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On Wed, 3 Mar 2004, Mike Richter wrote: > When he was mustered out of the army in 1945, my friend joined the NBC > Symphony and remained with them until they finally disbanded. He was also > an audio engineer and, among other things, 'moonlighted' with RCA and > maintained Toscanini's sound system. Following the Maestro's death, there > was a memorial concert at Carnegie Hall on 3 February 1957 in which Charles > Munch conducted "La Mer"; Pierre Monteux conducted "Enigma Variations"; and > Bruno Walter led the Beethoven 3rd Symphony. snip > Nor does he plan to do anything with his other recordings - much of the > RCA/NBC classical and jazz programming of the latter 40s and 50s, plus some > of the non-broadcast material since he had come to know the musicians so well. > > At any rate, from the half dozen tapes he's digitized and sent me on CD, I > know that the collection is priceless. Unfortunately, when his time comes, > they are likely to be scrapped. His wife has long decried his wasting time > on this sort of thing and I doubt that others could persuade her to do much > with the assortment. My guess is that they won't be passed along to an > institution, but even if they were to be, how could such material be evaluated? snip > Sorry for the anecdote, but I wanted to share my frustration. He hasn't > even catalogued his tapes, let alone investigated questions of rights. And > he's quite stubborn enough to refuse to do so right up to the end. Thanks for sharing this story, not totally unlike scenarios I have encountered. Karl