Symphony No. 9

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 1947-07

Label: RCA Victor Red Seal

Auto-coupled release ("drop-automatic").

Recorded November 4, 1946 and February 2, 1947 at Symphony Hall, Boston.

Released 6/47. 78 rpm: M-1134 (11-9634/6), DM-1134 (11-9637/9). LP: LM-2900, VCM-6174, PRM-234.

78 rpm matrix and take numbers, including dates for published retaken sides:
[side # matrix and take # recording date]
Side 1: D6-RC-6250-1A (1) 11-4-46
Side 2: D6-RC-6251-3A (3) 4- 2-47
Side 3: D6-RC-6252-2A (2) 4- 2-47
Side 4: D6-RC-6254-1 (1) 11-4-46
Side 5: D6-RC-6255-1 (1) 11-4-46
Side 6: D6-RC-6256-1A (1) 11-4-46

When Koussevitzky first played this Symphony at the Tanglewood concert of August 10, 1946, he played the second movement quite a bit more slowly than he did later. The reason for this has only recently come to light. Shostakovich heard the broadcast of this performance in Russia, probably from Office of War Information or from Armed Forces Radio Service records, and wrote to Koussevitzky expressing his disapproval of Koussevitzky's slow tempo in the second movement. Accordingly, five months later, Koussevitzky rerecorded the second movement at a more rapid tempo. The second movement then required only two record sides, as opposed to three sides in the original recording. This caused a gap in the matrix numbers. Shostakovich also heard Koussevitzky's performance of his Eighth Symphony and wrote to Koussevitzky disapproving of it as well. Probably for this reason Koussevitzky never completed his April 25, 1945 recording of that symphony (see Unpublished RCA Victor-made Recording Detailed Listing, April 25, 1945).

This recording is one of the first made under the supervision of Victor A & R Representative R. Gilbert, who succeeded Macklin Marrow. Gilbert's name first appears in the logs, along with Marrow's, for the April 1946 Symphony Hall recording sessions. From the BSO sessions of August 1946 through November 1947, Gilbert's name appears alone. His philosophy of microphone selection and placement seems to have been a happy compromise between the reverberant excesses of his predecessor, Macklin Marrow, and the close up dryness of his successor, Richard Mohr, who in this regard hearkened back to the days of Charles O'Connell.

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