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Thought Tom Fine and others might be interested in the recording process for an early LSO recording with Dorati. "The most fascinating period for me in the development of the LSO was during the Mercury recording sessions. in the summers of the late 1950s. Antal Dorati combined intense musical passion and a demand for perfection with a very short fuse and a Hungarian waywardness that gave him unique qualities. In the space of a few hours, his screaming at us, tempered by careful measured criticism from the backstage voice of the oh-so-polite Harold Lawrence, the record producer, polished the orchestra, turning it into the precision machine that can be heard on those records. The Alban Berg op. 6 Three Pieces for Orchestra could not have been played at a concert in those days. The recording was made in sections of as little as 16 or even 8 bars, with every snippet honed to perfection. I remember how my old friend Jay Friedman, of the CSO was so impressed by our playing! I could hardly bring myself to tell him how it was really done. This kind of note-bashing could hardly happen now, in today's LSO, but that kind of training did much to lift the orchestra from being just competent to brilliant." Denis Wick -------------------------- Eric Nagamine