NBC Symphony Orchestra - Recordings

Recordings

RCA Victor began making studio recordings of the NBC Symphony for commercial release in 1938; Mozart's Symphony No. 40 and Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 88 were the first works to be recorded. The orchestra recorded initially in Studio 8-H, but producer Charles O'Connell soon decided to hold most of the studio recording sessions in Carnegie Hall. However, many live broadcast performances originating in Studio 8H were also released on records, and subsequently on CD. The famously dry acoustics of Studio 8-H, designed for broadcasting, were found to be less than ideal for recording. Acoustical modifications in 1939 were thought to have greatly improved the sound of Studio 8H; some recording sessions were held there as late as June 1950. From the fall of 1950 until the orchestra was disbanded, all concerts and recording sessions took place in Carnegie Hall.

RCA Victor released the orchestra's recordings on its flagship Red Seal label on the then standard 78-rpm records. In 1950, a 1945 recording of Ferde Grofé's Grand Canyon Suite became the NBC Symphony's first LP release (LM-1004). A mainstay of RCA's catalog through the 1950s, many of the NBC Symphony's recordings were later reissued on the lower priced RCA Victrola label, where they remained until the demise of the LP. In the 1980s, RCA began preparing digitally remastered recordings of the orchestra, including a complete issue of all Toscanini's RCA recordings from 1990-92 on CD and audio cassette. Later advances in digital technology has led RCA (now owned by Sony Music) to claim further enhancement of the sound of the magnetic tapes for additional reissues, changing original equalization balances and adding acoustical enhancement; but critics are divided in their judgment. RCA has only reissued recordings that were personally approved by Toscanini, including some broadcast performances such as the seven complete operas he conducted at NBC between 1944 and 1950; however, other labels have released discs taken from off-the-air recordings of NBC broadcast concerts. Toscanini's final two broadcast programs, in the spring of 1954, were experimentally recorded in stereo, but he did not approve the release of these items; many years passed before they were finally issued on labels other than RCA Victor. Recorded in rather primitive and "minimalist" two-channel sound, the stereo antiphonal effect is striking (if crude); but unfortunately the complete performance from March 21, 1954 of the Tchaikovsky Symhony No. 6 ("Pathetique") is not entirely stereo as the master 2-track tape of the entire 'Allegro molto vivace' third movement has apparently not survived; an artificial stereo synthesis is substituted.

The complete series of ten NBC Symphony telecasts has been issued on VHS and Laser Disc by RCA in 1990 and on DVD by Testament in 2006. While the videos are taken from primitive kinescope films, the sound tracks were carefully synchronized from the highest fidelity transcriptions and tapes that exist.

One of the NBC Symphony Orchestra's most ambitious projects was the recording of the 13-hour musical score for NBC Television's 1952 series Victory at Sea. Robert Russell Bennett conducted the orchestra in his arrangements of Richard Rodgers' musical themes for the 26 documentary programs (recorded in Rockefeller Center's Center Theatre). The series is currently available on DVD. Some of the music was released by RCA Victor on LP. In the early 1960s, Bennett re-recorded music from Victory at Sea in a famed series of three stereo records for RCA Victor, conducting a studio orchestra, the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra (members of the Symphony of the Air). These have all been reissued by RCA on CD.

In 1954, shortly after the orchestra's final concerts, Stokowski made stereo recordings for RCA of excerpts from Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet and Menotti's ballet Sebastian. The recordings were originally issued (monophonically) as "Leopold Stokowski and his orchestra," but reissued as "members of the NBC Symphony Orchestra." On April 6, 1954, Guido Cantelli made a recording in Carnegie Hall of César Franck's "Symphony in D minor." The performance was initially issued in mono by RCA, but a stereo version (which had been taped in the same session) was published in the 1970s; it was eventually reissued on CD.