Completely OT: Great Deal on Arturo Toscanini Recordings

Old_Joe

If anyone is interested, Sony is scheduled to re-release the complete boxed set of Arturo Toscanini recordings. This set is the most inclusive that I have yet seen, with 85 cds. It is now available at ⇒ Amazon.

An interesting note: I first ran across this a few days ago on the CD Universe website, and at that time their pre-release price was the same as Amazon's. As of today though, their price has increased from $162 to $309. Don't know, but it's quite possible that Amazon's price may also be increased at some point. Amazon allows a pre-release order which will lock in the current price of about $2.00 per cd. You'll never do better than that!

If interested, don't forget to use the ⇒ MFO link to Amazon. After using the MFO link for Amazon entry, search for B006VKKAWQ, which is the Amazon stock number and will take you directly to this item.

Mindy

Well, I'll say this is more interesting than car talk! (:

scott

...who?

(no really, I have no idea who Arturo Toscanini is.)

Old_Joe

Yes, you're too young to remember the glory days of radio, and the introduction of the 33 1/3 rpm "long-playing" records. Arturo Toscanini was a revered and somewhat controversial Italian conductor, who left Italy in contempt for Mussolini and the fascist government. He came to the United States in the late 30's, and Robert Sarnoff, the head of RCA/NBC at the time, actually created an entire symphony orchestra for him. Imagine that! A broadcaster creating and paying for an entire symphony orchestra! Today, we're lucky if we get one decent series a year from any of them.

The NBC Symphony Orchestra was among the most highly regarded orchestras of the period, and Toscanini naturally produced a large number of radio broadcasts for NBC and recordings for RCA.

I've acquired a fair number of those recordings, and have been working for the past couple of months remastering them into stereo. (Purists will cringe at this, I'm sure.)

Much more at ⇒ Wickipedia, if you're interested.

hank

Reply to @scott: Me either. Guessing opera. I enjoy good music of all kinds. Bought a ton of DVD musicals at Amazon recently. Chicago is a real trip if ya ain't seen it. Kind ya can watch over & over - very funny. My thoughts on that cd collection is who in #*&!** got time to listen to all 75?

Old_Joe

Well, actually he did start in opera, and was a master at that, including being a major influence in the redesign of then-existing opera houses to the type that we have to this day. His conducting career began when he was on tour with an Italian opera company in Rio de Janeiro. The orchestra's conductor quit unexpectedly, and Toscanini, the 19 year old cello player, was placed into the conductor's slot, as he knew the entire score from memory. The rest is history.

hank

Sounds like good stuff. Thanks

msf

Reply to @Old_Joe: I'm not old enough to remember the glory days of radio, but I am old enough to remember all the "stereo enhanced" albums (remastered monophonic recordings) for an extra $1 when stereo became popular. And that does make me cringe - not because I'm a purist, but because I know how bad these can sound.

Regarding being a purist - I'm much more inclined to listen to Stokowski (who was also a principal conductor of the NBC Symphony Orchestra) than to Toscanini - Stokowski being more of a populist conductor, open to transcriptions, reinterpretations, etc. - anything but a purist.

All that said, Toscanini was a genius, and despite his making lots of mediocre recordings along with brilliant ones, this looks like an incredible bargain. I need to get back to discography - I'm beginning to go through my parents' old 78s - maybe I'll find some of these recordings there. And I hadn't realized that Sony (which bought Columbia/CBS) also acquired RCA/Victor/Red Seal a few years ago (Sony is reissuing the collection).

Old_Joe

Hi msf- I certainly agree with you regarding the early analog phony-stereo releases. But you'd be amazed what can be accomplished digitally on a powerful computer- virtually every parameter of the remastering process can be carefully controlled. Still, as insurance, I retain all of the unaltered original mono tracks as well.Time consuming, but challenging and interesting. That's why I am so active on MFO- I keep MFO active in the background while working on the remastering.

Many of the mediocre recordings were made in the infamous Studio 8H, which had virtually no reverb characteristics at all, as it was designed for traditional radio broadcast rather than music. Generally speaking, the recordings made in Carnegie Hall are acoustically much better. I use a totally different setup for remastering the 8H and the Carnegie recordings.

The history of the label is convoluted. In 1986 General Electric purchased what was left of RCA and sold the recording assets to BMG, who later merged with Sony. The early history of the RCA Victor label is well beyond convoluted- byzantine comes to mind. Plenty of info on Wickipedia if you're really interested.

Regards- OJ