Tom,
You're most welcome.
Here's an oddity that might interest you. George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra (under the name Music Appreciation Orchestra and His Symphony Orchestra) made a number of recordings for Music Appreciation Records between 1954 and 1955. As I understand it, they were actually recorded by Columbia Records, due to a joint arrangement between Book-of-the-Month-Club and Columbia House Record Club. Szell's first stereo recordings for MAR were made October 19, 20 and 21, 1955. He recorded Brahms Academic Festival Overture and Haydn Variations, Mozart Symphony No. 39, Schumann Symphony No. 4 and Stravinsky Firebird Suite. (I'm not certain the Brahms and Mozart were released in stereo on LP, but the Schumann and Stravinsky were.) Yet he didn't record in stereo for Epic/Columbia until February 22 and 23, 1957 for Columbia, making only mono recordings for them in 1955 and 1956. (Columbia's first acknowledged stereo recording was Leonard Bernstein
conducting the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra in Handel's Messiah on December 31, 1956.)
This raises some interesting questions. Did Columbia indeed record the MAR Szell recordings? If so, why did they not use their stereo recording capability again until December, 1956? If not, then who did?
By any chance, do you know, Dennis (Rooney)?
Jon Samuels
--- On Tue, 9/25/12, Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] early stereophony
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Tuesday, September 25, 2012, 6:37 AM
Jon, thanks for all this information. Fascinating and educational.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jon Samuels" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2012 12:39 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] early stereophony
Ironically, the only surviving RCA document that mentions the existence of binaural recording is the October 1953 Stokowski session I mentioned in an earlier post, which is labelled "binaural experiment". Naturally, none of those tapes have been located to date.
Jon Samuels
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