Leopold Stokowski -
Philadelphia Orchestra
Recordings of 1926
Stokowski in the 1920s (possibly by Elias Goldensky)
1926 Stokowski Electrical Recordings move to
the Academy of Music, Philadelphia
In the Spring of 1926, the Victor Talking
Machine Company agreed to install Westrex
electrical recording equipment in the basement
of the Philadelphia Orchestra's home in the
Academy of Music, Philadelphia. This was
one of the important improvements to Philadelphia
Orchestra recordings during the Stokowski era,
second only to the revolutionary change from
acoustic to electrical recording.
Not only was the equipment seemingly better,
technically, than the system that the orchestra
was recording on in Camden, but also the
beautiful acoustics of the hall of the Academy
of Music added an openness and atmosphere to the
recordings missing from the relatively dead
acoustics of the Camden Church Studio.
Raymond Sooy, the pioneering recording engineer
of Victor wrote of these initial recording
sessions in his memoires: "...
June 10, 1926: This was the first date of
recording the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra at
the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. Up
until this time, all Philadelphia Symphony
Orchestra records were recorded at our studio in
Camden, N.J. The above date proving very successful, we have
continued to make all recordings of the
Orchestra at the Academy of Music, using the
complete Orchestra of 110 musicians. The
first selections recorded: "Sounds from the
Vienna Woods" and "The Blue Danube Waltz."
2
June 10, 1926 - Recordings of two Johann
Strauss II Waltzes
These June 10 recordings were of two
waltzes by Johann Strauss II: 'On the Beautiful
Blue Danube' (An der schönen blauen Donau), and
'Tales from the Vienna Woods' (Geschichten aus
dem Wiener Wald). Although the
waltzes are substantially cut so that each
waltz will fit on a very full side of a 12 inch
Victor Red Seal disk, the arrangements are fully
satisfying.
These 1926 recordings were so successful,
acoustically and financially, that all the
Philadelphia orchestra recordings for the next 5
years were made in the Academy. In 1931,
recording sessions were moved back to the Camden
Church Studio no 2, because of depression
economics.
These two recordings of Johann Strauss II waltzes are lush and plush,
with the Philadelphia strings, including now
prominent celli and bass strings
giving polished, if muscular
performances. Also, the sound of the electrical
recording in the Academy of Music in 1926 is
light years ahead of the Blue Danube recording
of 8 years earlier, in 1919. (Stokowski had
also attempted a recording of the Tales from the
Vienna Woods in May, 1920, never released.)
Click on the links
below to hear these famous waltzes, issued on a
double faced Victor 6584 matrix CVE 22825 (Blue
Danube), and CVE 35182 (Vienna Woods).
Following these successful first Academy of
Music recordings, on November 10, 1926
Stokowski and the Orchestra recorded one of
Stokowski's favorite Tchaikovsky works: the
suite from the Nutcracker ballet (opus 71a).
Stokowski had previously attempted to record
several movements from Tchaikovsky's Suite from the
Nutcracker ballet beginning with his very first
Philadelphia Orchestra recording sessions in October, 1917. At that
time, he made recordings of the 'Dance of the
Sugar Plumb Fairy' and of the 'Trepak' Russian
Dance, which were apparently unsuccessful, and
not released. Similarly, in 1921 Stokowski
attempted, unsuccessfully, the 'Waltz of the
Flowers'.
Then in February and April, 1921, he attempted
to record the Dance of the Flutes,
unsuccessfully, prior to the successfully
released recording of this movement in February
13, 1922.
An example of the
difficulties of recording, even with the
electrical process was the celesta. In this
1926 recording, the celesta was played by Gustave
A. Loeben, who played by cello and keyboard in the
orchestra for 35 years, 1919-1954.
The recording of the celesta required the
difficult compromise between making the celesta
audible, versus picking up the internal mechanism of this
light instrument. We can imagine how recording
the celesta would have been well beyond any ability of the
acoustic process to capture.
This 1926 recording
of the Nutcracker was originally released as
three separate disks,
Victor 6615, 6615 and 6617. Then, in 1928 when
Victor began to issue the famous series
of Victor Albums titled "Musical Masterpiece
Series", the Nutcracker became Victor M-3, which
remained in the Victor catalog until in
early 1935, the Stokowski - Philadelphia
recording which had been recorded the previous
November was released.
The sound and performances of these items from
the Nutcracker remain thrilling today, and
demonstrate just how extensive were the advances
of the Victor engineers and of Stokowski in the
year since the first 1925 electrical recordings.
No doubt, recording in the Academy of Music was
also a favorable factor in both the sound and
the musicality of these performances.
Konstantin Ivanov concept for the original production of
Act 2 of The Nutcracker 1892
The music from the Nutcracker, below, is
organized into two parts. Part 1 includes
the first three sides of the Victor album, which
includes:
- Miniature Overture (Ouverture miniature)
- March (Marche)
- Dance of the
Sugar Plum Fairy (Danse de la fée Dragée)
- Trepak - Russian Dance (Danse russe).
Part 2 includes music from the final three sides of the album:
Later in 1926, Stokowski and the Philadelphia
Orchestra made another electrical recording
that, like the Strauss Waltzes, was destined to
be a long and best selling recording in the
Victor Red Seal library. This was the Liszt
Hungarian Rhapsody for piano no 2,
apparently orchestrated in this recording by
Stokowski, rather than the Karl
Müller-Berghaus orchestration which he used for
the 1920 acoustic recording. Stokowski's
orchestration performance sets of this Liszt
work, with his cuts reside in the Leopold
Stokowski Collection at the University of
Pennsylvania Library.
The Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody was recorded on
November 18, 1926 and March 10, 1927.
The restored recording in the links, below, were done by the mastering and restoration
engineer Marcos Abreu, and is an excellent and also subtle restoration. You can
contact him at Marcos Abreu - Audio mastering and restoration services, email
address:
mastering@terra.com.br
Thanks Marcos !
Recall that in 1919, the second year of Stokowski's recordings, he made
a remarkably successful recording of Wagner's Overture to Rienzi, cut
to fit on two 12 inch Red Seal sides. On November 18, 1926, the same day
as the first work on the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody no 2, Stokowski and the
Philadelphians began the recording of the full Rienzi Overture on three
sides. Sides 2 and 3 were completed on January 6,
1927. These recording dates do present a problem in that the
acoustics, or perhaps the microphone placement is different for the 1926
and 1927 recording sessions. Also, there are pitch differences among
the three sides which must be compensated. However, the result is a
grand performance, and the sound, if equalized, is excellent.
I believe you will find this recording to be an electrifying performance,
with good sound. Listen to Sol Caston's beautiful, exposed trumpet
solo of the A natural note which begins
this Overture. What a virtuoso orchestra !
Although the 1919 performance was excellent in both sound (for the acoustic
period) and performance, the recording progress demonstrated by the 1926
recording is striking. As a dramatic example of the progress in musical
reproduction represented by the introduction of electrical recording
by Victor, listen to the passage beginning about 2 minutes into the
Rienzi Overture in the 1919 recording, followed immediately by the
same brief passage from the 1926 recording. Of course, you would
expect a marked improvement, but you may find the contrast more dramatic
than you would have expected. Click the link below to compare.
Wagner's Rienzi Overture was recorded by the Philadelphia Orchestra
and Stokowski on November 18, 1926 and January 6, 1927, during the
same sessions when the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody no 2, and the closing
scene from Wagner's Götterdämmerung were recorded.
The Rienzi Overture was issued on three 12 inch sides of Victor 6624 and 6625
A, coupled with the closing scene from Die Götterdämmerung, recorded
also at the January 6, 1927 session. The three sides were from
matrices CVE 37004-1 (from the November 18, 1926 session), and
CVE 37700-1 and CVE 37701-2 from the January 6, 1927 session. These
recordings were issued in April, 1927.
2 Sooy, Raymond.
Memoirs of my Recording and Traveling Experiences for
the Victor Talking Machine Company. Manuscript,
not dated, but ending with events of 1931. An
important contribution to the history of recording,
the David Sarnoff Library edited and reproduced these
memoires on their website. http://www.davidsarnoff.org/soo-maintext.html
Note on listening to the Stokowski recordings:
The recordings in this site are files in mp3 format (128 mbps)
encoded from my recordings. Links to the mp3 files are located in two places:
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
Stokowski in the 1920s (possibly by Elias Goldensky)
