Bach's 'St. Matthew Passion' on 78s

[Inigo]

I have some dozens, and I play them. Mine are not as long as yours, though. The longest I have is an almost complete set of 1937 Cetra recording of Turandot, on sample white label pressings, 16 records. A nice present from a beloved forum colleague. Most of my classical sets are three to six records only.

[pallophotophone]

The CD set of the Bach St. Mathew Passion conducted by Willam Mengelberg is from a 1939 broadcast. Just for the record... No pun whatsoever intended...Even with cuts the broadcast is over 2 hours. I doubt it was ever issued on 78 RPM discs.

Pallophotophone

[Menophanes]

The CD set of the Bach St. Mathew Passion conducted by Willam Mengelberg is from a 1939 broadcast. Just for the record... No pun whatsoever intended...Even with cuts the broadcast is over 2 hours. I doubt it was ever issued on 78 RPM discs.

Pallophotophone

I was wondering about that. I once had a copy of the supplementary volume (1956) of Sackville-West and Shawe-Taylor's Record Guide which listed an early LP transfer of the Mengelberg version; I have not set eyes on the book for at least 35 years, but I seem to remember that the LP was said to be taken from a broadcast, and I am glad to have that impression confirmed.

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One thing I like about playing 78 r.p.m. sets is that, as Marco Gilardetti has hinted, it is not an entirely passive process; you have not got time enough to sit back and let the music flood over you. Sometimes, in fact, an extra level of alertness is needed. Thus in the sets of Bruckner's fourth and fifth symphonies made in the mid-1930s by Karl Böhm and the Saxon State Orchestra, the repeat of the scherzo movement after the trio is not recorded; if you want to hear the movement as Bruckner intended, you have to go back to the beginning of the previous side in order to play the scherzo again, thereafter snatching the needle off the record so as not to be carried into the trio a second time.

However, I must admit that I would not now wish to repeat an experiment in direct involvement which I once performed, not by choice, about fifty years ago: I played the whole of Thomas Beecham's 1937 Magic Flute on a gramophone whose mainspring had broken, so that I had to push the turntable round by hand. I did this quite often in those days, although never again on so large a scale (I did not know at the time that mainsprings could be replaced, and so whenever I broke a spring I would provide the motive power myself until I could afford another gramophone). As a result the first two fingers of my right hand came to be bent sideways, a deformity which remains with me to this day.

Oliver Mundy.