San Francisco Symphony - Recordings

Recordings

The orchestra has a long history of recordings, most notably those made with Pierre Monteux for RCA Victor, Herbert Blomstedt for Decca, and Michael Tilson Thomas for BMG and the orchestra's own label, SFS Media.

The first recording, of Auber's overture to Fra Diavolo, was made on January 19, 1925. The early recordings, for the Victor Talking Machine Company, included music by Auber and Richard Wagner, conducted by Alfred Hertz. They soon switched to electrical recordings with Victor, also conducted by Hertz, which continued until 1930. These recordings were produced by Victor's Oakland plant, which had opened in 1924. The 1927 recordings were made on the stage of San Francisco's Columbia Theater, now known as the American Conservatory Theater. In 1928, the orchestra made a series of recordings at Oakland's Scottish Rite Temple on Madison Avenue near Lake Merritt, now the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California. One early complete set was of the ballet music from Le Cid by Jules Massenet. During the 1925–30 recordings, Hertz conducted music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Léo Delibes, Alexander Glazunov, Charles Gounod, Fritz Kreisler, Franz Liszt, Alexandre Luigini, Felix Mendelssohn, Moritz Moszkowski, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Franz Schubert and Carl Maria von Weber. All of these recordings were issued only on 78 rpm discs and are prized by collectors, although restored versions are now available from France's Pristine Audio.

Monteux's recordings were made for RCA Victor in the War Memorial Opera House from 1941 to 1952, initially using a sound film process and then magnetic tape; there was also a stereo session for RCA with Monteux in January 1960. Monteux's first major recording with the orchestra was of the Symphony in D Minor by César Franck; his last was of Siegfried Idyll by Richard Wagner and Death and Transfiguration by Richard Strauss. Some of the recordings have appeared on LPs and compact discs, as well as internationally via the Pierre Monteux Edition from BMG. A substantial selection of Monteux's live broadcasts on the The Standard Hour have been released by the Music & Arts label.

Enrique Jordá made several stereo recordings for RCA in 1957 and 1958, and an album for CRI in 1962. Jorda's recording of Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto, with pianist Alexander Brailowsky was in the catalogue for many years. The recording of Manuel de Falla's "Nights in the Gardens of Spain" with pianist Arthur Rubinstein has remained available.

Commercial recordings resumed in June 1972 with Seiji Ozawa for Deutsche Grammophon in the Flint Center at De Anza College in Cupertino, California. In May 1975 Ozawa recorded Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 in E-flat and Dvořák's Carnival Overture and Symphony No. 9 in E Minor for Philips. For Deutsche Grammophon, Ozawa and the orchestra recorded William Russo's "Three Pieces for Blues Band and Symphony Orchestra" with the Siegel-Schwall Blues Band, and Bernstein's Orchestral Dances from West Side Story. These recordings featured solo performances from hornist David Krehbiel, concertmaster Stuart Canin, trumpeter Don Reinberg, and violist Detlev Olshausen. Recordings of the SFS under the direction of Edo de Waart, including digital recordings made in Davies Symphony Hall, were released by Philips and Nonesuch. One of de Waart's sets of digital recordings was devoted to the four piano concertos of Sergei Rachmaninoff, featuring pianist Zoltán Kocsis. A number of works by American composer John Adams were premiered and recorded by the SFS under de Waart's leadership, and Harmonium was also released with Adams conducting.

Soon after the arrival of Herbert Blomstedt, the SFS signed contracts with the British label Decca resulting in 29 CDs released in the U.S. under the London label. Several of recordings won international awards. Among their recording projects were the complete symphonies of Nielsen and Sibelius, choral works of Brahms, and orchestral works of Richard Strauss and Hindemith. The recordings helped to build the orchestra's worldwide reputation as one of the best in the United States.

The orchestra returned to RCA Victor when Michael Tilson Thomas became music director. Its first recording of the new contract was extended excerpts from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. There were special tributes to two American composers, Charles Ives and Aaron Copland. With the RCA label decision to cease from producing new classical recordings, the SFS created its own label, SFS Media, and continued producing its Mahler symphony cycle, which was completed in the Fall of 2010. Most recently, SFS Media released two new CDs, one featuring Henry Brant's orchestration of Charles Ives' A Concord Symphony and Aaron Copland's Organ Symphony, featuring Paul Jacobs, and one featuring Emanuel Ax performing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in addition to Beethoven's Symphony No. 5. The San Francisco Symphony, with Tilson Thomas, have produced several Grammy Award-winning recordings.