1812 Overture (Tchaikovsky): 1927 recording

[gramophone-georg]

Thank you all for your supportive comments. I am aware that my chief area of interest (early orchestral and chamber-music recordings) probably seems highly eccentric to most people, and it is most encouraging to find that I am not quite alone in my enthusiasm.

Oliver Mundy.

Oh HELL no! I'm a collector of early orchestral and chamber as well as jazz. But then, I'm not most people either so you may have a point after all.

[marcapra]

Yes Oliver, I was amazed at your first electrical recording of the 1812 Overture. It sounded very good. I'm wondering now if there was an acoustic recording of the compete 1812? And another question, what was the first recording of the 1812. Come to think of it, I have an early recording of the 1812 Overture on a 4 minute wax Amberol #51 from 1908, but of course it is only 4 minutes of a 13 minute work!

[fran604g]

Yes Oliver, I was amazed at your first electrical recording of the 1812 Overture. It sounded very good. I'm wondering now if there was an acoustic recording of the compete 1812? And another question, what was the first recording of the 1812. Come to think of it, I have an early recording of the 1812 Overture on a 4 minute wax Amberol #51 from 1908, but of course it is only 4 minutes of a 13 minute work!

I'd love to hear that Marc, if you could do a video of the recording.

Cheers,
Fran

[Menophanes]

Yes Oliver, I was amazed at your first electrical recording of the 1812 Overture. It sounded very good. I'm wondering now if there was an acoustic recording of the compete 1812? And another question, what was the first recording of the 1812. Come to think of it, I have an early recording of the 1812 Overture on a 4 minute wax Amberol #51 from 1908, but of course it is only 4 minutes of a 13 minute work!

Landon Ronald and the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra recorded a somewhat abridged version on three sides for H.M.V. in 1917. This includes the bells and side-drum but not the cymbals or the cannon effects. It is on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ_3PkJyUkM ).

There is an earlier (about 1907) Gramophone & Typewriter single-sided version of the final section alone, in a military-band arrangement, by the Band of the Coldstream Guards conducted by Lieutenant (later Lieut.-Colonel) James Mackenzie Rogan. This has some historical interest, since Rogan was one of the first people in Britain to conduct the work.

Weissmann, the conductor on my recording, had done the complete work acoustically for Parlophone in about 1922. I would dearly love to hear that version!

Oliver Mundy.

[epigramophone]

Although it is many years since I disposed of my orchestral 78's to concentrate on other musical genres, I remember Sir Henry Wood's recording of the 1812 Overture Solennelle with the New Queen's Hall Orchestra, released in 1926 on Columbia L1764/5&6. Bells very much in evidence but no cannon, and of course Columbia's superbly smooth and silent surfaces.

[Menophanes]

Wood's version must be the first electrical recording of the work. (Stokowski, whom one might have expected to be an early contender, did not conduct it on record until 1930.) Wood's tempi must have been very broad in places, since he needed five sides rather than the usual four. I have not heard this, but my recollection of a Liszt Hungarian Fantasy No. 2 which he conducted in the same year suggests that the studio used was a very cramped and unresonant one, perhaps left over from the acoustic era; the same is true of another Columbia set of the same year, Holst's Planets conducted by the composer. The earlier (1923) version of this is in fact better in many ways: warmer in tone, less hard-driven in tempi and only marginally less clear.

Oliver Mundy.

[drh]

It's 1812 mania!

If you would like to hear four other early versions of the 1812, you can download them (not stream them) here:

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/ppgll3ix9fovx/

The cast of characters, alphabetically:

Willem Mengelberg leading the Concertgebouw Orchestra on Capitol (post WW II pressing of Telefunken masters)

Nikolai Sokoloff leading the Cleveland Orchestra on Brunswick (abridged to two sides)

Leopold Stokowski leading the Philadelphia Orchestra on Victor

Sir Henry Wood leading the New Queen's Hall Orchestra (US Columbia Viva-Tonal, from English Columbia--the mention of this set above was the spur to this undertaking)

The Mengelberg is in Monkey's Audio .ape lossless compressed format; the others are .wav files.

Apologies for the poor condition of my copies of Sokoloff and Stokie and for the rather harsh recording quality Brunswick afforded the former. I think my favorite is Mengelberg, in part because he interpolates an organ at the end.

Some speculation was going on about Sir Henry J. Wood's recording, that it might be the product of a boxy studio. Quite the contrary, it's a remarkably vivid recording, especially considering its early date, and getting the bells at the end must have been quite a technological feat. As to its being spread over five sides, I think that was an engineering choice because of the dynamic recording; certainly the tempos don't seem unduly slow. That said, I'm afraid that, to my ear, the performance is rather stodgy. Give me Sokoloff; battered copy, brash original recording, abridged score notwithstanding, that is a whale of a performance.

[marcapra]

These recording pose many questions such as what recording was the first to have real cannon shots, or at least gun shots? What recording was the first to include a chorus at the end singing the Russian anthem?

Here is a video of the 1908 Edison wax Amberol #51 cylinder recording of the the 1812, (not mine)
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1n46nx

[Lucius1958]

These recording pose many questions such as what recording was the first to have real cannon shots, or at least gun shots? What recording was the first to include a chorus at the end singing the Russian anthem?

Here is a video of the 1908 Edison wax Amberol #51 cylinder recording of the the 1812, (not mine)
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1n46nx

Wow: I didn't know my old videos were still up there!

- Bill

[Menophanes]

It's 1812 mania!

If you would like to hear four other early versions of the 1812, you can download them (not stream them) here:

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/ppgll3ix9fovx/

. . .

Thank you for these! Sokoloff's reading certainly has an impressive urgency and momentum. Wood draws out the slow opening and (I agree) has some rather deliberate tempi elsewhere, especially perhaps in the ninth and tenth minutes, but he too gives us some exciting moments. The studio environment does strike me as rather close, but not objectionably so; it is, I think, rather like the relatively dry acoustic favoured by French engineers in the 1920s and 1930s. These are all I have had time to hear so far.

I should have liked to hear what Albert Coates would make of this piece.

Oliver Mundy.