Word: albums
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Dates: during 1940-1940
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Every once in a while, one of the record companies issues a classical album lovers and esoterics, but to the general public as well...
...Such an album is the new recording of the Beethoven Fifth Symphony on Victor Records by Arturo Toscanini and the National Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra...
Little was it to be wondered then that when Victor announced Toscanini was doing the Fifth excitement should reign not only amongst critics and musicians but amidst the general music public as well. A victor official told me that he expected that this album would have the greatest sale of any comparable work ever issued. Reports began to come in of stores selling out their entire stock in a day, some of them even in an hour...
...names "Beethoven," "Fifth" and "Toscanini" were enough to sell the album eight unseen (and surface unheard...
...what happened when you listened to this album of super-synthesis? Quite frankly, throughout the time I have been listening to record I have never heard a rendition of Beethoven that I considered to be as inadequate as this one. As a matter of fact, I can remember few recorded versions of anything that struck me as being so completely shallow and without not only comprehension of what the composer wanted, but what could be done with the score itself. Leopold Stokowski is often accused (and Justly so) of rendering Bach in a manner quite unlike what the composed intended...