Double Gould for Double Orchestra

Happy New Year, everyone!  2013 will see some important composer anniversaries - Verdi, Wagner, Britten among them - but the one I'm feeling most enthusiastic about right now is Morton Gould, although his birthday isn't until December!  And so, here's an LP which I don't believe has ever been reissued, featuring two works by Gould which I don't believe have ever been otherwise recorded.  Perhaps understandably so, for both are for double orchestra!  The recording was accomplished, in this case, by overdubbing, something which had long been a standard practice with pop recordings; but the Billboard issue of April 6, 1968, quoted the producer of the album, Roger Hall, as saying that this was the first time RCA's classical division had overdubbed a complete symphony orchestra.  This LP also represented another "first" - it was the Seattle Symphony's first recording for a major label:

Morton Gould: Venice and Vivaldi Gallery
Seattle Symphony Orchestra conducted by Milton Katims
Recorded April 1 and 2, 1968
RCA Red Seal LSC-3079, one stereo LP record
Link (FLAC files [Venice], 139.64 MB)
Link (FLAC files [Vivaldi Gallery], 139.61 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 108.58 MB)

Of the works themselves, I found "Venice" more enjoyable on first hearing, but found that "Vivaldi Gallery" held up a little better on repeated hearings.  Perhaps that's because I found the latter a little bit perplexing when I first heard it - I recognized several of the Vivaldi themes (most notably, from the slow movement of the D major lute concerto) but I was expecting something similar to Stravinsky's "Pulcinella," (or Gould's own "Foster Gallery"), where the source material, though greatly modernized, is structurally left intact, whereas Gould's procedure is more to use the Vivaldi themes as starting points for his own structures.  But enough of my soapbox; listen and judge for yourself!