Early Music from Germany in the 1930s

Well, I'm back online, thank God, and on a new laptop to boot. So for my first offering post-crisis, something easy for me to prepare, and that means dipping into my reclaimed record pile. These two records are somewhat related, for they both were recorded in Berlin in the 1930s, and they both are of German music of an earlier time. Here are the particulars:

Gluck: Don Juan - Selections from the Ballet (1761)
Hans von Benda's Chamber Orchestra
Recorded November 21, 1935
Victor 13648, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC file, 20.58 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 14.20 MB)

Philipp Heinrich Erlebach: Suite No. 3 in C Major (1693)
Kammermusikkreis Scheck-Wenzinger
Recorded October, 1938
HMV EH 1221, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC file, 23.65 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 13.46 MB)

As will be seen in the picture above, Victor did not deign to correctly identify Herr von Benda's orchestra, substituting instead its own pseudonym in something reminiscent of the days of acoustical recording. Irving Kolodin, in his 1941 Guide to Recorded Music, rightfully took a dim view of this, praising the performance (and giving the conductor his rightful credit) while commenting, sourly, about the "implication of the label that it was made in America by a conductor so obscure that his name need not be mentioned...Surely Victor cannot expect us to endorse such feeble anti-Nazism as this evasion of a reasonable responsibility."

Sanromá and the Boston Pops

Puerto Rico-born Jesús Maria Sanromá (1902-1984) was for 20 years the official pianist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  While in this capacity, he recorded six concerted works for piano and orchestra with the Boston Pops under Arthur Fiedler, one each year between 1935 and 1940.  This is the offering from 1938, the Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor, taken from a slightly worn copy of Victor set AM-780.  The concerto takes 5 sides of the three records; on the last side is a solo recording by Sanromá of two of Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words":

Link (FLAC files, 52.04 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 26.98 MB)

This might be my last post for a couple of weeks, as I have been asked to perform the solo harpsichord part of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 with a local community orchestra on Oct. 24, and preparing this will be taking up most of my free time between now and then.  So to tide everybody over, here are links to all the Arthur Fiedler-Boston Pops recordings I had transferred and posted previously to RMCR, one of them another of the Sanromá piano concertos:

Gluck-Mottl: Ballet Suite No. 1
Recorded March 24, 1940
Victor Musical Masterpiece set M-787 (2 records)
Link (FLAC file, 39.29 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 21.07 MB)

Khatchaturian: Masquerade Suite (Waltz, Nocturne, Mazurka, Romance, Galop)
Recorded June 18, 1947
RCA Victor set DM-1166 (2 records)
Link (FLAC file, 43.13 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 20.92 MB)

MacDowell: Piano Concerto No. 2 in D minor, Op. 23 (with Jesús Maria Sanromá)
and
Ibert: Divertissement
Recorded July 1, 1936
Victor Musical Masterpiece set M-324 (5 records)
Link (FLAC files, 89.35 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 46.28 MB)

Rossini-Britten: Matinées Musicales (March, Nocturne, Waltz, Pantomime, Moto perpetuo)
and
Rossini-Britten: Soirées Musicales - Tarantella
Recorded June 21, 1947
RCA Victor set DM-1204 (3 10-inch records)
Link (FLAC files, 38.9 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 19.2 MB)

And, one with the Fiedler Sinfonietta (a chamber orchestra composed of Boston Symphony players);

Telemann: Don Quichotte Suite
Recorded March 21, 1940
Victor Musical Masterpiece set DM-945 (2 records)
Link (FLAC file, 40.43 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 16.86 MB)