Dimitri-in-the-Dell

Cover design by Alex Steinweiss
(restored by Peter Joelson)

The spotlight this week is on the great Greek conductor and pianist, Dimitri Mitropoulos (1896-1960), who, at the time of these recordings, was the principal conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony.  Here, however, he is leading the Robin Hood Dell Orchestra of Philadelphia (essentially the Philadelphia Orchestra) in a couple of their earliest recordings under that name.  To simultaneously play and conduct Prokofiev's extremely demanding Third Piano Concerto was a Mitropoulos specialty (he first carried out the feat in Berlin in 1930), and, in fact, I'm unaware of anyone who has done the dual role with this piece since.  (Since writing the above, I've learned that Van Cliburn actually did so, at a 1961 concert in New York that was a memorial for Mitropoulos! Stokowski was supposed to conduct, but was laid up from an accident, so Cliburn, who had taken conducting lessons from Bruno Walter, assumed conducting duties as well.)  And even if there are quite a few wrong notes in this performance, one can't help admiring Mitropoulos' gumption not merely in pulling it off, but in posing the challenge to its only competition in the record catalogues at the time - the composer's own recording of 1932:

Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26
Dimitri Mitropoulos with the Robin Hood Dell Orchestra of Philadelphia
Recorded July 26, 1946
Columbia Masterworks set MM-667, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 71.05 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 38.43 MB)

In the next recording presented here, Mitropoulos reverts to his more accustomed role as conductor only, since for even so prestigious a talent as his, it would have been impossible to play both piano parts as well as conduct in the Mozart two-piano concerto:

Mozart: Concerto for two pianos in E-Flat major, K. 365
Vitya Vronsky and Victor Babin, duo-pianists
Robin Hood Dell Orchestra of Philadelphia conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos
Recorded September 21, 1945
Columbia Masterworks set MM-628, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 61.87 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 36.2 MB)