[78-L] Beethoven's seventh

[David Lennick]

I will admit to never having attempted a transfer of the Toscanini Beethoven 
7th from 78s because to me, the Camden LP sounded perfect. It still does. Not 
LCT, Not Victrola. Next time I see my dad's old copy of the 7th (which is in 
storage) I'll get it out, but I certainly recall long silences at the starts of 
most sides.

You also have the abrupt side switches in the 1939 Beethoven 5th and the 
William Tell Overture. They're much better accomplished, and you have to be 
listening for them, but fragments of notes are at the beginning of a few of the 
sides.

And Michael S is an (unprintable). Always was.

dl

DAVID BURNHAM wrote:
> Ted Kneebone wrote:
> 
> Writing of the 2 turntable cutter arrangement, I recall my copy of the 
> Toscanini/NYPSO Beethoven 7th symphony (Victor) had those strange side 
> breaks.  Some had lots of silence at the beginnings of sides.
> 
> dl wrote:
> 
> ....his 1936 New York 
> Philharmonic recordings were all made by cutting abruptly from one lathe to the 
> next..the side breaks occur in mid-note and some sides have very long silent 
> portions before the music cuts in.
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> Are you sure you folks aren't talking about the NBC "Eroica"?  I always doubted Irving Kolodin's comments on the Victrola LP reissue because, to my ears, there is no evidence that the NYPSO Beethoven 7th was recorded as a continuous performance.  For instance, since this was recorded in a (presumably), empty Carnegie Hall, the ambience from the end of side one would have overlapped the beginning of side two and there would have been an abrupt cut off.  I don't hear evidence of that.  Of course it's always possible that since AT knew when they were going to switch sides he paused the performance for just a couple of seconds to enable them to do so.  You never hear a Toscanini recording where he slowed down as he approached a side change as you often hear from Henry Wood, Hamilton Harty, Ormandy, Koussevitzky and sometimes Weingartner.  This makes it easier to recouple to sides to a continuous performance.
> 
> For the "Arturo Toscanini collection" produced by John Pfeiffer in the late 80s/early 90s, Mortimer Frank wrote about the first side of the Beethoven 7th:
> 
> In this reissue a second, more propulsive and better-recorded take of the first movement introduction - found in most but not all previous editions of the performance - has been used out of respect for Toscanini's perference for it.
> 
> If it was "better recorded", it must have been recorded under different circumstances at a different time.  My personal preference is for the more leisurely tempo of the first take which, as dl said, almost runs into the smallest lable Victor, (Canada), ever used.
> 
> I don't think this recording's place will ever be challenged as one of the most significant recordings of the 20th century, however, about 35 years ago, I ran into a certain Mr. Shulman, at that time the president of the "Toronto Record Collectors Society", who asked me what recordings I had of the Beethoven 7th.  I listed the ones I had at that time - Toscanini, Ormandy and Weingartner, (2 versions) - and his response was, "So what you're telling me is that you don't have a recording of Beethoven's Seventh."  He went on to explain that the only recording of this work worth considering was the Stokowski version, (M17 I think).  I went to just one of their gatherings and met the most tedious assembly of record collectors you could ever imagine, (I don't recall that Lennick was there).
> 
> db
> __________________