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Leopold Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Chronological Discography of Acoustic Recordings 1917-1924
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Leopold Stokowski - Chronological Discography of Acoustic Recordings 1917 to 1924
Leopold Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Chronological Discography Acoustic Recordings
Navigation of Stokowski - Philadelphia recordings pages
Stokowski - Philadelphia acoustic recordings 1917-1924
click here to go to all Stokowski - Philadelphia acoustic recordings
Stokowski - Philadelphia electrical recordings 1925-1940
click on the date below
no recordings 1938
Listings of the Musicians of some Famous Orchestras: Click on the link below
This is a chronological listing of the recordings Stokowski made with the Philadelphia Orchestra beginning in October, 1917, his first recording until his last acoustic sessions at the end of 1924. Not included are the numerous recordings of the many sides that Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra tried to make, but which were not successful due to the limitations of the acoustic process 1.
Edward Johnson, the eminent Stokowski scholar states in his notes to the Cala CD 'Stokowski First Releases' (Cala CACD 0502), "...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..."2.
In the chronological discography below, 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 released in the 1920s, are included. This 15% yield during the acoustic period indicates the difficulty faced by Stokowski and the Victor engineers to record even the limited number of Philadelphia Orchestra musicians, cramped together in front of the recording horn with little comfort or ventilation, seeking to capture a musical performance.
The quality and detail of the listing below is totally the result of the masterful and painstaking investigations of the Victor records by John R. Bolig in his The Victor Red Seal Discography Volume 1: Single-Sided Series (1903-1925) and The Victor Red Seal Discography Volume 2: Double-Sided Series to 1930 . These are amazingly detailed and exact listings of the Victor recordings (and any errors remaining in the Chronological Discography, below, are therefore my own errors.) I recommend that anyone seriously interested in these recordings purchase the John Bolig discographies, which are not only excellently done, but endlessly interesting to anyone wishing to explore the treasury of Victor recordings documented in these books.
Note on listening to the Stokowski recordings:
The chronological table of Stokowski recordings, below, provides two links for each recording:
1. The column to the right labeled 'Link' will take you to the page of this stokowski.org site which discusses the recording. Simply click on the word 'Page'.
2. The column to the right labeled 'MP3' gives a link to the file, in mp3 format, of the recording. Simply click on the word 'MP3' to download and listen to the mp3 file.
All the music files linked in the table below are in mp3 format (128 mbps). This means that they are of different sizes, depending on the length of the music. Therefore, when you click on the word 'MP3' to download the music, the time required will depend on the size of the file, and the speed of your internet connection. However, since most of the recordings of this acoustic era are of one 78 RPM side, they are all relatively short (typically 3 MB to 4MB), and should download quickly in a number of seconds, again depending on your internet connection speed.
If you wish to consult the listing of the Stokowski recordings made with the electrical recording process from 1925 to 1940, click on Leopold Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Chronological Discography Electrical Recordings .
Chronological Discography of acoustic Victor Red Seal Acoustic Recordings of Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra
* Harry O. Sooy In his memoires states: "...December 8th, 1924: After considerable work remodeling the 5th floor, Building #15, for an additional Recording Room for the Laboratory, we made our first records of the Philadelphia Orchestra in this studio on this date." 3 I have therefore assumed that the Rachmaninoff recordings later that month were in the same location.
If you wish to consult the listing of the Stokowski recordings made with the Westrex electric process from 1925 to 1940, click on Leopold Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Chronological Discography Electrical Recordings.
Key to Victor Red Seal record size:
The Victor Red Seal records listed on this page are all of either 10 inch or 12 inch diameter, as follows:
10 inch single sided disks: 64000, 66000 series catalogue numbers (matrix numbers beginning with B) 10 inch double sided disks: 900, 1000 series catalogue numbers (matrix numbers beginning with B)
12 inch single sided disks: 74000 series catalogue numbers (matrix numbers beginning with C) 12 inch double sided disks: 6000, 8000 series catalogue numbers (matrix numbers beginning with C)
1 An approximate idea of the recording sessions attempted and works that were attempted can be seen by looking at the many acoustic sessions, from which no recordings were approved by Stokowski. Peruse the superb Stokowski Discography of Stokowski's disks by Enno Riekena. Mr. Riekena, a Stokowski expert and scholar has carefully prepared and researched this discography, including correct names of the works recorded, which may often vary from the title selected by Stokowski or by Victor for the record label. Mr. Riekena's discography includes information on the acoustic recording sessions attempted from which no recording was released. This discography may be found at: http://members.lycos.co.uk/stokowski/
Enno Riekena also publishes his own CDs of Stokowski broadcasts which you can see at his The Leopold Stokowski Site http://www.geocities.com/stokowskisite/
2 Johnson, Edward. Notes to 'Stokowski First Releases'. CALA Records CACD 0502. London. 1995. The Cala website is at http://www.calarecords.com/
3 Sooy, Harry O. Memoir of my Career at Victor Talking Machine Company 1898-1925. Manuscript, not dated, but ending with events of 1925. Another important record of the history of recording, on the David Sarnoff Library website: http://www.davidsarnoff.org/sooyh-maintext1909.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:
First - in the page covering the year of the recording. For example, links to a 1926 recording are found in the page: 1926 - Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Recordings
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
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Description of Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Discographies
Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Chronological Acoustic Discography
Stokowski, Dr. Harvey Fletcher and Experimental Recordings of Bell Laboratories
Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Chronological Electrical Discography
Camden Church Studio and other Victor Talking Machine Recording Locations
( No Recordings in 1938 )
Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra Bibliography, Sources and Credits
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