Digression No. 21

I wanted to mention a few things that aren't in the nature of a regular post but might be of interest to some of you.

First, a while back I posted Rolf Liebermann's Concerto for Jazz Band and Symphony Orchestra in the Sauter-Finegan/Chicago Symphony-Fritz Reiner recording from 1954. Ricardo (aka Rich) left a comment that he had the rare stereo tape version of that recording, and now he has made it available via the symphonyshare Google group. Rich has kindly consented to let me repost the link. Thanks Rich!

In response to a request over at a usenet classical music site, I recently transferred the New York Philharmonic/Artur Rodzinski recording of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll, from February 1945. The sound on my early LP pressing is fairly rough, so I am not going to make the transfer a regular post at this blog, but here is a link for those who might want to hear the performance, which is quite good. (See label below.) Rodzinski is another musician who deserves more notice - several of his New York recordings are available via this blog.

I did also want to mention that a notable new archive is now on line at CHARM - the AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music, a consortium of several London educational institutions. The new archive makes available about 5,000 recordings by musicians of Britain and Ireland from the first half of the last century, focusing on materials that have not been transferred before.

I have pulled a number of fine items from the site already - Isolde Menges' recording of The Lark Ascending with Sargent conducting, Boyd Neel's recording of a Vaughan Williams Hymn Tune Prelude, and two folk songs in a setting by William Alwyn for harp and viola. I was particularly interested in the latter because I just read an article on the violist, Watson Forbes, in the Classical Record Collector. The transfers of all of these are quite good. I went ahead and redid the latter record to my own tastes, and thought a few of you might be interested. The music is rare and very lovely. The harpist is Maria Korchinska. Here's the link.