More Victor Numerical Set Listings

As a sort of appendix to my post earlier this week of my listing of Victor Musical Masterpiece sets, I present listings of four contemporaneous classical and semi-classical series.  These are:

1) The Concert Series (C-1 to DC-45), a semi-classical line featuing many Gilbert & Sullivan sets;
2) The Black Label Classics (G-2 to DG-32), begun in 1940 as a cheap classics line, but which morphed into yet another semi-classical series;
3) The "Victor Showpiece" Sets (SP-1 to SP-16), a short-lived series of two-record sets presented in colorful gatefold paper folders; and
4) The "Red Seal Deluxe" Sets (V/DV-1 to V/DV-30), classical sets pressed in red vinyl.

As with the other listings, this is downloadable as a PDF file:

Link (PDF file, 69 KB)

The First Recording of a Bach Orchestral Suite, via the Library of Congress

I have only within the last 24 hours discovered the joys of the Library of Congress' "National Jukebox."  Despite the rather appalling name, the "National Jukebox" is a treasure trove of early recordings, which can be streamed, but not downloaded - though the playlist feature enables one to hear the streamed recordings in any order one wishes.  At present some 10,000 sides are available, most if not all of them Victor recordings from the acoustic era.  I have taken advantage of the playlist feature to create a playlist containing what seems to me, as a devout Bachoholic, to be one of the most important recordings on the website - that of the Bach Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D, BWV 1068, recorded in 1917 by the Victor Concert Orchestra under Josef Pasternack (though, apparently, Rosario Bourdon actually conducted the last of the four sides).  This is the first recording of a Bach orchestral work with pretentions to completeness, or at least the first Bach orchestral work recorded by an orchestra (since the famous 1915 Kreisler-Zimbalist recording of the Double Concerto, also accessible through the website, was accompanied by a string quartet).  The Overture is cut to fit one side - twelve bars are cut from the end of the fast section and the final slow section isn't played - but the remainder of the work is complete, even to the repeats.  A fascinating glimpse into how Bach was played a hundred years ago - when Bach was played at all!  This was very unusual repertoire for the time.

Link to Library of Congress playlist

Victor Musical Masterpiece 78 Sets: A Numerical Listing

I'm back, folks!  I certainly didn't mean to let this much time elapse since my last posting, but I assure you I have been far from idle.  I have merely been working on a companion for the Columbia numerical listing of the last post, and here it is.  This is a similar listing of all Victor Musical Masterpiece sets from its inception in 1927 to its demise in 1951 (actually it was merely transferred to 45 rpm, and then to LP, but that is beyond the scope of this listing), as before downloadable as a PDF document.  There are quite a few gaps in the sequence, especially in the M-900s and the DM-1400s, so anyone with information on those entries which I have had to mark "unknown" is invited to come forward.  Meanwhile, here's the link to this work-in-progress:

Link (PDF file, 624 KB)

Postscript: Someone did very kindly come forward, and so, as of March 5. 2012, the file has been updated with the new information that has been made available to me.

Columbia Masterworks 78 Sets: A Numerical Listing

This is my first foray into discography by means of this blog.  I present here a listing of all US Columbia Masterworks 78-rpm album sets known to me between 1924 (when the series began) and 1951 (when the series effectively ended with the takeover of LP), in numerical order, downloadable as a PDF document.  All 1,000+ regular series sets (prefixed "M-" from 1939 on), as well as all 33 Opera sets and all 355 "X-" sets (two-record sets) are included, and for us Steinweiss fans, data on which sets are known to me to be graced with his inimitable cover designs.   Individual record numbers for each set, manual and automatic sequence, are given, but not matrix numbers or recording dates, most of which can be found on the CHARM website anyway.  This is intended to be a checklist printable on 66 pages of letter-size paper, not a complete discography, but I hope it will prove useful for collectors nevertheless.

Link (PDF file, 580 KB)

Weingartner in 18th Century Music

The Austrian conductor Felix Weingartner (1863-1942) is best-remembered for his interpretations of 19th Century masters, especially Beethoven and Brahms (he was the first to record all nine Beethoven symphonies), but he was equally adept in earlier music.  Recently, Satyr gave us Weingartner's fine version of Mozart's 39th Symphony (from a pioneering 1923 recording, one of five complete symphonies Weingartner recorded acoustically), and so I answer with three works: the famous "Toy Symphony" formerly attributed to Haydn but now thought to be by one Edmund Angerer, a brisk, no-nonsense version of Mozart's "Eine kleine Nachtmusik," and a rarely-heard set of selections from Handel's opera "Alcina."  The details and links to the downloads:

Haydn [attrib.]: Toy Symphony
Symphony Orchestra conducted by Felix Weingartner
Recorded April 7, 1931
Columbia 7242-M, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC file, 19.71 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 8.04 MB)

Mozart: Serenade in G, K. 525 ("Eine kleine Nachtmusik")
London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Felix Weingartner
Recorded February 17, 1939
Columbia Masterworks set MX-187, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 32.37 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 15.38 MB)

Handel: Alcina - Dream Music and Ballet Music
Paris Conservatory Orchestra conducted by Felix Weingartner
Recorded July 21, 1939
Columbia Masterworks set X-164, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 34.14 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 18.06 MB)

A Survey of Victor's Generic Covers, Part 2

In the last post I showed examples of the initial group of generic covers used for Red Seal album sets, all of them unveiled at the time when the brand name of the label was still officially just "Victor."  In the spring of 1946, "RCA" was added to the head of the brand name, making it "RCA Victor."  (The last Victor 12-inch Red Seal record I have seen with a "Victor-only" label is 11-9155, "The Bells of St. Mary's" and "The Lord's Prayer," by the Victor Chorale under Robert Shaw.  11-9156 is the first record of M-1050, the Bach Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 3 and 4 by the Boston Symphony under Koussevitzky, an issue of May 1946.) Sometime thereafter, four new generic cover designs were unveiled, using the new brand name in a box, with a full-color representation of Nipper in another box to the right.  Two of these were signed by Frank Decker:

The following design is unsigned, though it looks like another Frank Decker to me:

And the last of these new covers was signed "stahlhut."  This is almost certainly Henry Stahlhut, who also designed covers for magazines like Gourmet and Fortune:

All of these designs, and the ones in the previous post, continued to be used by RCA Victor on 45-rpm sets and even on a few early LPs.

A Survey of Victor's Generic Covers, Part 1

I've been sharing a bunch of Alec Steinweiss' Columbia cover designs lately, including generic ones, and, for a change of pace, offer the answer of Columbia's main competitor, Victor, to some of those designs.  In 1943 Steinweiss unveiled an appealing generic design for back issues in the Columbia catalog to replace the drab "tombstone" cover.  Victor's generic covers were equally drab in the early 40s, but that changed, probably in 1945, with the introduction of four new cover designs signed by Frank Decker.  Here are two of them:

In 1946, the brand name "Victor" officially became "RCA Victor" on the labels and covers, and so the designs were modified, replacing "VICTOR Red Seal Records" with "RCA VICTOR Red Seal Records" in a box and adding a line-drawing of Nipper to the side:

As I said, there were four of these 1945 designs in all, but I do not have the other two in their original "Victor-only" form (though I know they exist, for I have owned examples in the past).  I do have them as 45-rpm sets, however, with the modified form:

There were four additional generic designs a year or two later, which will be the subject of the next installment.

Incidentally, fans of Steinweiss' work will want to obtain the Taschen book, formerly priced at $500 as a limited edition, but now at Amazon for $44.09 in general release.  It's well worth that, and contains over 250 of his cover designs for Columbia, Decca, London and other labels.  A magnificent production indeed!  The Amazon link is here.

Lucien Cailliet's Pictures

Maurice Ravel's 1922 orchestration of Mussorgsky's piano suite, "Pictures at an Exhibition," has for so long been a part of the standard orchestral repertory that one is apt to forget that many other people have tried their hand at orchestrating it too.  Among these were Sir Henry Wood, Leopold Stokowski, and the subject of this week's upload, Lucien Cailliet (1897-1985), French-born American composer, conductor, arranger and clarinettist.  In 1919 he joined the Philadelphia Orchestra in the latter two capacities, and eventually became Eugene Ormandy's orchestrator of choice.  In 1937 his version of Mussorgsky's masterpiece was unveiled and immediately elicited comparison with Ravel's, most of it negative (perhaps unsurprisingly).  Nevertheless it is worth a listen.  There are a few places where I think I actually prefer Cailliet's orchestration (the trombones in "Bydlo" as opposed to Ravel's tuba, for example), and all of the Promenades are there (Ravel had omitted the one before "Limoges").  Judge for yourself - here's the only known recording of this arrangement, made shortly after its première:

Mussorgsky (orch. Cailliet): Pictures at an Exhibition
Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy
Recorded October 17, 1937
Victor Musical Masterpiece set DM-442, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 67.73 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 35.28 MB)

Last summer, I uploaded another Cailliet orchestration conducted by Ormandy, of a suite from Purcell's opera "Dido and Aeneas."  This MP3 file is still available, and a FLAC file has been added:

Purcell (arr. Cailliet): Dido and Aeneas - Suite
Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy
Recorded August 9, 1939
Victor Musical Masterpiece set M-647, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 38.55 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 20.54 MB)

Kempff's First "Hammerklavier"

The mightiest of Beethoven's piano sonatas, the "Hammerklavier," was slow to come to records in its original form.  Its first recording, in 1930, wasn't by a pianist at all, but by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Felix Weingartner, in Weingartner's own orchestration.  Then when Artur Schnabel undertook his pioneering cycle of all the Beethoven sonatas, the "Hammerklavier" was one of the last to be released in his series, appearing in 1936 as the tenth of twelve volumes devoted to the sonatas.  About the same time, this utterly different interpretation by Wilhelm Kempff (very controlled, while Schnabel's was hell-for-leather with fistfuls of wrong notes) appeared, the first of three recordings he was to make of the work:

Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-Flat Major, Op. 106 ("Hammerklavier")
Wilhelm Kempff, piano
Recorded c. 1935-36
Brunswick-Polydor set BP-4, five 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 102.02 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 45.44 MB)

Jean Sibelius, when Kempff visited him in Finland, requested that he play the slow movement of the "Hammerklavier."  When Kempff finished, Sibelius said, "You did not play that as a pianist but rather as a human being."

This set was one of only eight that American Brunswick presented as album sets in about 1937, in its new red-label Brunswick-Polydor series.  The entire series was withdrawn after the American Record Corporation (at the time, the parent company of both Brunswick and Columbia) was sold to CBS a year later.