The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Igor Stravinsky's "Petrouchka" performed by the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra, acoustically recorded in late 1923 and 1924.

All four disc are in pristine condition. Catalog numbers are sequential: 55245 - 55248

The records will be shipped in the album book of Victor set DM574 (1937). The cover states the performance is by the Philadelphia Orchestra, but that was the case with the 1937 Red Seal recordings that were originally in this album.

$45 plus shipping cost.

SOLD- PM to follow.

I think this may well have been the first recording ever made of anything by Stravinsky. Eugene Goossens, a member of a famous musical family of Belgian descent, was something of a specialist in modern music. (There were three generations of conductors named Eugene, or more correctly Eugène, Goossens; this one was the third.) The Royal Albert Hall Orchestra, formerly (and again after 1928) known as the New Symphony Orchestra, began to make records in 1909 under its principal conductor Landon Ronald who had been involved with the gramophone since 1900. In the 1920s they were far from being a virtuoso ensemble; they played with warmth for Edward Elgar, but Goossens was almost alone in being able to get any degree of rhythmic vigour out of them.

Oliver Mundy.

I know of at least one earlier recording of a Stravinsky piece, "Fireworks", by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra, recorded November 6, 1922, though it was not issued until late 1924. The Goossens/RAHO "Petrouchka" Blue Label set was recorded January 15, 1924.