Conducts Saint-Saens Sym No 3 [Import]

The 1950's experienced some quantum leaps in the field of recorded music for home use; the LP record which had made its mono debut in 1948 had finally gone stereo in 1958 which opened the door to tremendous improvements in the quality of home audio reproduction. By the early 50's the visionary engineers at RCA had already anticipated two and three channel sound reproduction even though technology had not yet progressed to a point where it could be reproduced in the home. With the advent of tape recorders in the recording chain the potential to record in two or three channel instead of the original single channel became feasible and too great a temptation for the engineers to resist.

The first stereo recording was made in 1954 and around one year later the first stereo tape players became available for consumer's use totally revolutionizing the field of high fidelity; RCA was ready to market their first stereophonic tapes to an excited public. By that time I was working as a salesman in a high fidelity store and I can confirm that the change to stereo tape was a dramatic improvement; it was hard to believe how much better it sounded!

When the LP stereo record became available in 1958, the improvements made possible by the stereo recording technique became available to those who didn't have the resources to take the jump into recorded tape; those Ampex and Concertone player/recorders cost a lot of money.

This recording was made on April 5 and 6, 1959 at Symphony Hall, Boston and first released in March, 1960. It was later remastered by JVC in Yokohama, Japan and released in 1999. Musically the performance is commendable, sonically the recording is noteworthy; from a collector's perspective it is worth the money. The case is actually more of a hardback material more similar to a book that a jewel case. The notes are in Japanese with some English on the technical production of the disc.

RCA has taken a different approach with these older two and three channel recordings remastering them into the SACD format and utilizing, where available, the missing center channel. I have several of these recordings and can recommend them highly if you have the ability to playback SACD.