Wasn't this reissued by Varese?

Steve Smolian

-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Lewis
Sent: Tuesday, January 19, 2016 10:07 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Craft Urania Ballet Mecanique

David,

Thank you! That was exactly what I needed to know. I will probably pick this up, as I really do need a good transfer of "The Origin of Fire," a landmark in Cincinnati based recording as you know.
There is also this download of the original Urania tape, though as they can't spell "Hovhaness" I don't suspect I will follow up -- I'm not really in the download market anyway.

http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/Soundmark%2BRecords/48094

The reason I asked is that I participate in a monthly "Vinyl Night" in Cincinnati and we often memorialize music folk that have passed in the short term. I figure there will be tons of Bowie at the upcoming night so I thought I'd be different and present on Boulez and Craft. Craft's "Ballet Mécanique" is hardly the crisp and disciplined affair that the earlier Surinach version for Columbia is, but it's still fun listening and the airplane sounds defy description. I wanted, though, to determine that there was not more of the piece on the tape than there is on the LP.

For those who might care, a few things about Urania I stumbled upon in the course of looking up this question. Apparently the arrangement that Steve Smolian describes -- combining distribution with Haydn Society -- only lasted from April-November 1955; on November 12, Billboard announced the dissolution of their partial merger with "one of the principals" saying "It just didn't work out."
That doesn't mean, of course, that they didn't try again later, as Steve suggests. However, it would've been without their president and founder Rudolf Koppl, who died October 15, 1956. I wonder how they managed to hang on so long; the best known thing about them is the notorious "Urania Eroica" which Wilhelm Furtwängler sued to suppress in 1954.

best,

Uncle Dave





On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 12:15 AM, david gideon <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> In response to the question raised earlier, I don’t know if Urania
> ever issued this on reel tape but Omega did. You can see a copy of the tape here:
>
> http://www.omegatape.us/stereo2.html#6009 <
> http://www.omegatape.us/stereo2.html#6009>
>
> There is also an mp3 clip posted. Like the LP the Omegatape was
> missing several minutes of music at the beginning. A unique feature of
> this performance was the use of actual airplane sounds rather than
> just the whirring propellors.
>
> ReDiscovery reissued this tape as part of a 20th century CD, one of
> the few titles that is not available as a download (due to the
> prohibitive costs for licensing non-PD music for download; the rates
> are much more reasonable for physical discs). It can be found here:
>
> http://www.rediscovery.us/compilations.html <
> http://www.rediscovery.us/compilations.html>
>
> dg
>
> Yesterday's music in today's sound.
> http://rediscovery.us
>