Fiedler Conducts Grofé, Gershwin and Copland

This post is the result of a request for my help in cleaning up a noisy Internet Archive transfer. The record is Grofé's Grand Canyon Suite, in the recording by the Boston Pops and Arthur Fiedler.

It seems that this is something of a rare item, at least in its stereo incarnation. Apparently it has appeared only twice - on a stereo tape and then on this RCA Victrola reissue.

The original mono issue

The suite was a relatively early exercise in stereo recording by the RCA engineers. It dates from a June 25, 1955 session in Symphony Hall that also produced a reading of Copland's El Salón México, its discmate on the original Red Seal mono issue. You may well have seen the mono LP. It was popular, with its striking photo of the Grand Canyon - much to be preferred to the stereo cover, which has a fuzzy photo of the Pops superimposed on a denatured Grand Canyon.

So, you may ask, why didn't the Victrola reissue include the Copland? I'm not sure, but I don't believe the Copland has ever appeared in stereo, and the Victrola folks must have wanted to include another two-channel recording as a coupling. Thus the inclusion of the 1963 Pops recording of An American in Paris.

RCA has reissued El Salón México in the ersatz "electronic stereo" format, so its stereo master may have been lost or damaged. Or the work may have not been recorded in stereo, although that seems unlikely.

Too bad, because the Grand Canyon Suite is quite a good early stereo recording. These early examples of two-channel recording used simple microphone setups and can provide a convincing facsimile of an orchestra in a concert hall. That's more than can be said of the Gershwin recording, which, while punchy, sounds nothing like the "real thing."

Arthur Fiedler

The download includes the Grofé, Gershwin and Copland works, the latter in unmolested mono, along with the usual scans and reviews. The performances are good, with the characteristic Fiedler drive that never turns brusque.