Early Hi-Fi

Cover: "Bell System American Orchestras On Tour" logo at top right. Early Hi-Fi Wide Range and Stereo Recordings Made by Bell Telephone Laboratories in the 1930s. Leopold Stokowski Conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra, 1931-1932. A1 to A4, B5, B6: Monaural B1 to B4: Stereo A1 "Roman Carnival": The recording presented here was made during the rehearsal of December 1, 1931. A2 "Invitation to the Dance": This performance, culled from a live concert of December 4, 1931, possess an infectious spontaneity not entirely captured during the formal recording sessions. A3 "Midsummer Night's Dream": The performance heard here, recorded December 5, 1931, is somewhat slower tempo than the acoustical 1917 Philadelphia recording, but it possesses more of the characteristic Stokowski flavor in such touches as the highlighting of the inner voices and the sudden sforzandi in the brass. A4 "Prelude & Liebestod": In this recording of December 19, 1931, Stokowski performd the standard Wagner arrangement of the Prelude and Liebestod. Unfortunately, not all of the Prelude was taken down during this performance; however, what remains has been included in this album to afford the listener an inkling of the passionate intensity which pervades so many of Stokowski's Wagnerian readings. B1 & B2 "Poem of Fire": During a concert of Russian music, given on March 12, 1932, Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra performed this work. Bell Labs engineers were on hand to make some experimental recordings in stereophonic sound. All that was recorded of Scriabin's "Poem of Fire," two short excerpts, is presented here in its entirety, representing the first stereophonic recordings of a major symphony orchestra. This record was produced with the full cooperation of the estate of Leopold Stokowski. Mr. C. W. Baumgarten, who is in charge of the musical and artistic assests of the estate and who was Stokowski's assistant during the last fourteen years of the maestro's life, says Stokowski would have been extremely pleased to find that the records have been preserved, since they are the truest recorded sound of this legendary period.