Jack Renner RIP

[Dialectic]

Jack Renner, engineer of many great recordings released by the Telarc label, has died. Here is the New York Times obituary, which I missed a month ago.

Renner was an early champion of digital recording and engineered what I believe to be many of the best recordings ever made.

Here is a list of his many credits.

A favorite of mine is the 1990s recording of the Beethoven String Quartets performed by the Cleveland Quartet.

 

[JJB70]

Very sad, I remember at that time Telarc was a bye word for high quality recording, even if the performances weren't always the best the recorded quality and production was first class.

 

[Dialectic]

From the very late '70s through the '90s, there were some recordings of superb artistic quality released on Telarc. In my view, those recordings--I'm thinking in particular of the Maazel- and Dohnanyi-conducted recordings with the Cleveland Orchestra--were artistically as good as anything ever released on an audiophile label.

Telarc seemed to lose its way in the SACD era, releasing lots of recordings of questionable marketability, and then it became merely a re-labeler for independently financed recordings. It was a disappointing way to see Telarc disappear.

 

[ripvw]

from John Atkinson at Stereophile:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/telarcs-jack-renner-remembered

 

[Mtbf]

“Malcolm Fraser Plays Chopin”, Telarc CD 80040, played on a Bösendorfer Imperial, is one of my all time favorite solo pianist recordings.
Especially the beautiful “Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise”, Opus 22. The phenomenal sound of the Bösendorfer is so beautifully recorded.