The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

BillH_NJ wrote:And I just got the Columbia abridged Mikado as well. I already had a couple of records from the set, but now I have the full set with album. It is unusual in that some sides were recorded with piano accompaniment rather than orchestra.

Joseph Batten, Columbia's (formerly Edison-Bell's) house musical director, discusses these abridged sets in his 1955 autobiography Joe Batten's Book. Sullivan's full scores were so jealously guarded by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company that even their own conductors were not allowed to see them and had to work from annotated piano scores instead. Batten, who among many other remarkable achievements had taught himself orchestration, made his own arrangements from the few individual instrumental parts that he was able to procure, sometimes reconstructing the string parts more or less by ear, and fell back on the piano when all other resources failed.

Oliver Mundy.

Yes, I have seen that. The full scores were controlled by D’Oyly Carte and the other performances and recordings use their own orchestrations. According to this page, sessions were on November 6, 7, 8, and 10 of 1930, and it appears that there was no orchestra present on the 10th. The microphone placement and acoustic are very different as well. I had already had another copy of Sides 3 and 4 prior to getting the complete album.

http://gasdisc.oakapplepress.com/mikcolu.htm

The US, UK, and Australian pressings were all numbered differently. I have the UK pressings of Iolanthe and The Gondoliers as well, and the UK albums are numbered as well as the individual sides. I don’t know if that was the case for the US releases.

Thanks for the link.
It's an interesting read.

It has a lot of useful information about older and more recent recordings. I have been collecting G&S for over 50 years, if you count the years that I was listening to the recordings from the 1960s that were actually bought by my parents but that I now have.

Bill