Mitropoulos: Fall River Legend/ Ormandy: Cakewalk Suite

This record has been reissued in its entirety by Naxos, for MP3 download only, and even that is not available to anyone connecting to the site from the U.S. So, although there is one nasty skip toward the end of Cakewalk, I thought I would post it anyway, as it is not a record I have seen a lot. I even pulled out the DJ scratch arm that came with the turntable and a heavy tracking stylus/cartridge combination thinking it might track with that. No luck.

I am offering it anyway because I suspect it might be rather hard to find and the music and performances are well worth the effort of digitizing. Gottschalk’s music, as arranged for orchestra by Hershey Kay, is unadulterated fun. There’s no other way to put it. When I play the piece it is hard not to get up and dance about, admittedly looking a bit foolish, but with a kind of “who cares” “devil may care” delight.

Fall River Legend is an altogether different matter. The sad, bloody story of Lizzy Borden is hardly a subject to elicit a happy-go-lucky score, though there are lighter moments of remembered happier times in the music. Morton Gould’s music is filled with deep feeling and a humane if not altogether forgiving sense of Lizzy’s predicament, which, in this historically inaccurate version of the story, sees her facing the gallows at the end – alone, accepting her fate with "bitter resignation", as the notes say.

Mitropoulos and Ormandy conduct their respective works admirably, with special kudos going to Mitropoulos. Kudos to all involved, even Columbia's engineers, who gave Mitropoulos a technically decent recording this time round.

Link to all files

Mitropoulos/ NYPO and Reiner/Pittsburgh Shostakovich Symphonies

These two recordings, to the best of my knowledge, are not currently available on CD. The Reiner Masterworks Heritage CD containing this recording is listed on Amazon for absurdly high prices, indicating it is no longer in the catalog. It is a brilliant remastering and I would strongly recommend getting the CD if you can find it at a reasonable price. Though I own it, I have used my well used, thrift store LP for the renovation, in line with my stated intent not to post other's digital work. It cleaned up rather well. The Mitropoulos recording of the Fifth Symphony, with the "Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of New York", was the first performance of the first Shostakovich piece I ever heard, when I checked the record out of the Thayer Public Library in Braintree, Massachusetts as a sophomore or junior in high school. (Many thanks to that library for its small but sterling collection of classical records which introduced me also to the Oistrakh/Mitropoulos recording of the Violin Concerto of the same composer and so many other great recordings.) After all these years, it is still my favorite performance on record, despite the less than brilliant sonic properties of the Columbia LP, which I have tried to improve as much as I felt was prudent. Unfortunately, Mitropoulos, one of the very greatest musicians of the last century, more often than not suffered from poor or, at best, mediocre recording. The recording of the 6th symphony with Reiner predates by several years that of the 5th by Mitropoulos, and was issued originally on 78s; it is nonetheless superior sonically. Both of these records contain performances of reference of the works in question, and it has been a pleasure and privilege to restore them for this post. Link to all files

Berg Violin Concerto: Szigeti, Mitropoulos / 3 Scenes: Kleiber

I am pleased to be able to offer these incredible live performances. The Mitropoulos/Szigeti reading of the concerto from December 30, 1945, in particular, has long been my favorite recording of the work. But I confess that I adore both performers. And the Kleiber recording, which I listened to after a long time of not hearing anything from Wozzeck, makes me want to listen to the opera again. It's about as gorgeous as German expressionism gets.

Link to all MP3 and FLAC files