The Incomparable Leon Goossens - Postscript

Leon Goossens

My Christmas present to myself this year was a new turntable - an Audio-Technica LP120 3-speed direct drive unit - meaning that it will no longer be necessary for me to switch out between turntables to handle LPs and 78s (at least, I hope it won't be!).  Here is my first project using the new table: an LP featuring two oboe concertos played by the great Leon Goossens, as a kind of postscript to the transfers of concerto recordings by him that I offered earlier:

Bach-Tovey: Concerto in A, BWV 1055, for oboe d'amore and strings
Recorded June 1, 1949, and July 30, 1952
and
Vaughan Williams: Concerto for Oboe and Strings
Recorded June 16, July 7 and September 1, 1952

Leon Goossens, with the Philharmonia String Orchestra
conducted by Walter Susskind
HMV CLP 1656, one 12-inch LP record
Link (FLAC files, 96.04 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 50.18 MB)

No doubt both of these, like the earlier Goossens concerto recordings, would have been issued as English Columbia 78 sets had not the long-delayed launch of LP by EMI in September 1952 intervened.  As it was, both recordings had to wait eleven years for full issue.  In the case of the Bach, an incomplete issue actually did occur in 1953, on American Columbia (ML 4782) - apparently only the first three 78-rpm matrices of the required four were available to CBS, with the result that the concerto, on that release, cuts off about a minute into the finale!

My best wishes to everyone for a prosperous and collectingful New Year!