Virgil Thomson in Philadelphia

I am bringing this file LP to you courtesy of my friend Joe Serraglio. I asked Joe if I could present it here because it is an important and somewhat rare record, and because I wanted to feature Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

The first side of this record contains music from Virgil Thomson's score for Louisiana Story, a 1948 film by Robert Flaherty. The filmmaker was famous for documentaries, but this was a fictional treatment of a story involving an oil crew and a young Cajun boy. The film, funded by Standard Oil, was so successful in aping the documentary style that it is still mistakenly called a documentary today.

Thomson himself had experience with Pare Lorentz's documentaries in the 1930s, and this music is in a somewhat similar style. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Thomson in 1949. The Philadelphians recorded both the soundtrack to the film and this suite, which uses a somewhat augmented instrumentation. The sessions for this recording were in May 1949 in the Academy of Music. In addition to the music captured here, Thomson also prepared a set of Acadian Songs and Dances from the film. I will be presenting these pieces at a later date in the the 1952 Little Orchestra Society/Thomas Scherman recording.

On the other side of the LP at hand, Thomson conducts the orchestra in five of the many "portraits" he composed of friends and associates for diverse instrumental forces. This set was recorded in May 1945 and originally issued on 78.

Joe has shared this recording elsewhere, so for those of you who have seen it before, the only difference here is that I have re-equalized Joe's excellent transfer a bit, and cleaned up the covers.

Thanks again to Joe!