Kenneth Wilkinson
Encyclopedia
Kenneth Ernest Wilkinson (28 July 1912 – 13 January 2004) was an audio engineer for Decca Records
, known for engineering classical recordings with superb sound quality.
After working for small recording companies, Wilkinson was taken onto the staff of Decca, where he engineered many recordings, working with producers such as John Culshaw
and conductors including Sir Georg Solti
, Hans Knappertsbusch
and Benjamin Britten
. He trained a whole generation of celebrated Decca engineers.
Wilkinson so closely identified with the Decca sound that he retired when the company was absorbed into the PolyGram
group in 1980.
in north London on a scholarship. He left school at the age of sixteen in 1928, and worked for the publishing house, Cassell's. When one of the firm's accountants left to join the World Echo Record Company, Wilkinson went with him, and was present at the company's first electrical recording at the old Clerkenwell Sessions House
off Farringdon Street in London. In that job, which involved him in the early electrical recording process, he met Jay Wilbur (James Edward Wilbur), a dance bandleader who interested him in the technical side of recording. The company folded, and Wilkinson took a job in charge of the recorded music at an ice rink in Brighton
.
. Wilkinson's job as a junior there included shaving waxes, removing the surface of used recording waxes to make them blank for re-recording. At Crystalate he met the recording engineer Arthur Haddy (1906–1989). When Decca acquired Crystalate in 1937, Wilkinson and Haddy (who would become the technical director at Decca) now worked for the new company.
An attempt to volunteer for the Royal Air Force
during World War II
was refused because Decca was involved in top secret government research. Wilkinson would work on submarine navigation, recording Luftwaffe
night fighter
signals, and on navigation aspects of the dam buster operations of Barnes Wallace. With Haddy, he also worked on Decca's recording equipment, disc cutters, and recording techniques including "ffrr" (full frequency range recording). He was also involved in recording two of Decca's most popular artists: Vera Lynn
and Mantovani
.
Wilkinson's early recordings as an engineer were for monaural
78 rpm releases. With Charles Munch
bringing the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra
to record in London for the first time, Wilkinson had to find a new recording location as Kingsway Hall
was already booked. He found an outstanding acoustic in Walthamstow Town Hall, which was booked for the sessions for 8–11 October 1946. For these sessions, he also served as producer. On November 19, he was back at Walthamstow recording the London Symphony Orchestra
in that venue for the first time. Victor Olof (1898–1976) was the producer for this session and many future ones with Wilkinson as engineer. Their collaboration included a complete set of Sibelius's symphonies recorded between 1952–1955 in Kingsway Hall.
, which put it ahead of its direct competitor EMI
. The company was also an early exponent of stereophonic recording. Wilkinson would make the move to stereo recordings for Decca in April 1958, but until then he remained the engineer with the monaural recording team (for a time there were parallel recording teams) because mono was considered the more important release. In the early 1950s, together with Roy Wallace (1927–2007) and Haddy, he developed the Decca tree
spaced microphone array used for stereo orchestral recordings. Decca began to use this for recordings in May 1954 at Victoria Hall
in Geneva
, a venue Wilkinson did not record in. He preferred recording in London and Paris although he also recorded in Amsterdam, Bayreuth, Chicago, Copenhagen, Rome, and Vienna.
Wilkinson discussed the use of the Decca tree in an interview with Michael H. Gray in 1987.
Wilkinson's method of selecting recording venues was recounted in an article on concert hall orchestral sound written by the conductor Denis Vaughan
in 1981:
recordings (which Decca produced). Itter always requested Wilkinson as engineer, calling him "a wizard with mikes".
Wilkinson's stereo recordings with the conductor Charles Gerhardt
(including a series of Reader's Digest
recordings and the RCA Classic Film Scores series) and the producer John Culshaw
made his name and reputation known to record reviewers and audiophiles. His legacy was extended by the fact that he trained every Decca engineer from 1937 and forward.
Wilkinson, always called "Wilkie" in the music business, was known as a straight-talking man, interested only in the quality of the work. The Decca producer Ray Minshull (1934–2007) recalled Wilkinson's methods in an interview with Jonathan Valin in March 1993:
Among Wilkinson's favourite recordings was Britten
's War Requiem
. This was recorded in January 1963 at one of Wilkinson's favourite venues, Kingsway Hall, with Culshaw as the producer. Among other recordings engineered by Wilkinson were Wagner
's Parsifal recorded live at Bayreuth
in 1951, of which the critic Andrew Porter
wrote, "...the most moving and profound of spiritual experiences ... Decca have recorded, superbly, a superb performance", and Berlioz
's Symphonie fantastique
with Sir Georg Solti
conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
in May 1972 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
's Krannert Center.
Wilkinson retired from Decca when the company was taken over by the PolyGram
group in 1980. He made no free-lance recordings. His work was released on Lyrita and Reader's Digest records (as mentioned above) and RCA Records
with recordings licensed through Decca. His recordings were characterised by the producer Tam Henderson in an appreciation: "The most remarkable sonic aspect of a Wilkinson orchestral recording is its rich balance, which gives full measure to the bottom octaves, and a palpable sense of the superior acoustics of the venues he favored, among them London's Walthamstow Assembly Hall and The Kingsway Hall of revered memory". http://www.audaud.com/audaud/JUL-AUG03/SpFeature.html
On retiring, Wilkinson received a special gold disc produced by Decca with extracts of his recordings. He received three Grammys for engineering
: 1973, 1975, and 1978. He also received an audio award from Hi-Fi magazine in 1981 and the Walter Legge
Award in 2003 "…for extraordinary contribution to the field of recording classical music".
Wilkinson died in Norwich
at the age of 91.
Decca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
, known for engineering classical recordings with superb sound quality.
After working for small recording companies, Wilkinson was taken onto the staff of Decca, where he engineered many recordings, working with producers such as John Culshaw
John Culshaw
John Royds Culshaw OBE was a pioneering English classical record producer for Decca Records. He recorded a wide range of music, but is best known for masterminding the first studio recording of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, begun in 1958.Largely self-educated musically, Culshaw worked for...
and conductors including Sir Georg Solti
Georg Solti
Sir Georg Solti, KBE, was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor. He was a major classical recording artist, holding the record for having received the most Grammy Awards, having personally won 31 as a conductor, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to his...
, Hans Knappertsbusch
Hans Knappertsbusch
Hans Knappertsbusch was a German conductor, best known for his performances of the music of Richard Wagner, Anton Bruckner and Richard Strauss....
and Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
. He trained a whole generation of celebrated Decca engineers.
Wilkinson so closely identified with the Decca sound that he retired when the company was absorbed into the PolyGram
PolyGram
PolyGram was the name of the major label recording company started by Philips from as a holding company for its music interests in 1945. In 1999 it was sold to Seagram and merged into Universal Music Group.-Hollandsche Decca Distributie , 1929-1950:...
group in 1980.
Early life
Wilkinson was born in London. He attended the Trinity Grammar School, Wood GreenWood Green
Wood Green is a district in north London, England, located in the London Borough of Haringey. It is situated north of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of the metropolitan centres in Greater London.-History:...
in north London on a scholarship. He left school at the age of sixteen in 1928, and worked for the publishing house, Cassell's. When one of the firm's accountants left to join the World Echo Record Company, Wilkinson went with him, and was present at the company's first electrical recording at the old Clerkenwell Sessions House
Middlesex Sessions House
The Former Middlesex Sessions House is a building on Clerkenwell Green in the London Borough of Islington in London, England.It was built in 1780 for the Middlesex Quarter Sessions of the justices of the peace, replacing nearby Hicks Hall which had fallen into disrepair...
off Farringdon Street in London. In that job, which involved him in the early electrical recording process, he met Jay Wilbur (James Edward Wilbur), a dance bandleader who interested him in the technical side of recording. The company folded, and Wilkinson took a job in charge of the recorded music at an ice rink in Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
.
Decca
Wilbur had joined Crystalate, another record company, and invited Wilkinson to join him at its studios in HampsteadHampstead
Hampstead is an area of London, England, north-west of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Camden in Inner London, it is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations and for Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland...
. Wilkinson's job as a junior there included shaving waxes, removing the surface of used recording waxes to make them blank for re-recording. At Crystalate he met the recording engineer Arthur Haddy (1906–1989). When Decca acquired Crystalate in 1937, Wilkinson and Haddy (who would become the technical director at Decca) now worked for the new company.
An attempt to volunteer for the Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
was refused because Decca was involved in top secret government research. Wilkinson would work on submarine navigation, recording Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....
night fighter
Night fighter
A night fighter is a fighter aircraft adapted for use at night or in other times of bad visibility...
signals, and on navigation aspects of the dam buster operations of Barnes Wallace. With Haddy, he also worked on Decca's recording equipment, disc cutters, and recording techniques including "ffrr" (full frequency range recording). He was also involved in recording two of Decca's most popular artists: Vera Lynn
Vera Lynn
Dame Vera Lynn, DBE is an English singer-songwriter and actress whose musical recordings and performances were enormously popular during World War II. During the war she toured Egypt, India and Burma, giving outdoor concerts for the troops...
and Mantovani
Mantovani
Annunzio Paolo Mantovani known as Mantovani, was an Anglo-Italian conductor and light orchestra-styled entertainer with a cascading strings musical signature. The book British Hit Singles & Albums states that he was "Britain's most successful album act before The Beatles .....
.
Wilkinson's early recordings as an engineer were for monaural
Monaural
Monaural or monophonic sound reproduction is single-channel. Typically there is only one microphone, one loudspeaker, or channels are fed from a common signal path...
78 rpm releases. With Charles Munch
Charles Munch
Charles Munch may refer to:*Charles Munch , American artist*Charles Munch , orchestral conductorSee also:*Charles Munch discography, recordings of Munch, the conductor...
bringing the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra
Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire
The Orchestre de la Société des concerts du Conservatoire was a symphony orchestra established in Paris in 1828. It gave its first concert on 9 March 1828 with music by Beethoven, Rossini, Meifreid, Rode and Cherubini....
to record in London for the first time, Wilkinson had to find a new recording location as Kingsway Hall
Kingsway Hall
The Kingsway Hall, Holborn, London, built in 1912, was the home of the West London Mission of the Methodist Church, and eventually became one of the most important recording venues for classical music and film music...
was already booked. He found an outstanding acoustic in Walthamstow Town Hall, which was booked for the sessions for 8–11 October 1946. For these sessions, he also served as producer. On November 19, he was back at Walthamstow recording the London Symphony Orchestra
London Symphony Orchestra
The London Symphony Orchestra is a major orchestra of the United Kingdom, as well as one of the best-known orchestras in the world. Since 1982, the LSO has been based in London's Barbican Centre.-History:...
in that venue for the first time. Victor Olof (1898–1976) was the producer for this session and many future ones with Wilkinson as engineer. Their collaboration included a complete set of Sibelius's symphonies recorded between 1952–1955 in Kingsway Hall.
LP and stereo
Decca was an early adopter of the LP albumLP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
, which put it ahead of its direct competitor EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
. The company was also an early exponent of stereophonic recording. Wilkinson would make the move to stereo recordings for Decca in April 1958, but until then he remained the engineer with the monaural recording team (for a time there were parallel recording teams) because mono was considered the more important release. In the early 1950s, together with Roy Wallace (1927–2007) and Haddy, he developed the Decca tree
Decca tree
The Decca Tree is a spaced microphone array most commonly used for orchestral recording.It was originally developed as a sort of stereo A–B recording method adding a center fill. It is the most commonly used spaced-pair technique...
spaced microphone array used for stereo orchestral recordings. Decca began to use this for recordings in May 1954 at Victoria Hall
Victoria Hall
For other theatres with a similar name, see Victoria Theatre The Victoria Hall is a concert hall in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, England. It was constructed as an annex to Hanley Town Hall in 1888 to commemorate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. The building was constructed with red brick and terracotta....
in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, a venue Wilkinson did not record in. He preferred recording in London and Paris although he also recorded in Amsterdam, Bayreuth, Chicago, Copenhagen, Rome, and Vienna.
Wilkinson discussed the use of the Decca tree in an interview with Michael H. Gray in 1987.
You set up the Tree just slightly in front of the orchestra. The two outriggers, again, one in front of the first violins, that's facing the whole orchestra, and one over the cellos. We used to have two mikes on the woodwind section – they were directional mikes, 56's in the early days. You'd see a mike on the tympani, just to give it that little bit of clarity, and one behind the horns. If we had a harp, we'd have a mike trained on the harp. Basically, we never used too many microphones. I think they're using too many these days.
Wilkinson's method of selecting recording venues was recounted in an article on concert hall orchestral sound written by the conductor Denis Vaughan
Denis Vaughan
Denis Vaughan is an orchestral conductor most famous for his role as the driving force behind the creation of the United Kingdom's National Lottery. He is a campaigner for wider access to arts and culture for young people, and promotes the health benefits of music, the arts and sport...
in 1981:
I have recorded in many halls throughout Europe and America and have found that halls built mainly of brick, wood and soft plaster, which are usually older halls, always produce a good natural warm sound. Halls built with concrete and hard plaster seem to produce a thin hard sound and always a lack of warmth and bass. Consequently when looking for halls to record in I always avoid modern concrete structures.
Legacy
Wilkinson went on to engineer at thousands of recording sessions. He was said to have worked with over 150 conductors. He was also the engineer most responsible for Richard Itter's LyritaLyrita
Lyrita is a classical music record label, specializing in the works of British composers.Lyrita began releasing LPs in October 1959 as Lyrita Recorded Edition for sale by mail order subscription. The founder of the company, Richard Itter of Burnham, Buckinghamshire, was a businessman and record...
recordings (which Decca produced). Itter always requested Wilkinson as engineer, calling him "a wizard with mikes".
Wilkinson's stereo recordings with the conductor Charles Gerhardt
Charles Gerhardt (conductor)
Charles Allan Gerhardt was a conductor, record producer, and arranger.-Early years:Gerhardt grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he studied the piano at age five and composition at age nine...
(including a series of Reader's Digest
Reader's Digest
Reader's Digest is a general interest family magazine, published ten times annually. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, its headquarters is now in New York City. It was founded in 1922, by DeWitt Wallace and Lila Bell Wallace...
recordings and the RCA Classic Film Scores series) and the producer John Culshaw
John Culshaw
John Royds Culshaw OBE was a pioneering English classical record producer for Decca Records. He recorded a wide range of music, but is best known for masterminding the first studio recording of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, begun in 1958.Largely self-educated musically, Culshaw worked for...
made his name and reputation known to record reviewers and audiophiles. His legacy was extended by the fact that he trained every Decca engineer from 1937 and forward.
Wilkinson, always called "Wilkie" in the music business, was known as a straight-talking man, interested only in the quality of the work. The Decca producer Ray Minshull (1934–2007) recalled Wilkinson's methods in an interview with Jonathan Valin in March 1993:
Everyone loved and respected Wilkie, but during a session he could be exacting when it came to small details. He would prowl the recording stage with a cigarette – half-ash – between his lips, making minute adjustments in the mike set-up and in the orchestral seating. Seating arrangement was really one of the keys to Wilkie's approach and he would spend a great deal of time making sure that everyone was located just where he wanted them to be, in order for the mikes to reflect the proper balances. Of course, most musicians had a natural tendency to bend toward the conductor as they played. If such movement became excessive, Wilkie would shoot out onto the stage and chew the erring musician out before reseating him properly. He wanted the musicians to stay exactly where he had put them. He was the steadiest of engineers, the most painstaking and the most imaginative. In all of his sessions, he never did the same thing twice, making small adjustments in mike placement and balances to accord with his sense of the sonic requirements of the piece being played.
Among Wilkinson's favourite recordings was Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
's War Requiem
War Requiem
The War Requiem, Op. 66 is a large-scale, non-liturgical setting of the Requiem Mass composed by Benjamin Britten mostly in 1961 and completed January 1962. Interspersed with the traditional Latin texts, in telling juxtaposition, are settings of Wilfred Owen poems...
. This was recorded in January 1963 at one of Wilkinson's favourite venues, Kingsway Hall, with Culshaw as the producer. Among other recordings engineered by Wilkinson were Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's Parsifal recorded live at Bayreuth
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner are presented...
in 1951, of which the critic Andrew Porter
Andrew Porter (music critic)
Andrew Porter, born 26 August 1928, in Cape Town, South Africa, is a British music critic, scholar, organist, and opera director. He studied organ at University College, Oxford University, in the late nineteen-forties, then began writing music criticism for various London newspapers, including The...
wrote, "...the most moving and profound of spiritual experiences ... Decca have recorded, superbly, a superb performance", and Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
's Symphonie fantastique
Symphonie Fantastique
Symphonie Fantastique: Épisode de la vie d'un Artiste...en cinq parties , Op. 14, is a program symphony written by the French composer Hector Berlioz in 1830. It is one of the most important and representative pieces of the early Romantic period, and is still very popular with concert audiences...
with Sir Georg Solti
Georg Solti
Sir Georg Solti, KBE, was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor. He was a major classical recording artist, holding the record for having received the most Grammy Awards, having personally won 31 as a conductor, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to his...
conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Chicago, Illinois. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1891, the Symphony makes its home at Orchestra Hall in Chicago and plays a summer season at the Ravinia Festival...
in May 1972 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
's Krannert Center.
Wilkinson retired from Decca when the company was taken over by the PolyGram
PolyGram
PolyGram was the name of the major label recording company started by Philips from as a holding company for its music interests in 1945. In 1999 it was sold to Seagram and merged into Universal Music Group.-Hollandsche Decca Distributie , 1929-1950:...
group in 1980. He made no free-lance recordings. His work was released on Lyrita and Reader's Digest records (as mentioned above) and RCA Records
RCA Records
RCA Records is one of the flagship labels of Sony Music Entertainment. The RCA initials stand for Radio Corporation of America , which was the parent corporation from 1929 to 1985 and a partner from 1985 to 1986.RCA's Canadian unit is Sony's oldest label...
with recordings licensed through Decca. His recordings were characterised by the producer Tam Henderson in an appreciation: "The most remarkable sonic aspect of a Wilkinson orchestral recording is its rich balance, which gives full measure to the bottom octaves, and a palpable sense of the superior acoustics of the venues he favored, among them London's Walthamstow Assembly Hall and The Kingsway Hall of revered memory". http://www.audaud.com/audaud/JUL-AUG03/SpFeature.html
Personal life and awards
Wilkinson married Miriam Tombs in 1938, and they had four children (two sons, two daughters).On retiring, Wilkinson received a special gold disc produced by Decca with extracts of his recordings. He received three Grammys for engineering
Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Classical
The Grammy Award for Best Engineered Recording, Classical has been awarded since 1959. The award had several minor name changes:*In 1959 the award was known as Best Engineered Record ...
: 1973, 1975, and 1978. He also received an audio award from Hi-Fi magazine in 1981 and the Walter Legge
Walter Legge
Harry Walter Legge was an influential English classical record producer, most notably for EMI. His recordings include many sets later regarded as classics and reissued by EMI as "Great Recordings of the Century". He worked in the recording industry from 1927, combining this with the post of junior...
Award in 2003 "…for extraordinary contribution to the field of recording classical music".
Wilkinson died in Norwich
Norwich
Norwich is a city in England. It is the regional administrative centre and county town of Norfolk. During the 11th century, Norwich was the largest city in England after London, and one of the most important places in the kingdom...
at the age of 91.