Things have been acting up with this magic box, so I don't know whether
Roger's message will be forwarded with it. In case it isn't, this has to do
with his question regarding the Fiedler/Boston Pops recording of Grofe's
Grand Canyon Suite made on June 25, 1955. It was indeed recorded in stereo, but
wasn't issued in that form on LP until the 1960s, on Victrola. I don't
have the numbers at hand. Sorry.
The NBC Symphony Orchestra: by 1953/4, NBC wanted to dispense with the
huge expense of maintaining it in a market that was becoming dominated by
television. The orchestra had been created for Toscanini, and when he retired
the NBC people apparently felt no need to continue it without him. And
Cantelli had a big and burgeoning career. I believe there are many details
about this in Harvey Sachs's biography of Toscanini. And probably elsewhere.
Finally, a Chicago Symphony/Reiner tidbit about the Grand Canyon Suite
from those "behind the scenes" in Chicago at the time (1955). The RCA Victor
people first wanted to record it with Fritz Reiner and the CSO. He was
very agreeable to it. (He also enjoyed conducting the music of Gershwin,
Richard Rodgers, and others.) But the dilletantes who ran the CSO board that
such music would be "beneath the dignity" of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
So the RCA people did it with Fiedler and the Pops. And that record sold in
immense numbers and probably made the Boston Symphony a ton of money.
One can just imagine what the music would have sounded like in a
well-engineered RCA Victor Reiner/CSO recording in the pre-1966 "renovated" (i.e.
acoustically semi-destroyed) Orchestra Hall.
Don Tait
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