Live Recordings from the Past

[richardfinegold]

I’ve mentioned the label 78 experience, French Canadian source for concert broadcasts primarily culled from radio performance tapes. I have bought recordings of Karajan, Tennstedt, Monteux, and a few others.
Recently I have bought a few Szell live performances from different venues.
I’m wondering about other prominent contemporaneous conductors who don’t seem to have a presence in live recordings. Ormandy, Bernstein, Solti for starters.
The BBC has of course issuing the work of Boult and many others but I never see a Solti/LPO release. And many Russian conductors concerts became available after the fall of the USSR.
I’m just wondering at these disparities. Live Solti and Ormandy would get my interest

[Pulcinella]

BBC MM put out a cover CD of live recordings by the World Orchestra for Peace, conducted by Solti (Bartok and Rossini; Geneva, 1995) and Gergiev (Stravinsky; St Petersburg 2003).

https://www.discogs.com/release/3918293-Bartók-Stravinsky-Rossini-World-Orchestra-For-Peace-Sir-Georg-Solti-Valery-Gergiev-Concerto-For-Orc

Many of Bernstein's later DG releases were 'live', but I suspect that's not really what you're talking about.

[smittims]

Hans Rosbaud, who came and went on commercial disc, did a lot of work for South-West German radio which has been issued on CD by SWR Media serices. I have his sets of Haydn and Mozart . It may sound strange to today's collectors to describe Haydn as neglected, but Rosbaud's 1950s broadcasts were pioneering. Even a lot of earlier Mozart (pre 1780s) was unplayed.

[Petrushka]

I’ve mentioned the label 78 experience, French Canadian source for concert broadcasts primarily culled from radio performance tapes. I have bought recordings of Karajan, Tennstedt, Monteux, and a few others.
Recently I have bought a few Szell live performances from different venues.
I’m wondering about other prominent contemporaneous conductors who don’t seem to have a presence in live recordings. Ormandy, Bernstein, Solti for starters.
The BBC has of course issuing the work of Boult and many others but I never see a Solti/LPO release. And many Russian conductors concerts became available after the fall of the USSR.
I’m just wondering at these disparities. Live Solti and Ormandy would get my interest

There are a few live Solti discs out there but not much, it has to be said, and you might have to dig a bit to find them.

BBC Legends had/has a Beethoven 'Eroica' from 1968 with the LSO. It's coupled with a Tristan Prelude and Liebestod with Birgit Nilsson and the Covent Garden Orchestra and Siegfried's Rhine Journey both from a 1963 Prom, all in stereo.

The second half of that 1963 Prom was the whole of Act 3 of Gotterdammerung, an absolutely thrilling performance available on Testament. Also on Testament is a live Die Walkure from Covent Garden in 1961 (mono).

The LPO label hasn't done much live Solti at all which is a surprise given how much stuff there must be in the BBC archives. I can only think of a piece by Malcolm Arnold and a Tchaikovsky 6 neither of which I have.

Orfeo released a live Munich Walkure Act 1 from 1947 and also a 1963 Mahler 1 with Vienna Philharmonic but very much doubt if these are available now.

ICA Classics have some on DVD. A Brahms 1 from Edinburgh with the Chicago SO and a London concert with Chicago (at which I was present) which includes the Tchaikovsky 4.

The BBC must have a ton of Solti stuff, both opera and concert tapes. Where are they?

l don't know about any Ormandy sorry.

[smittims]

Radio 3 , sadly, seem quite uninterested in playng their archive recordings. What a wasted opprtunity. I'd love to be allowed a day picking out a selection to re-broadcast. Thank goodness for YouTube where I've found many wonderful examples.

[Petrushka]

Radio 3 , sadly, seem quite uninterested in playng their archive recordings. What a wasted opprtunity. I'd love to be allowed a day picking out a selection to re-broadcast. Thank goodness for YouTube where I've found many wonderful examples.

If they are not interested - and it certainly looks that way - then the BBC should hand over its entire archive to someone who will have it digitally restored and made available to all.

Moves were reported a few years ago that this would be done tied in, I think, to the Genome project but there has been silence ever since. Funding is no doubt an issue.

[mikealdren]

There are some marvellous live Oistrakh performances in the new Warner box, a reminder of just how great a player he was.

[pastoralguy]

There are some marvellous live Oistrakh performances in the new Warner box, a reminder of just how great a player he was.

I’m sure I heard that there’s an Elgar concerto somewhere in a Soviet archive.

[richardfinegold]

I was just reading a review in Gramophone of a Dohnanyi/Cleveland box just issued on Decca. Apparently they had started a Ring Cycle, got halfway through and then Decca dropped the orchestra. They had the option of finishing the cycle on the house label, but would have to use live performances. Dohnanyi refused because he felt only the standards and the environment of the studio would do.
Based on this I would be surprised if a flood of Dohnanyi live material ever becomes available. Otoh Celibidache famously didn’t want to record and felt that a listener should not have the ability to listen repeatedly to the same performance because once it was frozen in time it loses its essence (I may be misstating his position, as I’ve never quite understood it). After Celi died recordings of performances came out in droves. He had created a mystique due in part to his antipathy to recording during his lifetime that paradoxically created a demand for his recorded concert performances.
In their own ways Karajan,Szell, and Celi were Control Freaks. Karajan and Szell did allow at least one live recording-Mahler 9 and 6, respectively-to be issued during their lifetime but they were outliers. In both cases this emphasis on the studio and control was a real loss. The Karajan Mahler symphonies on 78experience feature the odd infrequent cracked trumpet note but otherwise easily best the studio counterparts for intensity. Szell Mozart 40 from Japan crackles with an energy that the studio Cleveland account lacks.
Having heard Solti and the CSO in their salad days I very much regret the relative paucity of live material. And the thought of what must be in the Ormandy and Bernstein vaults tantalizes

[smittims]

Testament issued a fine Ormandy concert from the Royal Festival Hall in 1963, but it's the Philharmonia not the Philadelphia orchestra (SBT2 1053). The programme is Prokofiev's 'classical' symphony, Beethven's 'Emperor' with Rubinstein and Sibelius' second symphony. Testament announced it as 'previously unissued' but in fact the Beethoven had been on a BBC Legends CD a few years before.

[Petrushka]

I was just reading a review in Gramophone of a Dohnanyi/Cleveland box just issued on Decca. Apparently they had started a Ring Cycle, got halfway through and then Decca dropped the orchestra. They had the option of finishing the cycle on the house label, but would have to use live performances. Dohnanyi refused because he felt only the standards and the environment of the studio would do.
Based on this I would be surprised if a flood of Dohnanyi live material ever becomes available. Otoh Celibidache famously didn’t want to record and felt that a listener should not have the ability to listen repeatedly to the same performance because once it was frozen in time it loses its essence (I may be misstating his position, as I’ve never quite understood it). After Celi died recordings of performances came out in droves. He had created a mystique due in part to his antipathy to recording during his lifetime that paradoxically created a demand for his recorded concert performances.
In their own ways Karajan,Szell, and Celi were Control Freaks. Karajan and Szell did allow at least one live recording-Mahler 9 and 6, respectively-to be issued during their lifetime but they were outliers. In both cases this emphasis on the studio and control was a real loss. The Karajan Mahler symphonies on 78experience feature the odd infrequent cracked trumpet note but otherwise easily best the studio counterparts for intensity. Szell Mozart 40 from Japan crackles with an energy that the studio Cleveland account lacks.
Having heard Solti and the CSO in their salad days I very much regret the relative paucity of live material. And the thought of what must be in the Ormandy and Bernstein vaults tantalizes

There's a live Bernstein Mahler 1 with the Concertgebouw in the RCO 125 box together with a Schubert 5. The Mahler has an intensity and excitement that beats the DG issue even though that itself was taken from live performances! Wasn't there live Bernstein in the NYPO box?

The live BPO/Karajan box from Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings is on the way to me so that's something to look forward to.

There are swings and roundabouts involved between live/studio and there's no ready answer.

[mikealdren]

I’m sure I heard that there’s an Elgar concerto somewhere in a Soviet archive.

It's often talked about, Oistrakh did play the Elgar and Walton on a Soviet radio series on violin concertos but, according to Bruno Monsaingeon who curated the new recordings, he has searched the archives for them without success.

[cloughie]

It's often talked about, Oistrakh did play the Elgar and Walton on a Soviet radio series on violin concertos but, according to Bruno Monsaingeon who curated the new recordings, he has searched the archives for them without success.

https://www.discogs.com/release/24200390-Igor-Oistrach-Boris-Gutnikov-Elgar-Britten-Elgar-And-Britten-Violin-Concertos

[oliver sudden]

Barbirolli’s Mahler is an interesting thing in this regard. His official recordings are of course splendid (to me at least) but his live recordings are also essential. Some symphonies he didn’t get to do ‘in the studio’ at all and I would not be without his 4 and his LvdE in particular. But his 5 with the Houston Symphony, and his 6s with Berlin and with the NPO just before the EMI recording, each slice 10 minutes off the ‘studio’ duration and make up in sheer grippingness far more than they lose in sound or precision (YMMV of course).

[richardfinegold]

Barbirolli’s Mahler is an interesting thing in this regard. His official recordings are of course splendid (to me at least) but his live recordings are also essential. Some symphonies he didn’t get to do ‘in the studio’ at all and I would not be without his 4 and his LvdE in particular. But his 5 with the Houston Symphony, and his 6s with Berlin and with the NPO just before the EMI recording, each slice 10 minutes off the ‘studio’ duration and make up in sheer grippingness far more than they lose in sound or precision (YMMV of course).

That’s very interesting. I don’t much care for JB Mahler as it seems arthritic to me but I might seek these out