1934 Leopold Stokowski Richard STRAUSS DEATH AND TRANSFIGURATION VICTOR M-217

$

35

A series of great  Orchestra Records by great conductors  on 78 rpm records

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Leopold STOKOWSKI conducts Richard STRAUSS

Nietzschean Tone Poem  DEATH & TRANSFIGURATION

Leopold Stokowski And The Philadelphia Orchestra 

This set was the first  where soft fade ins and outs, instead of hard cuts were used.

Stokowski conducted the whole piece, and Victor cut it on two alternating lathes.

Condition: Better than EXCELLENT pristine, plays EXCEPTIONALLY QUIET
ALBUM LIKE NEW


 "In recording Tod und Verklarung, Victor presents an innovation which should be of great interest to music lovers. In the difficult art of recording music there have always been two serious handicaps. One is the necessity for breaking the continuity of music at frequent intervals, often at a point which, although justified by musical logic, causes a sense of shock to the listener. The second tremendous difficulity is the nervous tension brought about among the orchestra men by the sense of responsibility for a perfect record which every sincere musician has.

A method has been found to do away with both of these difficulties to a very marked degree, and this method is exemplified in the recording of Tod und Verklarung. In the first place, the music was played by the orchestra exactly as at a concert; without interruption, except the normal pauses between movements. In this way, after the first two or three minutes, it was possible for the musicians to forget that a recording was in progress, and to play with the freedom, flexibility, and responsiveness characteristic of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Then, instead of abrupt breaks at the end of each record surface, the music is slowly faded out, and on the secceeding record faded in - a process which permits the hearer to prepare himself for the cessation of the music at the end of a record, and which prevents the customary shock of an abrupt stop.

The music is faded out at the end of one record surface and faded in at the beginning of the succeeding one; the entire musical work is presented on the records without distortion. The recording engineers have been careful to fade in the second record surface before starting to fade out the first and, consequently, although it is necessary to manipulate a short phrase at the end of each record, you will find this same phrase played perfectly normally on the suceeding record. Therefore, the entire work, without distortions or manipulations, is presented in a set of records made with the new technique; liberties are taken only in short overlapping parts."

Only a few albums came out with the overlap technique -  the Shostakovich Sym. No. 1 (M-192), the Rachmaninov (M-250) and Tchaikovsky Sym. 5 (M-253).