Chapter II: Part 2

All the same, despite the sublimities of the work and the vaunted “morality” of the composer, Beethoven did not hesitate to offer the score to at least three different publishing houses at practically the same time! Small wonder that, before long, a London concert agent was writing: “For heavens’ sake, don’t have any dealings with Beethoven!” If the master was not above attempting a little business skulduggery now and then he did not go about it cleverly!

Symphony No. 9, in D Minor, with Final Chorus on Schiller’s “Ode to
Joy,” Opus 125

More than ten years passed after the initial performance of the Eighth Symphony before Beethoven brought out its successor, his ninth and last, on May 7, 1824. The earlier part of this period was comparatively unproductive. Beethoven was profoundly disturbed by quarrels over his guardianship of his nephew Karl, which eventually were taken to court. His health and spirits suffered and, meantime, his deafness became complete. Nevertheless his creative impulse found expression in two works of the grandest dimensions, the Mass in D and the Ninth Symphony. Sketches for the symphony were made as early as 1815—perhaps even earlier—and he went to work on it in earnest in 1817.

The première took place at the Kaerthnerthor Theater, Vienna, on May 7, 1824. The problems of performance were complicated by the composer’s using in the final movement a chorus and a quartet of soloists. Michael Umlauf conducted and the solo singers were Henriette Sontag (one of the most famous sopranos of her day), Karolina Unger, Anton Haitzinger, and J. Seipelt. The difficulty of Beethoven’s voice parts gave trouble at rehearsals. Mmes. Sontag and Unger begged him to alter their music, but in vain. Mme. Unger declared in his presence that he was a “tyrant over all the vocal organs.” Still, at the first performance it was she who led the composer from where he had been sitting in the midst of the orchestra to the edge of the stage to see the excited waving of the audience and to bow.

These solo parts have lost none of their difficulty for singers, and from the sopranos of the chorus Beethoven well-nigh demands the superhuman. With a view to helping matters some conductors have transposed the Finale down a whole tone, thus dimming its brilliance and upsetting Beethoven’s scheme of keys. Wagner believed that Beethoven by having words and singers in the Finale had closed the cycle of purely orchestral music. Others, however, regard the singers as a mistake and maintain that Beethoven recognized his error. So devout and searching a student of Beethoven as Professor Tovey, while dismissing as absurd the theory of Beethoven’s discontent with instrumental music, holds that every part of the Ninth Symphony becomes clearer when we assume that the choral Finale is right, and that hardly a point in the work but becomes difficult and obscure when we assume that the choral Finale is wrong. Though he admits that Beethoven, long after the production of the symphony, told some friends that the choral inclusion was a mistake and that perhaps some day he might write an instrumental Finale, he sets this down to a fit of depression. At any rate, the Finale stands as written and there is no choice but to grapple with its problems.

For three movements the symphony is of course, purely instrumental. Of the first movement (“Allegro, ma non troppo, un poco maestoso,” in D minor) Ricciotto Canudo has written: “In the beginning was space; and all possibilities were in space; and life was space.” It begins pianissimo in empty fifths. A descending figure of two notes, from the heights to the depths, is reiterated while a tremendous crescendo leads to the theme that dominates the movement, given out fortissimo in unison and octaves:

The entire movement, which is well stocked with other themes, has the majesty and impetus of a titanic tragedy, and its propulsive drama ends with a defiant proclamation of the chief theme.

Now Beethoven reverses his usual procedure by postponing the slow movement and introducing a “Molto vivace” (in F minor), which has been called at once the greatest and the longest of his scherzos. A phrase of three notes, repeated on each interval of the chord of D minor, begins it, followed immediately by this fugal subject:

The enormous vitality and rhythmic drive of the Scherzo have deafened some hearers to the bitter strain in the jest. Joy unalloyed has not yet burst upon the scene.

And meanwhile Beethoven gives us the slow movement, a combination of an “Adagio molto e cantabile” (in B-flat major) and an “Andante moderato” (in D major), which as a whole has been described conveniently and with reasonable accuracy as a set of variations on two alternating themes:

Language has been ransacked for words to express the beauty and elevation of this Adagio-Andante. Its seraphic song is dying away when the initial D minor of the Finale, presto and fortissimo, roughly smites our ears.

A series of orchestral sections, in contrast and conflict, occupy the battleground of the earlier pages before the baritone soloist, first using words by Beethoven himself, introduces the human voices and Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.” Two of the themes brought in here the listener should keep carefully in mind: the first is employed later by the baritone in demanding sounds of gladness, and the second is the so-called theme of joy:

Now chorus and soloists join valiantly in the good fight for “mirth and rapture blended” till the symphony ends in the victorious D major paeans, vocal and at the very last instrumental, of universal rejoicing. The burden of Schiller’s praise of Joy is held in these two lines:

“All mankind are brothers plighted
Where thy gentle wings abide.”

And universal brotherhood is thus voiced by the tenors and the basses in unison.

Chamber Music

If Beethoven’s best-known and most widely performed works are the nine symphonies, his chamber music represents the most far-reaching, diversified, profound, original, spiritualized, and at the same time the most problematic manifestations of his genius. It is through his quartets, when all’s said, that his influence has been most felt. In these dwell the germs of more or less everything out of which subsequent music has, in one way or another, developed. If Beethoven may be called a “musician of the future” it is by reason of his sixteen string quartets more than by anything else. More than all else he composed they continue, in great measure, to be in advance not only of the master’s own time but even of our own.

It may be said that his chamber music spanned his life. The earliest specimens of it date from his Bonn days, from around his fifteenth year. From then on they continued (intermittently, it is true) almost up to the time of his death—indeed, the last composition he completed was a new finale for the B-flat Quartet, opus 130, to replace the original one, the Great Fugue, now opus 133, which early audiences could not grasp and which, to this very day, is a stumbling block for most hearers although one of the most extraordinary and transcendent pages Beethoven ever produced. And though at his demise he left a quantity of sketches (including studies for a tenth symphony) there is every reason to assume that an even more copious quantity of chamber music might have come from his pen had he lived five or ten years longer.

The mass of such chamber music as he did bequeath us includes sonatas for piano and violin as well as for piano and cello; a Quintet in C major, opus 29, for two violins, two violas, and cello, dating from 1801; a quintet fugue in D, written in 1817 but published as opus 137; a number of trios for a variety of instrumental combinations, several duets and serenades, and other miscellany for more or less intimate performance. Lastly, the famous Septet in E flat, for clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello, and double-bass, opus 20. This septet was composed about 1800 and was at one time so immeasurably popular that Beethoven himself wearied of it. Despite the vogue it long enjoyed, it is far from one of its creator’s most inspired flights.

The series of trios for piano and strings constitute something of a counterpart to the great string quartets. Opus 1 consists of three such trios, and the composer’s friend Ries wrote that “when the three were first heard by the musical world at one of Prince Lichnowsky’s soirées nearly all the foremost artists and amateurs of Vienna were invited, among them Haydn, whose opinion was awaited with intense interest.” The trios caused a sensation. Haydn, who was enthusiastic about them on the whole, had reservations to make about the third, in C minor, and advised the composer not to publish it. Beethoven took this advice in bad part, the more so because he regarded this trio as the best, and imagined that his famous contemporary was actuated by envy. The truth of the matter was that Haydn, struck by the bold originality of the score, was honestly afraid that the public might not understand it. But it is precisely this quality that has lifted the C minor Trio far above the other two of opus 1.

The other trios for piano and strings are the pair in D major and E-flat, opus 70, and the supremely great one in B flat, opus 97, called the “Archduke” Trio because it was dedicated to the composer’s friend and pupil, the Archduke Rudolph. The Opus 70 creations are remarkable for the somewhat restless, indeed forbidding, quality that fills some of their pages. The first has been named the “Ghost” Trio on account of an eerie figure that pervades the slow movement and lends it a strangely weird and hollow sound. The “Archduke” Trio has a spaciousness and elevation, particularly in its Largo, which is a series of five variations on a theme in the character of a hymn. Wisely enough, Beethoven placed the Scherzo before the profound slow movement, as he was again to do in the “Hammerklavier” Sonata and the Ninth Symphony. But this scherzo utilizes in its middle part a curious, winding chromatic figure which ranks with the master’s most striking ideas at this stage of his progress.

Between 1799 and 1802 Beethoven wrote eight of his ten sonatas for violin and piano. The most famous of these eight are the fifth—the so-called “Spring” Sonata in F, opus 24, which opens with a theme of lovely grace and has an adorable serenity throughout its four movements—and the set in A major, C minor, and G major, opus 30, which was published with a dedication to Czar Alexander I of Russia. The C minor Sonata reveals a heroic quality which lends it something of the spirit of the “Eroica” Symphony, and the closing Presto of the finale has about it an element of dramatic grandeur. However, none of these sonatas quite reaches the level of the “Kreutzer” or the much later Sonata in G major, opus 96. The A major, opus 47, derived its name from the fact that it was dedicated to Rudolph Kreutzer. It was first played by a mulatto violinist named Bridgetower, while the composer performed the piano part. Despite the haste with which the work was composed (Czerny spoke of “four days”), the sonata, “written in a very concertante style,” has remained probably the best-known and most widely popular of all Beethoven’s sonatas for violin and piano. The music has an expansiveness and plenitude that surpass any other work Beethoven designed for this instrumental combination. The finale, a whirlwind Presto originally conceived for the first sonata of the opus 30 set, influenced Schubert when he composed the last movement of his D minor Quartet. Undoubtedly it is the most original, not to say the most exciting, part of the work—more so, indeed, than the Andante, with its series of variations so arranged that each artist is given his adroitly balanced share.

The G major Sonata, composed in 1812 and first performed by the French violinist Pierre Rode and the Archduke Rudolph, is unquestionably the most intellectual and the subtlest of Beethoven’s violin sonatas. In any case it has some of the unmistakable traits of the master’s later style about it.

The sonatas for cello and piano, in F major and G minor, were composed as early as 1796 and performed in Berlin before the King of Prussia by Beethoven and the Court cellist, Duport. But the memorable cello sonatas of Beethoven’s are the one in A major, opus 69, one of his most lavish and magnificent works; and the C major and D major, opus 102. The first named, like the “Kreutzer” Sonata or the “Appassionata” of the piano series, is a creation that needs no defense and no far-fetched explanations. On the other hand, the opus 102 pair, despite their indisputable profundities, are among Beethoven’s more unapproachable and recondite works. Indeed, they have about them a certain hard-shelled quality which scarcely lends them an especially intimate or endearing effect.

String Quartets

The great series of string quartets begins with the six of opus 18, published in 1801, and concludes, officially speaking, with the masterpiece in F major, opus 135, completed only in 1826, but not printed till something like half a year after his death. The half-dozen works constituting the earlier opus had been ripening in the form of sketches and experiments of one sort or another for several years. They were finally issued in two numbers, each consisting of three scores. It is not possible to determine precisely the order in which they were written, but that fact is unimportant because the lot do not exhibit any definite line of development. It seems that one version of the first quartet, in F, was completed in 1799. Beethoven gave it to his friend, the young ecclesiastical student Carl Amenda, but asked him to show it to nobody because “I have altered it considerably, having just learned to compose quartets aright.” Bekker finds that the revision “tends to a freer, more soloistic treatment of the accompanying parts, a clearer individualization of the cello part and a greater tonal delicacy in the ensemble effects.... The main idea of the composition, however, remained unchanged. This is no disadvantage, for the fresh naiveté of the content and the unassuming clarity of structure are great charms, and more would have been lost than gained by overmeticulous revision. As the work stands it is gratifying to the performer and offers pleasant, not over difficult problems to the listener.”

The finest part of the work is undoubtedly the second movement, an “Adagio affetuoso ed appassionato.” It is the richest in texture and certainly the most poetic and emotional of the four. When the composer played it to Amenda he is said to have inquired what the music suggested to him. “It suggests a lover’s parting,” replied Amenda; whereupon Beethoven replied, “Well, the tomb scene from _Romeo and Juliet_ was in my mind.” And Bekker insists that this Adagio is “a most moving song of sorrow such as only Beethoven could accomplish when he turned to the grave D minor key.”

The second quartet, in G major, has been christened in some German countries the “Compliment Quartet.” It is graceful and rather courtly but it reaches none of the depths of the more moving pages of the preceding work, The Finale, however, is an instance of that “unbuttoned humor” that Beethoven was to exhibit on later occasions and of which he gave us supreme instances in the last movement of the Seventh Symphony, the Eighth Symphony, and moments in the last quartets, the “Diabelli Variations,” and several of the final piano sonatas. Opus 18, No. 3, in D, is likewise marked by a quality of gaiety, though hardly of the “unbuttoned” kind.

The fourth work of the opus 18 set, in C minor, is more or less a work distinct from its companions. “A mood of deep seriousness is common to it and the C major Quintet, opus 29,” believes Bekker, “but the Quartet is full of passionate excitement,” and he alludes to its “mournful earnestness ... and restless dissatisfaction, the very opposite of the cheerful sense of concord with the world and mankind expressed in the other five.” The Quartet in A major has been termed Mozartean by some, operatic by others. Certainly it is fluent and lilting music, of which the Minuet is in some respects the most winning portion even if the final Allegro excels it in expressiveness.

The B-flat Quartet, sixth of the series, is particularly significant for the sombre adagio beginning of its otherwise jubilant allegretto Finale. Beethoven has headed this introduction (which is recalled dramatically during the movement) “La Malinconia: Questo pezzo si deve trattare colla più gran delicatezza” (“Melancholy: this piece must be played with the greatest delicacy”). This eerie and wholly romantic movement is a true glimpse of the Beethoven into whose newer world we shall presently penetrate.

With the three monumental quartets of opus 59 we have entered this new sphere. They belong to the year 1806, which means that they are of the epoch of the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, the third “Leonore” Overture, and the Violin Concerto and the G major Concerto for piano. Beethoven dedicated them to the Russian Count Rasoumovsky, whose name is thus imperishably linked with these masterpieces; and it was perhaps as a compliment to this nobleman that he introduced into the first and second of these works authentic Russian themes. Indeed, the Scherzo of the E minor Quartet utilizes that great melody around which, more than half a century later, Moussorgsky was to build the coronation scene in his opera _Boris Godounov_.

The “Rasoumovsky” trilogy exhibits Beethoven’s inventive and technical faculties at the ideal symmetry they had achieved at the flood tide of his so-called “Second” period. The F major, C major, and E minor Quartets are in some ways the most ideally “balanced” ones he ever wrote; and, with all their splendor of form and substance, they are still replete with the most astonishing originalities and departures. Indeed, the amazing “Allegretto, scherzando” movement of the F major Quartet so astounded the players who first undertook to perform it that they imagined Beethoven’s rhythmic motto theme was intended as a joke at their expense and almost refused to go through with it. The Adagio, on the other hand, develops, with the utmost richness of sonority and color possible to four stringed instruments, two gorgeously songlike themes till it seems as if they had become expanded to orchestral dimensions. The E minor Quartet, less a display piece than its companion works, is in a totally different and quite as unprecedented manner, while its slow movement (“Molto Adagio”) sounds a deep, spiritual note which seems to have been inspired in the composer by a nocturnal contemplation of a starry sky in the country around Baden, near Vienna. As for the C major Quartet, the third of the “Rasoumovsky” set, it closes in a jubilant, sweeping fugue, which is like a paean of triumph.

There are two E-flat quartets in Beethoven’s output: the first, opus 74, is known as the “Harp” Quartet by reason of the numerous passages of plucked strings in the first movement; the second is the tremendous opus 127. The former is the dreamier, less challenging of the two; it is rich not only in a sort of romanticism that looks forward to the age of Schumann, but also in unexpected effects bearing the unmistakable stamp of the Beethoven of the “Emperor” Concerto period, though in its way it is rather less venturesome than the “Rasoumovsky” trilogy. But the quartet that was written down in 1810—the F minor, opus 95—is in another category. It is the product of a new period of emotional ferment and a disquiet pervades the score with the irascible pertinacity of a gadfly. There is, indeed, a new quality of storm and stress in this _Quartetto Serioso_, as the composer himself designated it. Here he is in no mood for trifling. “At the moment when Beethoven had fought out his battle, when he could look back on all stages of the contest and taste the fruits of victory, he became most intensely aware of what it had cost him,” writes Paul Bekker, adding that “the autographed title shows that the composer sought no happy solution of his problem”—in spite of which the F minor Quartet does, surprisingly enough, end on a note of laughter.

Beethoven did not busy himself with the composition of string quartets for another fourteen years. This stretch of time is longer than any other interval in the various series of his compositions. It must be recalled, however, that in this space he wrote the last three symphonies, the last half-dozen piano sonatas, the _Missa Solemnis_, the definitive revision of _Fidelio_ together with its new E major overture, the _Ferne Geliebte_ song cycle, the “Consecration of the House” Overture, and a quantity of other works only less significant. Spiritually, of course, he had traversed cycles of experience and had become, in an intellectual and artistic sense, another being.

It is almost inevitable, therefore, that the next great masterpiece of chamber music, should lift the curtain on a new creative realm. The E-flat Quartet, opus 127, has been properly likened to a majestic portal opening on the grand landscape of the last four quartets—the B-flat, opus 130; C-sharp minor, opus 131; A minor, opus 132; and the relatively short F major, opus 135, which may be described as a short of epilogue to the series.

There is nothing quite like these “last quartets” in Beethoven’s myriad-faceted output. In its way the series may be said to transcend even the Ninth Symphony, the “Hammerklavier” Sonata, and the “Diabelli” Variations. The novelty, the explosive qualities, the far-darting influence of these works (which span the nineteenth century and might even be said to help leaven the musical art of our own time) cannot be fully evaluated, let alone described, in this book.

It must suffice here to point out that the E-flat Quartet places the listener at once in a world of unimagined wonders. The very opening measures of the first movement with their powerful chords sound like a heraldic annunciation. The second movement, (“Adagio ma non troppo e molto cantabile”) is a series of variations of deepest earnestness. It is as if the composer endeavored to bring to his hearers revelations newly unfolded to his searching vision. The “Scherzando vivace” that follows is wildly and even uncannily humorous—and, incidentally, the longest of Beethoven’s scherzos. The Finale is a sort of triumphal march in which “some adventurer from the heavens seems to visit the earth ... with tidings of gladness, to return to his home in the heavens once more.”

The B-flat Quartet is, if anything, more unusual and amazing, and it is in reality bound by a kind of mystical thematic kinship with the A minor and the C-sharp minor Quartets which come next. This kinship can be traced through the Great Fugue and is carried through the following quartets with a variety of profound philosophical modifications. The seven relatively brief movements of the B-flat masterpiece culminate in the hyper-emotional Cavatina (of which Beethoven said that remembrance of the feelings that inspired him to compose it always stirred him to tears); and to this sentimental outburst the harsh if stupendous fugue provided a truly beneficent purgation. The later-written closing Allegro, if lively and effervescent, is much less truly “in the picture.”

While it is risky, if not really impossible, to speak of the “greatest” of the last quartets, more than one musician would vote for the fourteenth—the tremendous one in C-sharp minor. The composition has seven movements, extraordinarily diversified. Beethoven tried out one of his little pleasantries on Schott, the publisher, and declared at first the quartet was “pieced together out of sundry stolen odds and ends.” A little later he reassured the frightened, unimaginative man of business that it was really “brand new.” And subsequently he said impulsively that he considered the C-sharp minor “my best.” The introductory “Adagio non troppo” was called by Wagner “the most sorrowful thing ever said in music.” All the same, the mighty creation, after passing through unbelievable emotional transformations, closes in a triumphal frenzy which Wagner likened to “the dance of the whole world.”

The A minor Quartet, opus 132, doubtless begun somewhat earlier than the two preceding, is scarcely less amazing. Its heart is the “Molto Adagio” movement which Beethoven called “Song of Thanksgiving in the Lydian mode offered to the Deity by a convalescent.” It is filled with a mystical quality, a religious mood explained by the circumstance that the composer wrote the movement (one of his longest) when recovering from an illness. But the still more amazing fact about this quartet is that some pages of it were conceived for other works. It is a strange phenomenon that Beethoven on several occasions designed a quantity of pages not wholly sure where they would best fit, though in the end his artistic intuitions invariably led him to discover the right place. Just as he once intended the last movement of the “Kreutzer” Sonata for one of the sonatas of the opus 30 set, so he at one time intended the “Alla Marcia” that begins the finale of the A minor Quartet for the Ninth Symphony. And the last quartets furnish other instances of the same kind of thing.

The sixteenth quartet, last of the series, is rather different from the philosophical quartets that immediately preceded it. It is, on the whole, of lighter weight, though its brief “Lento assai” movement touches hands with the ineffable Cavatina of the B-flat Quartet. It is the shortest, though one of the most moving, of Beethoven’s slow movements. The last movement opens with a three-note motto under which the composer wrote the words “Must it be?” and followed it with another three-note theme (Allegro) inscribed with the words “It must be!” Explanations have been numerous and often far-fetched. There is reason to believe that this formula and the musical embodiments of this interrogation and answer must be construed in the light of the master’s philosophy, with its cheerful acceptance of the inevitable. It looks almost like a purposeful reversion to the mood of “La malinconia” episode in the B-flat Quartet of opus 18.

COMPLETE LIST OF RECORDINGS
BY THE
PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY OF NEW YORK

COLUMBIA RECORDS

LP—Also available on Long Playing Microgroove Recordings as well as on
the conventional Columbia Masterworks.

_Under the Direction of Bruno Walter_

Barber—Symphony No. 1, Op. 9
Beethoven—Concerto for Violin, Cello, Piano and Orchestra in C major
(with J. Corigliano, L. Rose and W. Hendl)—LP
Beethoven—Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major (“Emperor”) (with Rudolf
Serkin, piano)—LP
Beethoven—Concerto in D major for Violin and Orchestra (with Joseph
Szigeti)—LP
Beethoven—Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21—LP
Beethoven—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Eroica”)—LP
Beethoven—Symphony No. 5 in C minor—LP
Beethoven—Symphony No. 8 in F major—LP
Beethoven—Symphony No. 9 in D minor (“Choral”) (with Elena Nikolaidi,
contralto, and Raoul Jobin, tenor)—LP
Brahms—Song of Destiny (with Westminster Choir)—LP
Dvorak—Slavonic Dance No. 1
Dvorak—Symphony No. 4 in G Major—LP
Mahler—Symphony No. 4 in G major (with Desi Halban, soprano)—LP
Mahler—Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor
Mendelssohn—Concerto in E minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin)—LP
Mendelssohn—Scherzo (from Midsummer Night’s Dream)
Mozart—Cosi fan Tutti—Overture
Mozart—Symphony No. 41 in C major (“Jupiter”), K. 551—LP
Schubert—Symphony No. 7 in C major—LP
Schumann, R.—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Rhenish”)—LP
Smetana—The Moldau (“Vltava”)—LP
Strauss, J.—Emperor Waltz

_Under the direction of Leopold Stokowski_

Copland—Billy the Kid (2 parts)
Griffes—“The White Peacock,” Op. 7, No. 1—LP 7″
Ippolitow—“In the Village” from Caucasian Sketches (W. Lincer and M.
Nazzi, soloists)
Khachaturian—“Masquerade Suite”—LP
Messian—“L’Ascension”—LP
Schoenberg—Stein-Lied Der Waldtaure sus Gurrelieder (Martha Lipton,
soloist)—LP
Sibelius—“Maiden with the Roses”—LP
Tschaikowsky—Francesca da Rimini, Op. 32—LP
Tschaikowsky—Overture Fantasy—Romeo and Juliet—LP
Vaughan-Williams—Greensleeves
Vaughan-Williams—Symphony No. 6 in E minor—LP
Wagner—Die Walküre—Wotan Farewell and Magic Fire Music (Act III, Scene
3)
Wagner—Siegfried’s Rhine Journey and Siegfried’s Funeral March—(“Die
Götterdämmerung”)—LP
Wagner—Overture “Rienzi”

_Under the Direction of Efrem Kurtz_

Chopin—Les Sylphides—LP
Glinka—Mazurka—“Life of the Czar”—LP 7″
Grieg—Concerto in A minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 16 (with Oscar
Levant, piano)—LP
Herold—Zampa—Overture
Kabalevsky—“The Comedians,” Op. 26—LP
Khachaturian—Gayne—Ballet Suite No. 1—LP
Khachaturian—Gayne—Ballet Suite No. 2—LP
Lecoq—Mme. Angot Suite—LP
Prokofieff—March, Op. 99—LP
Rimsky-Korsakov—The Flight of the Bumble Bee—LP 7″
Shostakovich—Polka No. 3, “The Age of Gold”—LP 7″
Shostakovich—Symphony No. 9—LP
Shostakovich—Valse from “Les Monts D’Or”—LP
Villa-Lobos—Uirapuru—LP
Wieniawski—Concerto No, 2 in D minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 22
(with Isaac Stern, violin)—LP

_Under the Direction of Charles Münch_

D’Indy—Symphony on a French Mountain Air for Orchestra and Piano—LP
Milhaud—Suite Française—LP
Mozart—Concerto No. 21 for Piano and Orchestra in C major—LP
Saint-Saens—Symphony in C minor, No. 3 for Orchestra, Organ and Piano,
Op. 78—LP

_Under the Direction of Artur Rodzinski_

Bizet—Carmen—Entr’acte (Prelude to Act III)
Bizet—Symphony in C major—LP
Brahms—Symphony No. 1 in C minor—LP
Brahms—Symphony No. 2 in D major—LP
Copland—A Lincoln Portrait (with Kenneth Spencer, Narrator)—LP
Enesco—Roumanian Rhapsody—A major, No. 1—LP
Gershwin—An American in Paris—LP
Gould—“Spirituals” for Orchestra—LP
Ibert—“Escales” (Port of Call)—LP
Liszt—Mephisto Waltz—LP
Moussorgsky—Gopack (The Fair at Sorotchinski)—LP
Moussorgsky-Ravel—Pictures at an Exhibition—LP
Prokofieff—Symphony No. 5—LP
Rachmaninoff—Concerto No. 2 in C minor for Piano and Orchestra (with
Gygory Sandor, piano)
Rachmaninoff—Symphony No. 2 in E minor
Saint-Saens—Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 4 in C minor (with
Robert Casadesus)—LP
Sibelius—Symphony No. 4 in A minor
Tschaikowsky—Nutcracker Suite—LP
Tschaikowsky—Suite “Mozartiana”—LP
Tschaikowsky—Symphony No. 6 in B minor (“Pathétique”)—LP
Wagner—Lohengrin—Bridal Chamber Scene (Act III—Scene 2)—(with Helen
Traubel, soprano, and Kurt Baum, tenor)—LP
Wagner—Lohengrin—Elsa’s Dream (Act I, Scene 2) (with Helen Traubel,
soprano)
Wagner—Siegfried Idyll—LP
Wagner—Tristan und Isolde—Excerpts (with Helen Traubel, soprano)
Wagner—Die Walküre—Act III (Complete) (with Helen Traubel, soprano and
Herbert Janssen, baritone)—LP
Wagner—Die Walküre—Duet (Act I, Scene 3) (with Helen Traubel, soprano
and Emery Darcy, tenor)—LP
Wolf-Ferrari—“Secret of Suzanne,” Overture

_Under the Direction of Igor Stravinsky_

Stravinsky—Firebird Suite—LP
Stravinsky—Fireworks (Feu d’Artifice)—LP
Stravinsky—Four Norwegian Moods
Stravinsky—Le Sacre du Printemps (The Consecration of the Spring)—LP
Stravinsky—Scènes de Ballet—LP
Stravinsky—Suite from “Petrouchka”—LP
Stravinsky—Symphony in Three Movements—LP

_Under the Direction of Sir Thomas Beecham_

Mendelssohn—Symphony No. 4, in A major (“Italian”)
Sibelius—Melisande (from “Pelleas and Melisande”)
Sibelius—Symphony No. 7 in C major—LP
Tschaikowsky—Capriccio Italien

_Under the Direction of John Barbirolli_

Bach-Barbirolli—Sheep May Safely Graze (from the “Birthday
Cantata”)—LP
Berlioz—Roman Carnival Overture
Brahms—Symphony No. 2, in D major
Brahms—Academic Festival Overture—LP
Bruch—Concerto No. 1, in G minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin)—LP
Debussy—First Rhapsody for Clarinet (with Benny Goodman, clarinet)
Debussy—Petite Suite: Ballet
Mozart—Concerto in B-flat major (with Robert Casadesus, piano)
Mozart—Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183
Ravel—La Valse
Rimsky-Korsakov—Capriccio Espagnol
Sibelius—Symphony No. 1, in E minor
Sibelius—Symphony No. 2, in D major
Smetana—The Bartered Bride—Overture
Tschaikowsky—Theme and Variations (from Suite No. 3 in G)—LP

_Under the Direction of Andre Kostelanetz_

Gershwin—Concerto in F (with Oscar Levant)—LP

_Under the Direction of Dimitri Mitropoulos_

Gould—Philharmonic Waltzes (Zino Francescatti, violin)—LP
Khachaturian—Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (Oscar Levant, piano)—LP
Rabaud—La Procession Nocturne (Zino Francescatti, violin)—LP
Saint-Saens—Dance Macabre (Robert, Gaby & Jean Casadesus, pianists)—LP
Saint-Saens—Le Rouet d’Omphale (Zino Francescatti, violin)—LP
Saint-Saens—Violin Concerto, Op. 61 (Zino Francescatti, violin)—LP
Sessions—Symphony No. 2

_Under the Direction of Leonard Bernstein_

Bernstein—“Age of Anxiety”

_Under the Direction of Morton Gould_

Gould—“Quick Step”—LP

_Under the Direction of Darius Milhaud_

Milhaud—Suite Française—LP

_Under the Direction of George Szell_

Smetana—Bohemia’s Fields and Groves—LP
Smetana—Symphonic Poem, Vltava (The Moldau)—LP

VICTOR RECORDS

_Under the Direction of Arturo Toscanini_

Beethoven—Symphony No. 7 in A major
Brahms—Variations on a Theme by Haydn
Dukas—The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Gluck—Orfeo ed Euridice—Dance of the Spirits
Haydn—Symphony No. 4 in D major (The Clock)
Mendelssohn—Midsummer Night’s Dream—Scherzo
Mozart—Symphony in D major (K. 385)
Rossini—Barber of Seville—Overture
Rossini—Semiramide—Overture
Rossini—Italians in Algiers—Overture
Verdi—Traviata—Preludes to Acts I and II
Wagner—Excerpts—Lohengrin—Die Götterdämmerung—Siegfried Idyll

_Under the Direction of John Barbirolli_

Debussy—Iberia (Images, Set 3, No. 2)
Purcell—Suite for Strings with four Horns, two Flutes, English Horn
Respighi—Fountains of Rome
Respighi—Old Dances and Airs (Special recording for members of the
Philharmonic-Symphony League of New York)
Schubert—Symphony No. 4 in C minor (Tragic)
Schumann—Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor (with Yehudi
Menuhin, violin)
Tschaikowsky—Francesca da Rimini—Fantasia

_Under the Direction of Willem Mengelberg_

J. C. Bach—Arr. Stein—Sinfonia in B-flat major
J. S. Bach—Arr. Mahler—Air for G String (from Suite for Orchestra)
Beethoven—Egmont Overture
Handel—Alcina Suite
Mendelssohn—War March of the Priests (from Athalia)
Meyerbeer—Prophète—Coronation March
Saint-Saens—Rouet d’Omphale (Omphale’s Spinning Wheel)
Schelling—Victory Ball
Wagner—Flying Dutchman—Overture
Wagner—Siegfried—Forest Murmurs (Waldweben)

Transcriber’s Notes

--A few palpable typos were silently corrected.

--Illustrations were shifted to the nearest paragraph break.

--Copyright notice is from the printed exemplar. (U.S. copyright was not
renewed: this ebook is in the public domain.)