Stokowsky's 1921 Tannhäuser Overture

Lengthy, complex classical compositions posed difficulties for record companies in the pre-1925 acoustic era. A 12-inch record side could only contain four-and-a-half or (at the most) five minutes of music, so longer compositions had to be split over multiple record sides. And the acoustic recording process was fairly kind to strong vocalists, but was woefully inadequate in terms of capturing the timbre of instrumental ensembles. Orchestral music fared particularly poorly in the acoustic era, with record companies generally limiting orchestras to short, familiar warhorses, often edited to fit on one record side.

But as I've mentioned before, Leopold Stokowski, conductor of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, understood the recording process better than most musicians. His are some of the best-sounding orchestral recordings of the acoustic era. And while he mostly offered shorter works and single movements (designed to fit on one record side) for his acoustic records, he was bold enough to record some longer pieces with the Philadelphia Symphony before it was common to do so.

Stokowski had been making records for four years when he recorded Wagner's 13-minute "Tannhäuser Overture" in late 1921. It's spread over three single-sided Victor Red Seal discs - sold separately, since the concept of the record "album" only became common with the advent of electrical recording. Stokowski leads the Philadelphians in a magnificent reading of Wagner's piece; its impact overcomes the limitations of the archaic recording process.

I have combined the three sides into one file below. The original issues are:

Part One - Victor 74758: matrix C-22808, take 10; recorded November 7, 1921
Part Two - Victor 74759: matrix C-22814, take 7; recorded December 5, 1921
Part Three - Victor 74768: matrix C-24999, take 2; recorded November 7, 1921.

All parts were recorded in Victor's Camden, New Jersey studios.

Philadelphia SO/Stokowski: Tannhäuser Overture

Comparing Stokowski - Acoustic and Electric

Leopold Stokowski was one of those artists, like his contemporary, Duke Ellington, who understood the
recording studio early on. Most musicians in the early days of the record business were pretty much at the mercy of the recording engineers in terns of how their recordings sounded, but Stokowski and Ellington knew what they wanted the finished products to sound like, and knew how to achieve those results. At evey stage of his recording career, Stokowski was a pioneer. He rearranged the Philadelphia Orchestra on stage and in the studio for better balance (and later for better stereo separation). When electric recording became standard, he used the mixing board as well as the baton to achieve the dynamics he wanted from his musicians.

Stokowski's early acoustic recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra represent the state of the art of the period, but he wasn't satisfied with them - and no wonder. The acoustic recording process could only

capture a fragment of the timbral and dynamic richness of an orchestra, and he was forced to use a reduced version of the orchestra, since the acoustic recording horn couldn't handle a full symphony orchestra. Stokowski really came into his own in the studio with the advent of the microphone. Recording on the stage of the Philadelphia Academy of Music with the full orchestra, his early electric recordings were revelatory at the time, and still sound impressive today.

Here are two Stokowski/Philadelphia recordings of the same piece, "March of the Caucasian Chief" by Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov. The earlier version was made at Victor's Camden, New Jersey studio on April 29, 1922. The second recording was cut in Philadelphia on October 11, 1927. It's an interesting contrast, and reveals much about the differences between the acoustic and electric recording processes.

March of the Caucasian Chief, 1922

March of the Caucasian Chief, 1927