Re: [ARSCLIST] Piston Symphony #2

[David Lennick <dlennick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Wrong about the vinyl, sorry..they were all initially pressed by RCA. If you 
find one in mint condition, it's actually quite decent. Performances were 
sub-par because they were done on the cheap, usually in Vienna, when every new 
LP label discovered a bunch of impoverished musicians who could sight-read 
reasonably well and who were desperate to make a few post-war yankee dollars. 
But the tapes of both the Piston 2nd (ARS 1) and the Hanson 4th (ARS 4) are 
horrible, or gave the RCA engineers some serious problems, because I have 3 
pressings of each, each from different matrices, and they all run off-speed and 
sound like short wave. I hate to toss out an evening's work but I won't be 
using these two.

dl

Roger and Allison Kulp wrote:
> I assume you mean one of those "American Compsers" subscription Lps.The recording,the mastering,and the vinyl on these things were all crap.They were real low budget jobs all the way,with no quality control whatsoever.Anybody who has spent any time digging through thrift shop Lps,has seen these records by the hundreds.The Dean Dixons on Westminster,were not much better.A real low point in the label's history.I own them,because I would like to have a complete run of pre-ABC Westminsters.
>
> I have not heard Piston himself conducting.I think there is a recording out there somewhere,of him,and The New York Philharmonic,but the only records of his stuff I have enjoyed enough to listen to,more than once,are the Koussevitsky, and Hanson,of course.
>
>                                        Roger
>
>
> David Lennick <dlennick@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: Thanks! And info from another source had confirmed my suspicion that it's in A 
> Minor. Amazing how far off pitch some early LPs were..also amazing how some 
> were issued from master tapes that seemed to come into close proximity with the 
> playback head about 50% of the time.
>
> dl
>
> -=sVo=- wrote:
> > a minor.
> >
> > Scott
> >
> >
> > On Mon, 17 Dec 2007 23:26:26 -0500, David Lennick 
> >  wrote:
> >
> > > What key is Walter Piston's Symphony #2 in? Once again, I'm confronted 
> > > by an early recording that plays between known western keys (A Minor 
> > > and B Flat Minor).
> > >
> > > dl
> >
> >
> > ---=sVo=-
>
>
>        
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