1917 to 1924: Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra Acoustic Recordings
In this portion of the Leopold Stokowski site, devoted to his acoustic recordings with the
Philadelphia Orchestra, seven different pages (linked below) offer descriptions of
all the acoustic recording sessions of Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra, issued on
Victor Red Seal disks, from 1917 through to the end of acoustic recordings by Victor in late 1924.
Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra worked intensively to record these acoustic disks at a time
when the technology required uncomfortable recording conditions, and produced variable sound and results
which were often difficult to predict. Also, Stokowski would need to wait, sometimes weeks to hear
the results, since playing a wax master just after recording would have destroyed the master.
As a result of all these difficulties, and because of Stokowski's high standards,
Edward Johnson, the eminent Stokowski scholar states in his notes to the
CALA CD Stokowski First Releases, "
...Between 1917 and 1924, they made an estimated 450 acoustic recordings, but the old method of playing into a
large horn gave a very poor representation of orchestral sound, and of all their acoustic discs,
only 60 or so were actually issued..." 1.
In the
Leopold Stokowski Chronological Discography of Acoustic Recordings
1917 to 1924
, I count only 69 acoustic sides released by Stokowski, which increase to
71 sides if the two sides of
the first movement of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto no 2, not then released, are included.
This 16% yield during the acoustic period indicates the difficulty faced by Stokowski and a
limited number of musicians, cramped together in front of the recording horn with little comfort or ventilation,
seeking to capture a musical performance.
Limitations to the Acoustic Recording Process
Another limitation associated with the acoustic
process was the range of frequencies which it could
record. The acoustic process range was approximately
200 to 2,400 Hertz (and sometimes less), which is only about three
octaves. Stokowski and the Philadelphians
would have to wait until 1925 for the electrical
recording process to arrive to take reproduction up
to toward the 6,000 hertz range, another octave of
reproduction. This extra octave also provided
the reduced harmonic
distortion and increased transparency of the
electrical process.
There are a pair of famous photographs showing the
Victor Camden studio in Building 15 with an acoustic
configuration, and the same scene with the recording
configuration for the Western Electric Westrex
equipment, including the famous Western Electric 1B
carbon microphone - a 'before and after' set of
photographs. The Westrex configuration is
shown in the web page devoted to the
1925 - Stokowski Other Philadelphia
Orchestra Electrical Recordings.
The acoustic configuration is shown in the photograph below in early 1925.
From other photographs, acoustic sessions of earlier
years were even more cramped.
Note the musicians on various risers, and the Stroh
violins, with horns pointing toward the acoustic
recording horn. That is perhaps Rosario
Bourdon, the artistic director of Victor conducting
the Victor Orchestra.
In addition to the difficulties for the musicians, the
recording engineers had a challenging task which
took trial and error experience to produce better
recordings. For example, in the disk cutting
chamber in the recording room, heat from
incandescent bulbs were typically used to keep the
wax master disks warm on the cutting turntable.
The temperature of the wax master influenced the
surface noise of the groove when cut.
Similarly, at the end of
the recording horn, sound boxes were used with a
diaphragm made of various materials that were
selected to be non-resonant, such as mica. The
diaphragm was linked to the recording horn by rubber
connectors, and the thickness of the diaphragm and
the consistency of the rubber connector were each
selected by the recording engineer to achieve the
best result, again, by trial and error.
These pages also contain mp3 coded reproductions of
each of the Stokowski Victor acoustic recordings
being described. As primitive as these
recordings may on certain occasions be, the reproductions here are
intended to permit Stokowski fans to listen to these
historic Stokowski recordings either from curiosity,
or before purchasing one of the modern CD
transcriptions of classic 78 RPM Stokowski
performances. Also, in some cases, the
recordings are remarkably good, providing enduring
enjoyment and inspiration.
Links to these seven pages of the acoustic Stokowski
recording and also to other parts of this
stokowski.org site are listed below. Click on
the link to go to that page.
Acoustic
Recordings:
The acoustic recordings
of Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra between
1917 and 1924 are grouped by musical gendre and
years, as shown in the page links below.
Please click on the appropriate link.
There are also pages
devoted to each year of Stokowski and the
Philadelphia Orchestra's electrical recordings
beginning in 1925. To investigate
these, please click on the appropriate link below:
In addition, here are
offered a number of pages of information related to
the recordings of Leopold Stokowski and the
Philadelphia Orchestra, as well as listings of the
Principal Musicians of other Major American Symphony
Orchestras.
Second - in the Chronological Discography page.
For example, links to a 1926 recording are also found in the
electrical recordings chronological discography page:
Chronological Discography of Electrical Recordings
This page lists all the electrical recordings from 1925 to
1940 made by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold
Stokowski and issued by Victor, including of course the 1926 recordings.
The mp3 files in this site are encoded at 128 mbps. This means that the
files are of different sizes, according to the length of
the music. For example, the second electrical recording, the
April 29, 1925 Borodin ‘Polovetzki Dances’ is small (3.6MB). In contrast,
the 1929 Le Sacre du Printemps file is large. Le Sacre part 1 is 14MB
and Le Sacre part 2 is 16MB.
This means that a large file will take a longer time to
download, depending on your internet connection speed.
Please keep this in mind when you click to listen to -
download a particularly music file. You may click
the link to the music file, but need to wait a number of
seconds or even minutes to listen to the file.
If you have any comments or questions about this Leopold Stokowski
site, please e-mail me (Larry Huffman) at e-mail address:
leopold.stokowski@gmail.com
