[78-L] Toscanini in Stereo

[DAVID BURNHAM]

M. Biel wrote

MANY have claimed???????  Name ONE person who has made the claim to have
DONE it and found stereo.  I have heard these stories for over 30 years
and have personally talked to the restoration engineers who have
actually worked with the various original masters of the Toscanini
recordings, and although they have tried a few, none of them have ever
come up with any stereo and never claimed to.  I have heard NO CLAIMS
whatsoever.  Tell me who you have actually heard say they have done it. 
Give me a name.

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A name is irrelevant.  When I say "many", I mean many personal friends who are collectors like myself who have varying degrees of expertise in these matters.  The first person who mentioned it to me, (who, I believe, was the president of the Canadian Arturo Toscanini Society), was Dave Denny who has been dead for over 30 years so I can't check with him now.  But I've heard this claim several times and, like you, have expressed my doubts that this was possible.  

The 1939 "Eroica" as it was released in the Complete Toscanini CDs issued by Victor in the early 90s is certainly not the same recording as was used to make the famous 78 set, but it is the same performance, (the infamous cough gives it away).  Combining these two recordings, however does not produce anything which sounds like stereo.

There are two Stereo recordings of Toscanini - a Wagner program and a program including the Tchaikovsky Pathetique.  I've heard two different versions of the Tchaikovsky concert, one, on an Italian CD, is the better of the two sonically but near the end of the third movement someone snipped out a couple of minutes of the tape for some reason and it was replaced with the mono version.  Other than that, the sound is clear and undistorted.  The only flaw is that it appears that the engineers boosted the top end in an attempt to extend the high frequencies producing a sometimes shrill sound.  The other release, on Music and Arts suffers from excessive Noise Reduction muddying the sound and in the peaks there is overload and clipping distortion.  This version, however, does not have the mono segment, proving that a complete copy of the concert must exist in stereo.  It also includes the Barber of Seville overture.

db