April 1, 2020

"Gummiente (from 'Aida')", Leo Slezak and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra(1905) 

This week's theme: Leo Slezak 

Perhaps the greatest German language tenor of the early 20th Century. 

This extremely rare recording was made in Berlin in 1905. 

The recording starts with an introduction by Leo Slezak himself, in German, followed by his rendition of "Gummiente" from the opera "Aida" by Giuseppe Verdi accompanied by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. 

This restoration shows the state of the art in audio restoration using Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques.

The software, centered around the Multi-Layer Perceptron and using a Back-Propagation Neural Network for "Deep Learning", not only removes defects such as surface noise and "wow and flutter", but creates a nearly "high-fidelity like" sound from the extremely poor, original 1905 recording.

The result is quite stunning. 

Individual violins in the symphony orchestra can even be readily discerned. 

The restoration was done at the Bell Laboratories Research Center in Murray Hill, New Jersey on January 17, 2020. 

Bell Laboratories
https://www.belllabs.com/


Leo Slezak (world-famous Moravian tenor)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Slezak

Walter Slezak (actor - famous son of Leo Slezak)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Slezak

Giuseppe Verdi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Verdi

Aida
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aida

Berlin Philharmonic
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Philharmonic


Stay Jazzed! :-)
--Tom Swezey