The best Recordings and Reissues of 2019

(This list arrives a trifle late as I was feeling a bit under-the-weather at last year’s close.)

We’re down to the last few days of 2019 and as often happens at this time of year, many of us enjoy reflecting upon our favorite records of the past year. 

For listeners like myself, devoted to digging about in the past, 2019 was yet another boom year for inexpensive and handsomely produced reissues and hitherto unheard archival revelations. For example, here in my hands is the entirety of Bruno Walter’s American Columbia discography—all of it available for less than $200. And this is only one among many such sets.

While the “major” labels have largely abdicated their commitment to serious music, the so-called “minor” labels have been spoiling us with splendid new recordings of repertoire well-trod and arcane. 

So without further ado, and in no particular order, here are my favorite reissues and new recordings of the past year. 

 Favorite reissues:

• Raymond Lewenthal: The Complete RCA and Columbia Recordings [Sony]: Eccentric and erudite, a figure as much a creation of Carnegie Hall as it was of Hollywood, Lewenthal carved a niche for himself among the most unique and fascinating in music. A pianistic late bloomer, he pushed his technique to its very limits. The sheer force of will he was capable of summoning is immediately palpable in these recordings from that brief moment when his career was in the ascendent. Throughout this set one encounters the flashing color, bold rhythmic projection, and messianic zeal that keeps the listener at the edge of their seat. He was also that great rarity in a musician: A genuinely articulate, insightful, and engaging speaker on music. Like the man himself, this set demands your attention. 

• Bruno Walter: The Complete Columbia Recordings [Sony]: Twenty-five years ago, Sony reissued about ⅔ of this material in their Bruno Walter: The Edition. Now here is the entirety of the conductor’s output for Columbia, handsomely produced and remastered, and priced cheaper than ever. His recordings from the 1940s and early 1950s, many previously unavailable on CD, with their fire and rhythmic tautness, have long been praised as being his finest work. But the final studio sessions in Los Angeles, which have their many detractors, sparkle afresh here; their warmth and generosity of spirit compelling on their own terms. 

• Dinu Lipatti: The Last Recital [FY Solstice]: The tale of Lipatti’s final performance, eloquently retold in the liner notes by Mark Ainley, to say nothing of the performance itself is well-known to collectors. Lovingly restored in full for the first time as it is here from the original tapes, complete with the pianist’s evocative preluding, this reissue is a revelation nevertheless. A poignant tribute to an artist whose star was dimmed much too soon. 

• Debussy’s Traces (recordings by Marius-François Gaillard, Irén Marik, Mieczysław Horszowski, Mary Garden, Claude Debussy, and Marie-Thérèse Fourneau) [Arbiter]: Debussy’s sound webs, woven together from strands as disparate as Wagner and gamelan music, are often turned soggy by many a pianist, incapable of the deft hand needed to render these delicate tapestries. Marius-François Gaillard, a champion of this music while it was still considered modern, presents here a nuanced, multifaceted Debussy wholly unlike the bland saccharine pastel often presented today. From these freshly-scrubbed shellac grooves the music sings, declaims, laughs, sobs, dreams; all of it faintly bristling with a sense of danger. Performances of Debussy by other pianistic greats fill out this compilation, but make no mistake: Gaillard is the star of the show. Superb notes by producer Allan Evans. 

• New Music String Quartet: The Complete Columbia Album Collection [Sony]: A surprise reissue. The NMSQ didn’t have the fame of their contemporaries such as the Budapest, Amadeus, and Juilliard String Quartets, but their astonishing articulation, colorful phrasing, and adventurous programming make this a vital memento of this long overlooked ensemble.

• Wilhelm Furtwängler: The Radio Recordings, 1939 – 1945 [Berlin Philharmonic]: These recordings are by now so famous (infamous?) that yet another reissue seems hardly warranted. But these new remasterings from the original tapes—a considerable improvement on their tinny-sounding predecessors—and the informative liner notes accompanying them will draw the eye of even the most fatigued Furtwänglerite. At their best, they capture the sort of frenzied, single-minded orchestral execution that was rare even in the conducting golden age from which these sprang forth from. Everything teems with vitality and necessity. Nothing sags, not a moment is wasted. Whether one is a neophyte or a seasoned follower of this conductor, no single set most persuasively demonstrates the spellbinding power of Furtwängler’s art better than this. 

• Artur Rodziński: The Complete CSO Recordings [Pristine Audio]: Conductors can often be mercurial characters, but Rodziński was something else altogether. Fanatic, superstitious, and increasingly paranoid as his years wore ingloriously on, he became his own worst enemy. These recordings from his short-lived tenure at the helm of the Chicago Symphony, then, are a poignant reminder of a high-flying career that would soon crash with a thud. Not that any of that is discernible here. The energy, clarity, and edge that had made him a sought-after conductor in the 1930s and 1940s is amply evident. In a better world, a more even-tempered Rodziński would have kept on leading and recording with Chicago, perhaps avoiding driving himself into a premature death. As it is, we have only these few, but fascinating testaments of a musical partnership as artistically brilliant as it was acrimonious; plenty enough to contemplate what might have been. 

• Mahler: Symphony No. 5 (London Symphony Orchestra/Jascha Horenstein) [Pristine Audio]: Until recently, there were no recordings of this symphony by this great Mahlerian. Now we have two, with this most recent one being the finest. Presented in fine sound, Horenstein, as usual, delivers a Mahler that is both structurally sound and dramatically incisive, illuminating this score’s dense textures with seeming effortlessness. Excellent notes by the conductor’s cousin, Misha Horenstein. 

• Rudolf Firkušný: Bern Recital; March 16, 1976 [Weitblick]: The Czech pianist was never a glamorous A-list pianistic star. Elegant and self-effacing, he instead became something of a pianist’s pianist. The music-making on this set from Weitblick beguiles, charms, even seduces. Like his great compatriot, Ivan Moravec, Firkušný seemed incapable of playing anything less than stunningly gorgeous. This Swiss recital from the late 1970s captures him at his very best. 

• Ustvolskaya: Young Pioneers’ Suite, Children’s Suite, Sports’ Suite, Poem (Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra/Yevgeny Mravinsky, Arvid Jansons, Igor Borisoglebsky, Vladislav Lavrik): The enigmatic and brutal music of this withdrawn, one-time student of Shostakovich has steadily been garnering attention over the past quarter century. This budget reissue from Brilliant compiles a number of excellent recordings of her early music. Bright and boisterous, these colorful scores burn with an inner conviction that augur the uncompromising tone poet she would eventually become. 

Favorite new recordings:

• Dupont: Complete Symphonic Works (Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège/Patrick Devin) [Fuga Libera]: The shadow of death looms over this music which also glows defiantly with life, with the resolve to create, to leave a mark upon existence against all odds. Part Franck, part Debussy, the short-lived French composer Gabriel Dupont took the various strands that influenced his work and fashioned an art that was original and deeply expressive. This gorgeous music is matched to equally gorgeous performances that captivate, leaving one admiring the force of will that wrought such beauty against the decay of illness. 

• Ravel: Piano Concerto in G, Le Tombeau de Couperin, Alborada del gracioso (Javier Perianes; Orchestre de Paris/Josep Pons) [Harmonia Mundi]: While most pianists today seem bent on out-Horowitzing and out-Argeriching each other, the Spanish pianist Javier Perianes prefers to be himself, sensitively honing his subtle art. In this Ravel album, he conjures as much gossamer as he does glitter, daubing the sparkle with a warming glow that invites. His sound—bronze, not brass—is a joy for the ear always. 

• Feldman: Patterns in a Chromatic Field (Mathis Mayr/Antonis Anissegos) [Wergo]: Feldman’s hypnotic and unapologetically beautiful music is among the glories of the late 20th century. This late score from 1981 finds Feldman less gauzy and more galvanized than usual. Mayr and Anissegos interact with almost conversational casualness, imbuing an earthiness into this often ethereal score, belying their feat of intense focus needed to bring off this score. Its slight technical imperfections impart a human face upon this rarefied music; this creation of an abstract Romantic, the unlikely musical grandchild of Bruckner and Sibelius, baptized by Cage. 

• Henze: Heliogabalus Imperator, Los caprichos, Ouvertüre zu einem Theater (Anssi Karttunen; BBC Symphony Orchestra/Oliver Knussen) [Wergo]: The knotty, thorny music of Henze finds here sympathetic friends in the guise of cellist Karttunen and the late conductor Knussen. Often venomously ironic and delighting in its own invention, Henze could also be disarmingly sincere. Both soloist and conductor, with the excellent support of the BBC Symphony, cut through the music, exposing to the listener a body of work which deserves ranking among the greatest composed. 

• Beethoven: Complete Piano Sonatas (Igor Levit) [Sony]: Levit, despite being only in his early 30s, has much to say about these works that are better than they can ever be performed. Even at his interpretively most imperfect, Levit’s fingers restlessly search out this music’s meanings, consider carefully their manifold implications. This is bracing Beethoven alive and surging with purpose, nervy, daring the listener to come to grips with it. 

• Zimmermann: Violin Concerto, Photoptosis, Die Soldaten (Vokal-Sinfonie) (Leila Josefowicz; Anu Komsi, Jeni Packalen, Hilary Summers, Peter Tantsits, Ville Rusanen, Juha Uusitalo; Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Hannu Linttu) [Finlandia]: Atonal music, so it’s often claimed, is “cerebral” art bereft of emotion, better left behind in the ash heap of the 20th century. The music of Zimmermann is a living refutation of that lame stereotype, proof positive that expressive music isn’t dependent on traditional tonality to move the listener. The “vocal symphony” he extracted from his magnum opus, Die Soldaten, is like the opera it’s based a febrile and intense thing; a writhing waking nightmare among the most potent musical statements of the last century. Joined by two other important Zimmermann scores, these performances under Hannu Lintu convey this music to the listener with superhuman virtuosity and intensity of expression that highlight its debt to Beethoven and Mahler. 

• Ives: Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4 (San Francisco Symphony Orchestra/Michael Tilson Thomas) [SFS Media]: Over 30 years ago, Tilson Thomas made fine, if somewhat flawed recordings of these scores. Today perhaps no other living conductor better understands the crazy quilt audacity of Ives. These recordings, documenting a lifetime’s love and devotion to this music, convincingly presents their explosive balancing act between the rural and cosmopolitan, the homespun and cosmic. Tilson Thomas doesn’t smooth the roughness—like the coarse shapes of a homemade woodcut—of this music. Instead, he celebrates it; he celebrates Ives in all the inconsistency and awesomeness of his originality. In his hands, the composer is revealed as perhaps the most accurate reflection of the nation from which he emerged: Taciturn, petty, ambitious, heroic, and sentimental. 

• Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 (Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/Mariss Jansons) [BR Klassik]: The late conductor’s final recording of Shostakovich’s wartime colossus proves to be his finest. The splendid Bavarian brass—rich-toned, but with a touch of tartness—are superb, carrying through with graceful power in the first and third movements. Jansons’ sense of pacing is natural, allowing the music room to unfurl without detriment to its drama, toning down this score’s jingoistic swagger into something Beethovenianly noble. 

• Roussel: Le festin d’Araignée; Dukas: L'Apprenti sorcier (Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire/Pascal Rophé) [BIS]: Roussel’s late ballet, like much of his music, tends to be overlooked. A shame because as these pert and subtly colored performances demonstrate, his music—alight with mesmerizing rhythms—is among the 20th century’s finest. The fine performance of Dukas’ deathless tone poem is the icing on the cake. 

• Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 (Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra/Manfred Honeck) [Reference Recordings]: The partnership of Pittsburgh and Honeck seems to fly under the radar of the mainstream classical music press. Heaven knows why. Their recordings—initially with Exton, now with Reference—demonstrate the kind of hefty sound and daring sense of interpretive risk all too rare nowadays. Their conception of Bruckner’s final symphony is appropriately apocalyptic: The cyclopean opening movement thunders, the Scherzo roils with anger, and the crushing climax of the “Adagio” opens up like an awful cosmic revelation of utmost terror. 

A Brief Overview of The Most Recent Carl Nielsen Cycles

I first encountered Carl Nielsen’s music at the age of 13, courtesy of Paavo Berglund’s masterly recording of the composer’s Symphony No. 6. It was love at first hearing. Since then a lot of things have changed. Quite a few composers I loved then are barely tolerable to me now; my enthusiasm for others has since been tempered by a more soberly critical spirit. But my adoration of Carl Nielsen’s music has remained steadfast for the past quarter of a century. If anything, my appreciation for his genius, for the humanity of his art only increases with each passing year.

What is it about Nielsen’s music that is so special? It is the restlessness of the man’s spirit, his eagerness to explore, his readiness to roam ever further beyond the horizon. Whereas his great Scandinavian contemporary Jean Sibelius seemed to have spent his entire career retracing his steps with each symphony and tone poem in the hope of making the ascent towards the summit of his elusive perfection better still, Nielsen sought to venture through different paths with each new score, tearing up the maps from prior journeys, and guided by his unquenchable thirst for aesthetic wanderlust. “Give us something else, give us something new,” he once stated, “and let us feel that we are still alive, instead of constantly going around in deedless admiration for the conventional.”

His body of work contains a multitude of genres—concerti, chamber music, songs, solo instrumental works, and brilliant operas which rank with the best of the 20th century’s—but his six symphonies are perhaps the backbone of his kaleidoscopic art. Each one documents a remarkable stylistic leap from the last; taken cumulatively, the evolution from the youthful buoyancy of Nielsen’s Symphony No. 1 to the unsettlingly dark, embittered grotesquerie of his final “Sinfonia semplice” is dramatic to behold.

Because of the wide disparities in texture, mood, and form, his symphonic cycle are a formidable challenge for any single conductor to render. That has not stopped them from trying. Beginning in the 1970s with his fellow countryman Ole Schmidt, many conductors have attempted to wrangle together these multifaceted scores. (A couple—Leonard Bernstein and Chung Myung-Whun—attempted to do so, but left their cycles incomplete for varying reasons.) But unlike Sibelius, who counted on the support of a network of powerful admirers, critics, and conductors in England and America, appreciation of Nielsen remained largely confined to Scandinavia. Consequently, his symphonies arrived relatively late to records and international recognition of his importance continues to lag behind other composers of his generation. At least here in Los Angeles, his music—save for the Wind Quintet—is rarely performed.

Fortunately, despite all that, Nielsen’s symphonies do not lack for excellent recordings. Schmidt’s aforementioned cycle comes to mind. But two of the finest cycles of his symphonies came along during the sesquicentennial of his birth in 2015. While the pioneering recordings by Danish conductors such as Thomas Jensen, Erik Tuxen, and Launy Grøndahl ring with an authenticity that demand the attention of dedicated Nielsenites, these newest recordings not only interpretively hold up on their own, but the sheer polish of their orchestral execution would have dazzled the composer had he lived to hear them. Nielsen is a first-class composer whose music demands to be played by first-class orchestras.

The following is a brief overview of these recordings from 2015, ranked in order of personal preference.

• BBC Philharmonic Orchestra/John Storgårds [Chandos]: The Icelandic conductor’s set is perhaps the most consistently satisfying with respect to persuasiveness of interpretation and excellence in sound. Storgårds’ Nielsen is brawny, square-jawed, and muscular, leaping from height to height. He is at his best in the first three symphonies, where his clear-eyed approach fits well with the unbuttoned, open air mood of the composer’s pre-World War I music. His recording of the Symphony No. 1 is a delight, one of the best since André Previn’s; while the surging power of his “The Four Temperaments” ranks comfortably with Morton Gould’s. In the final two symphonies, however, Storgårds tends towards the prosaic. Though still very fine recordings, his rendering of the Symphony No. 5 lacks that last spark of wildness, of primal energy that fuels the best performances by Bernstein, Tuxen, and Kondrashin, among others. Additionally, the cavalcade of unsettling ironies in the Symphony No. 6 are presented at times with poker-faced plainness, their incongruous edges smoothed out. Nevertheless, both recordings are still quite good. The Chandos sound, as usual, is bold and splashy, with a sonic perspective that seems to sit the listener face-to-face with the orchestra. Insightful and informative liner notes by David Fanning round out this superb set.

• Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra/Sakari Oramo [BIS]: Oramo, on the other hand, is at his best in the last three Nielsen symphonies. His Symphony No. 6 might be the very best ever committed to records; more than earning its favorable rank alongside the splendid recordings of this tricky work by Schmidt, Berglund, Jensen, Jascha Horenstein, and Tor Mann. Like Berglund, Oramo seems to regard the composer’s final symphony as proto-Shostakovichian, highlighting the streak of disillusionment and anger that courses throughout. The Royal Stockholm brass are superb as are its winds, which chatter vividly in the “Humoreske.” Oramo’s “Inextinguishable” and Symphony No. 5 would be among the very best if not for the somewhat shallow, boxy sound that BIS unfortunately imposed upon these performances (and which was subsequently much improved in this cycle’s later installments). Nevertheless, Oramo’s razor-sharp dynamic contrasts and general sympathy for Nielsen’s late idiom shine through despite these drawbacks. The early symphonies are also excellent, but it is in the late scores where Oramo is most in his element.

• Various soloists; New York Philharmonic Orchestra/Alan Gilbert [Danacord]: It is sad to report that the New York Philharmonic’s first complete Nielsen cycle ended up being a bit of a bungled opportunity. The orchestra, to be sure, is gorgeous: Powerful and noble brass, characterful winds, sleek strings, all of them blended into a rich, oaken tone that amply highlight Nielsen’s debt to Beethoven and Brahms. Danacord’s production is as good as one can find these days, with a spacious sonic perspective that balances ensemble blend with telling individual textural detail. The problem, however, is the cipher helming the podium. Gilbert, at least in my personal experience and estimation, is one of the blandest, most boring conductors alive today. His autopilot cruise through Nielsen’s symphonies is especially woeful in the last three. Simply put, Gilbert’s anonymous run-through of these scores, which demand a level of interpretive verve and direction that is simply missing here, can often be a cheerless slog for the listener to endure. Fortunately, he is not all bad. Gilbert’s hands-off approach is less of an impediment in the early symphonies, where at least the orchestra is allowed to sing out beautifully. Shockingly, the “Sinfonia espansiva” somehow manages to rouse him out from his usual somnambulism, drawing from him a performance which unfurls with a majestic, unforced brilliance and a natural sense of pacing that places it among the very best recordings of that work. He also proves to be a sensitive partner for his soloists in the Nielsen concerti, all of which are excellent; the Violin Concerto with Nikolaj Znaider might be my favorite recording of all.

• Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra/Paavo Järvi [RCA/Sony]: Decent, but somewhat faceless performances in OK sound. Especially disappointing given that his father Neeme recorded a very fine cycle for DG some 30 years ago. Admittedly, I have not listened to this set again since early 2016, so if given another listening to today I may, perhaps, feel differently enough to revise my opinion. Suffice to say that Oramo and Storgårds keep me coming back. Even Gilbert does once in awhile (especially for the concerti). But not Järvi fils. [EDIT 12/12/19: Sometimes I’m just full of it. Having reacquainted myself with this set over the past few days, I’m struggling to understand why these recordings failed to move me back in 2016. Aside from the graininess and occasional garishness of the production, the performances themselves are masterly. Paavo Järvi’s Nielsen is some of the most gripping I’ve ever heard, with especially splendid recordings of Symphonies Nos. 2, 4, and 5. The latter is easily one of the finest on records, its last movement bounding dynamically from the inertness of its predecessor. (The only quibble I have is one that crops up in even the best recordings of the work: A much too reticent snare drummer at the end of the first movement. For a truly terrifyingly wild take on that solo, listen to the classic Jascha Horenstein recording on Unicorn, or the otherwise forgettable reading by Adrian Leaper on Naxos.) From now on this cycle will be ranked alongside Schmidt, Storgårds, and Oramo among my personal favorites.]

• London Symphony Orchestra/Sir Colin Davis [LSO Live]: Davis’ Nielsen is a dry, loveless affair. The sound from the Barbican is expectedly horrid. With his utter lack of aptitude or sympathy for these works, you have to wonder why the conductor even bothered to perform, much less record them.

A Nielsen cycle for our time: A photograph of my personal copy of John Storgårds’ excellent Nielsen symphony cycle for Chandos.

In the Trenches of the Format Wars

Francis Fukuyama may have been wrong about the inevitability of global liberal democracy and its implications on future societal developments, but when it comes to playback formats, music lovers may indeed wonder whether we have reached the “end of history.” As I type this, I have just finished losslessly streaming through my phone an album of Beethoven’s wind music conducted by Karl Haas. The notion of being able to stream anything at CD quality would have seemed unthinkable to me even five years ago. But even as up-to-date though such an act may appear, the FLAC file format upon which my streaming service depends upon is nearly two decades old, and is based off of predecessor digital formats whose roots go even further back. Historical progress in musical reproduction has today converged into a static horizon point of possibility.

Even as we are on the cusp of entering the third decade of this current century, the old 20th century’s grip on music appears stronger than ever. The “vinyl renaissance” will immediately come to mind for many, of course, but perhaps the most dramatic illustration of this phenomenon is the nearly forty-year-old compact disc which, for all the disdain and snobbery it incurs from today’s “vinyl” snobs, remains stubbornly alive. Despite posting declines of sales overall, it persists as the top physical music format sold globally. We may eventually find that it will also be the last physical musical format to earn widespread public adoption, the final step in a long evolution that began with the wax cylinder. It’s worthwhile to recall at this moment that forty years into its existence, the LP was on the verge of becoming obsolete. What would the average listener in 1980 say if one had told them that people would still be listening to music in generally the same way in 2020—and with no flying cars, to boot?

All this came to mind earlier today when I took a break from writing to watch a video from Techmoan, one of my favorite YouTube channels. His latest upload deals with the format wars of the late 1940s: Namely, between Columbia’s 33 ⅓ RPM long-playing discs and RCA Victor’s 45 RPM discs. Each sought to succeed the 78 RPM format; both ultimately “won,” although the retelling of this history typically overlooks the crucial role played by classical music. 

During this period, classical music was not only an important “prestige” genre, it was also a very financially lucrative market that record labels could not ignore. Even by the 1930s, the 78 RPM was beginning to look (and sound) behind the times, with mostly classical musicians expressing their frustration with its limitations. From its very inception, many of them were skeptical or outright disdainful of a format they felt was plagued by poor quality sound reproduction and short duration. The roster of musicians whose distrust of the then comparatively primitive state of recording technology—a process which Bruno Walter late in life likened to being made to sit in “animal cages”—could not be overcome is a long and painful one. 

Because of these limitations, many larger symphonic works or operas were prohibitively expensive to record, or altogether impossible to do so, at least profitably. In 1937, Electrola recorded Act III of Wagner’s Der Meistersinger von Nürnberg with the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Dresden State Opera under Karl Böhm’s direction. Even a single act from the opera took up 15 heavy and fragile double-sided discs. Around the same time, RCA Victor recorded Serge Koussevitzky conducting the Boston Symphony in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. That recording exceeded 50 discs, if I’m not mistaken. Their cumbersome bulk, not to mention price (a single 78 RPM disc in the 1930s would on average cost the equivalent of approximately US $25 – $30 today) placed such recordings far beyond what all but a very few people and institutions could afford. 

It was these problems that spurred a development mentioned in the video: RCA Victor’s failed attempt in 1931 to popularize the Victrolac, its own long-playing format. There are several reasons why they were unable to gain traction at the time, but perhaps among the most important was the growing power of the pop music market. Because while the Victrolac resolved some of the issues posed by the 78 RPM disc, it opened up new ones which alienated the pop music audience

With its comparatively modest demands in length and production, the pop music of the era was as if tailor-made for the 78 RPM format. Understandably, the average fan had no need for expensive multi-disc albums, no concerns about length. Single discs were sufficient to contain the music they desired to hear.

So when RCA Victor (in conjunction with Bell Laboratories) began experimenting, then attempted to market extended playback (and stereophonic sound), it was no surprise that instead of enlisting the pop musicians of the era to push the Victrolac, they instead relied on men like Leopold Stokowski and Sir Thomas Beecham. Even had classical listeners been won over to the Victrolac format and managed to overlook its significant flaws, the prohibitive cost of this new format would have precluded any possibility of winning over fans of pop music, whose support was crucial to make it a viable competitor and successor to the 78 RPM. 

This become clearer when fifteen years later Columbia succeeded with its LP, which owed its triumph to two main reasons. Firstly, because the vinyl surface of its playback materials and its duration—with a single album comfortably fitting a standard-length symphony—were an undeniable improvement in fidelity over 78s. Because of that the label could count on the support of their talent roster to court the classical audience, with Igor Stravinsky, Bruno Walter, Eugene Ormandy, and George Szell (who appears on the far right of a group photo with LP pioneer Edward Wallerstein in the aforementioned video) all being prominently featured in their marketing. But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the LP was affordable. Not only was it significantly cheaper than the Victrolac had been a decade earlier, it promised to eventually be cheaper than the 78 RPM it hoped to replace, thereby making the format accessible to an unprecedentedly broad audience. 

At the same time, RCA Victor also succeeded with the 45 RPM precisely because most pop listeners at the time had no use for albums, instead wanting to only hear the latest hit song. It’s telling that pop/jazz musicians wouldn’t really learn to effectively take advantage of the LP format until well into the 1950s. Even deep into the 1960s, many non-classical LP albums were ramshackle things consisting of a hit song or two accompanied by ten or so tracks of filler. Likewise, the possibilities afforded by tape were first explored by the seemingly irreconcilable opposites of the experimental electronic composers and easy-listening orchestras of the 1950s, with rock musicians finally bringing together elements of both in the 1960s.

The classical market, while much diminished after the 1960s, would continue to be an important force in the recording industry as late as the early 1990s. The advent and durability of the CD bears testimony to this fact. Later attempts at physical format improvements—DVD Audio, SACD, Blu-spec, and Blu-ray Audio—have only managed to appeal to a very niche audience, or have simply failed precisely because the classical audience, which tends to prioritize playback duration and fidelity of sound, has itself become an extreme niche in the wider music industry. Many, perhaps most pop music fans today appear to be quite content streaming music at low-quality bit rates. Some pop music today is even mastered on mp3. 

If present trends in listening and musical taste continue, it could very well come to be that in forty years from now, the CD, LP, and various successors to today’s present digital formats (if not the present ones themselves) will still be with us. And somehow our dreams of flying cars will, mystifyingly, remain unfulfilled. 

“He wants you to enjoy the full beauty of his cello.” Gregor Piatigorsky helping to sell the Columbia LP, 1947.

Michael Gielen (1927 – 2019)

A few years ago at a record store job I once held, a customer approached me asking for recommendations of Mahler recordings. I led him over to the composer’s section in our store and began going through several which were personal favorites. He asked if there were any integral sets of the composer’s symphonies which I could suggest. We happened to have Michael Gielen’s cycle in stock and held that one out to him.

The customer just looked at me puzzled.

“Who is he?”

I replied with a very brief summary of his life and work, adding that he was to me the greatest conductor then living.

“He can’t be that great,” this customer shot back in irritation. “I’ve never even seen him on social media.”

Requiescat in pace.

Michael Gielen with the Chicago Symphony. [Photo courtesy of the CSO Archives]