Thanks, Don, I knew I had the Philadelphia on CD somewhere. I think I had read somewhere that this set included these masterings for the first time but I guess they were just referring to the remastering and not the recordings themselves. 

db

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> On Mar 27, 2014, at 8:23 AM, Don Cox <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
>> On 27/03/2014, DAVID BURNHAM wrote:
>> 
>> As I've mentioned here before, I've recently purchased the Westminster
>> box set, the Mercury Vol. 1 & 2, (but I haven't gotten 2 yet), and
>> most interesting, the latest incarnation of the complete Toscanini.
>> I'm amazed by the range of qualities of remastering in the Toscanini
>> set. Some are dreadful, like the late '40s early '50s versions of the
>> Beethoven Symphonies. These are painfully over-modulated with the
>> tympanies regularly going into distortion, (I didn't recognize the
>> names of the remastering engineers on these ones). One advantage of
>> this set is that it includes the recordings by the Philadelphia
>> Orchestra and the BBC Orchestra which weren't included in the '90s
>> set. The Philadelphia recordings are a marvel of recorded sound, high
>> fidelity even by today's standards, considering that these recordings
>> were made at roughly the same time as the wretched sounding Horowitz
>> Tchaikovsky concerto which was such a popular album; I've never heard
>> a
>> definitive version of why these were rejected for issue when they
>> were recorded. The first story I heard was that the recordings were
>> defective and unusable. This seems absurd since RCA had been recording
>> this orchestra in this hall probably more than they had recorded any
>> other orchestra - they should have been able to record them in their
>> sleep! The Mendelssohn "Midsummer Night's Dream" would have been a
>> particularly useful set to have on the market since nobody had
>> recorded this much of the score before. Also it's strange that, if
>> these records weren't to be issued, that Toscanini didn't re-record
>> the material with the NBC until several years later. 
> 
> I have the complete 1990s edition (in its special case), and it does
> include all the Philadelphia recordings, on four CDs.
> 
> My impression is that the problem with these recordings was that the 78
> rpm discs had very large numbers of clicks, because substandard wartime
> materials were used. The 1990 transfers do have very clicky backgrounds.
> 
> I have the 2006 transfers in a 3-CD set. These are DSD transfers. The
> clicks are all gone and the string sound is much improved.
> 
> Presumably the 2006 transfers are the ones used for the current complete
> edition.
> 
> Regards
> -- 
> Don Cox
> [log in to unmask]