The BSO's Basement Tapes
If you're an orchestra junkie, there's some interesting news out of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
The BSO has finished a six-month project to restore a group of audio tapes - which include a world premiere of Milhaud's Sixth Symphony and Leonard Bernstein performing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-Flat - taken from concerts between 1951 and 1959.
The bad news: You can't actually buy or download any of the music taken from the 229 reel-to-reel tapes of the BSO and Pops recording off radio broadcasts by amateur audio engineer Robert Waddell. To listen, you'll have to call and make arrangements with Bridget Carr, the BSO's archivist.
"The recordings are great," Carr told me. "It's one of about five or six collections we have that document a time when there wasn’t an official radio broadcast archive, so yes, they’re treasures for us. We chose this collection because it was recorded so well but we’ll be seeking funding to preserve and reformat the others in the future."
The recordings were found by a couple in Fremont, New Hampshire who purchased Waddell's house in 1996. Two years later, they donated the collection to the BSO. Why do they matter so much? Because a 1961 fire at WGBH destroyed most of the broadcasts made over the previous decade.
The Waddell tapes captured 125 selected BSO concerts led by Charles Munch. They include the world premiere performances of Walter Piston’s Symphony No. 6 (November 26, 1955), Darius Milhaud’s Symphony No. 6 (October 8, 1955), and Bohuslov Martinu’s Fantasies Symphoniques (January 8, 1955). There's also Bernstein conducting and performing the Mozart concerto on March 1, 1952 and a recording of WGBH’s first radio broadcast on October 6, 1951.
For this project, the BSO worked with Philadelphia's Safe Sound Archive, digitizing the recordings at 96 kHz, 24 bit resolution in .wav format. The Grammy Foundation provided the money needed to do the project.
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And this is one of the great tragedies of the music industry right now. If the BSO had a contract with a label, even a minor one, you can bet that there would be some incentive to get these recordings available. As it is, they fall in that gap between "public domain" recordings of the sort that show up on Archive.org and the newer commercial recordings, which are almost all made anywhere but here.
Indeed, a tragedy. The treasures they hold in their archives are not doing anything for music appreciation or the public that would enjoy great performances, including those that came after the period referenced in this story. The recordings remain in an archive...for whom? If they cannot be listened to or enjoyed without really being made available, their value is diminished. The BSO would be wise to make recordings available, for a fee, of course, so the public can enjoy great music expertly performed by a great ensemble led by a generation of great conductors. Here is a wonderful opportunity for the BSO....missed.
This is wonderful, of course.
Let me ask a few questions:
This would be very early mono FM? FM stereo? Or is it a clean AM mono signal?
Did Mr. Waddell have a 1/2 track or a 1/4 track deck in his home?
Did he record these at 3 3/4 ips or 7 1/2 ips?
I am guessing the former because of length.
I have not seen these aspects addressed, but I admittedly have not looked at every possible source. Anybody know?
Regarding the previous comment, FM stereo was not available till about 1963 and stereo tape recorders for consumer use were not common much before that.
So these were hopefully made by a 50s "HiFi" enthusiast with a good FM tuner and good mono tape recorder. Most for home use were 1/2 track mono with the tape being recorded both directions.
FM and still some AM stations took quality seriously in the 50s, and getting an excelent recording of a symphony off the air was considered a serious expression of dedication to ones hobby then.
So if everything was "right" regarding the broadcast quality and his reception and tape machine these could potentially be very Hi Fi even by today's standards. Pity they are not available.
Type your comment here...
Once again, the lack of easy access to these recordings hurts the orchestra, scholars, enthusiasts and the cause of classical music in general. We couldn't be happier that these unique documents survive at all; we rage against the restrictions on having them available for study and enjoyment. The current situation is just plain wrong.
Like anyone who knows about the Munch/BSO premiere recordings of many of these works, I've been waiting for years to see them available. These days, I would prefer a .wav hi-fi download of a full range analog recoding. Until that's available, I have to labor over a transfer from my copy of a vinyl LP of the Piston and Martinu 6ths(one track needs to be done over due to a skip).
The Philadelphia Orchestra has recordings available for download at its website. Some of them are available in FLAC, the other lossless software. It would be great if more orchestras made their recordings available, especially of the works they debuted.
This blogger might want to review your comment before posting it.
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