Kenneth Wilkinson

For the Anglican priest, seeKenneth Wilkinson (priest).

Kenneth Ernest Wilkinson(28 July 1912 – 13 January 2004) was an audio engineer forDecca Records,known for engineering classical recordings with superb sound quality.

Kenneth Wilkinson (r.) withSir Malcolm Sargentat a recording session

After working for small recording companies, Wilkinson was taken onto the staff of Decca, where he engineered many recordings, working with producers such asJohn Culshawand conductors includingSir Georg Solti,Hans KnappertsbuschandBenjamin 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 thePolyGramgroup in 1980.

Life and career

Early life

Wilkinson was born in London. He attended Trinity Grammar School,Wood Greenin 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 oldClerkenwell Sessions Houseoff 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 inBrighton.

Decca

Wilbur had joined Crystalate, another record company, and invited Wilkinson to join him at its studios inHampstead.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 engineerArthur 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.

ffrrbrought Decca to the forefront of recording companies after World War II.

An attempt to volunteer for theRoyal Air ForceduringWorld War IIwas refused because Decca was involved in top secret government research.Wilkinson would work on submarine navigation, recordingLuftwaffenight fightersignals, and on navigation aspects of the dam buster operations ofBarnes 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 LynnandMantovani.

Wilkinson's early recordings as an engineer were formonaural78 rpm releases. WithCharles Munchbringing theParis Conservatoire Orchestrato record in London for the first time, Wilkinson had to find a new recording location asKingsway Hallwas already booked. He found an outstanding acoustic inWalthamstow Town Hall,which was booked for the sessions for 8–11 October 1946. For these sessions, he also served as producer. On 19 November, he was back at Walthamstow recording theLondon Symphony Orchestrain 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 ofSibelius's symphonies recorded between 1952 and 1955 in Kingsway Hall.

LP and stereo

Decca was an early adopter of theLP album,which put it ahead of its direct competitorEMI.The company was also an early exponent ofstereophonicrecording. 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 theDecca treespaced microphone array used for stereo orchestral recordings.Decca began to use this for recordings in May 1954 atVictoria HallinGeneva,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 conductorDenis Vaughanin 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 hundreds of recording sessions. He was said to have worked with more than 150 conductors. He was the engineer most responsible for Richard Itter'sLyritarecordings (which Decca produced). Itter always requested Wilkinson as engineer, calling him "a wizard with mikes".

Wilkinson's stereo recordings with the conductorCharles Gerhardt(including a series ofReader's Digestrecordings and the RCA Classic Film Scores series)and the producerJohn Culshawmade 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 onwards.

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 wasBritten'sWar 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 wereWagner'sParsifalrecorded live atBayreuthin 1951, of which the criticAndrew Porterwrote, "...the most moving and profound of spiritual experiences... Decca have recorded, superbly, a superb performance",andBerlioz'sSymphonie fantastiquewithSir Georg Solticonducting theChicago Symphony Orchestrain May 1972 at theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign'sKrannert Center.

Wilkinson retired from Decca when the company was taken over by thePolyGramgroup in 1980. He made no free-lance recordings.His work was released on Lyrita and Reader's Digest records (as mentioned above) andRCA Recordswith 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 the Assembly Hall atWaltham Forest Town Hall,Walthamstowin London and The Kingsway Hall of revered memory ".

Among the popular performers whom he recorded over the years wereMantovani,theTed Heath Band,Vera Lynn,Edmundo Ros,Jo StaffordandRosemary Squires.

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 threeGrammys for engineering:1973, 1975, and 1978. He also received an audio award fromHi-Fimagazine in 1981 and theWalter LeggeAward in 2003 "…for extraordinary contribution to the field of recording classical music".

Wilkinson died inNorwichat the age of 91.

References

• Atkinson, John "Kenneth Wilkinson 1912–2004" Stereophile[1]
• Foreman, Lewis. "Kenneth Wilkinson: Chief Engineer for Decca at the Height of the LP Era" The Independent, 9 February 2004[2]
• Gray, Michael H. "The Birth of Decca Stereo" Association for Recorded Sound Collections, November 1987, vol. 8, no. 1, page 7
• Valin, Jonathan. Living Stereo: The RCA Bible. The Music Lovers Press, 1993. page 37 & 117.
• Vaughan, Denis "Orchestral Sound in Concert Halls – 1" The Musical Times, Vol. 122, No. 1655 (Jan., 1981).