In his liner notes to "The Birth of the Third Stream" (Columbia CK 64829)
George Avakian touches on, but does not elaborate,
that some experimental stereo recording was made during the June 1957
sessions for the Adventures in Sound LP "Modern
Jazz Concert" but does not elaborate. Back when the CD was released I sent
a query through the Sony grapevine, and what
came back was that the stereo equipment had just arrived at Columbia but no
one really knew how to operate it, and that some
testing was done for the "Modern Jazz Concert" album in stereo, but none
was usable, and none was saved.
I guess they had figured it out at least by the time of Stravinsky's "Agon"
in 1958. If, as Tom said, Mercury was "late in the game"
in 1955 in dealing with the stereo phenomenon, then Columbia was almost not
in the game at all. Personal opinion: Once they did
get it going, stereo did provide for a big boost in their overall
sound quality, though that opinion may be influenced by shoddy
mastering/pressing and the tattered condition of some mono Columbia tapes
that have come down to us.
Uncle Dave Lewis
Lebanon, OH
On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 11:54 AM, Dennis Rooney <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> I found no reference to the MAR items in my archival research on Szell's
> Columbia/Epic recordings. It's entirely possible that RCA recorded them.
> There was great resistance to stereo from Fred Plaut and others. and I
> never found any evidence of experimental binaural setups that preceded
> the*Messiah
> * of Dec. 1956. However, when inspecting the tapes at IMAR, I came across
> an Ormandy/PO recording (I no longer remember the repertoire) recorded
> c1955 in 3-track, 1/4-inch format. The contents were never released.
>
> DDR
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