"The Origin of Fire" was reissued by Varèse, and I've used a copy of their
LP to play in lectures about the Cincinnati Symphony/local recording history
before. I'd like a second opinion as the Varèse LP is ticky and I don't
recall their releasing it on CD. Their CDs are impossible to obtain at a
reasonable
price these days, IMHO.

Varèse reissued "The Origin of Fire" from a master provided by Don Gabor
himself -- I hope that they didn't give it back!

David N. Lewis
Hamilton, OH

On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 12:36 PM, Steven Smolian <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> 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
> >
>