allowing more music lovers than ever to experience Wilma and Bob’s remarkable legacy.
In honour of the catalogue's reissue, dCS has partnered with Decca to document the fascinating story behind Mercury Living Presence.
Through films, podcasts and articles, we'll reveal how Bob, Wilma and Mercury's classical division created a treasured collection of classical music. We'll also reveal how the dCS 900 allowed Wilma and Dennis to transfer the Mercury Living Presence catalogue to CD, while preserving the magic of the original LPs.
In the first of two documentaries, we talk to Dennis Drake, music historian Michael Gray, and Tom Fine, a mastering engineer and Bob and Wilma's son, about the origins of Mercury Living Presence and the catalogue's digital revival.
