January 19， 2004 — We are saddened to report the death of Decca recording
engineer Kenneth E. Wilkinson on January 13 at the age of 92， in Norfolk， England. The news was reported by LP historian Michael Gray of The Absolute Sound on the Internet newsgroup rec.audio.high-end.
"Wilkie，" as he was universally known， was one of the driving
forces behind the audio excellence of Decca/London classical recordings
in its "ffrr" and "ffss" heyday， from the 1950s to
1980， when he retired. He started his career at World Echo records in
1927， at the very dawn of electrical recording， and retired just before
the advent of commercial digital recording. He did work on some early Decca
digital projects， however， according to an appreciation by Tony Faulkner
in the July 1981 issue of Hi-Fi News， published to coincide with that
magazine’s giving him one of its annual Audio Awards.
Wilkinson joined Decca in 1931 when Decca acquired the Crystalate Company
for which he was then working. He worked on the development of moving-coil
disc cutting and， during the war years， on the recording of Luftwaffe
nightfighter codes. But it was his work with Arthur Haddy in the mid-1950s， adopting Roy Wallace’s "Decca Tree" microphone array for stereo classical recordings that laid the foundation stone of his career’s golden days， when he recorded literally thousands of orchestral sessions with more than 150 conductors.
No purist， Wilkie augmented the Decca Tree’s three omni microphones with
outriggers and spot mikes—whatever was required to communicate the music.
He felt that a coincident mike technique was not capable of reproducing
a realistic hall sound， with a natural sense of ambience， compared with
techniques using omnidirectional microphones. His own work demonstrates
that thesis: According to an appreciation by producer Tam Henderson， until
recently of Reference Recordings， published by Audiophile Audition in
2003 when they presented Wilkinson with the Walter Legge Award， a Wilkinson
orchestral recording has a "rich balance， which gives full measure
to the bottom octaves， and a palpable sense of the superior acoustics
of the venues he favored."
Wilkie’s favorite of the LPs he worked on was the Decca recording of Benjamin
Britten’s War Requiem (SET 252-3)， as well as Solti’s Grammy-winning
Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique (SXL-65711). I would tip my hat to the series
of recordings he worked on with producer Chuck Gerhardt for The Reader’s
Digest in the 1960s before nominating as my personal favorite the LP of
works by French composers conducted by Gerhardt that RCA released in the
UK in 1978 (Red Seal RL 25094) and that was both engineered and produced
by Wilkinson.
A giant used to walk the world of recording. All we can do is walk in his
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