First recording of the 9th symphony 1923

[Peter]

Incredible to think almost the same time lapse (100 years) from this recording to the composition date as there is to today

[Schenkerian]

Our wonderful recorded (and cinematic) legacy!! Note the use of portamento.

This is just stunning and the additional achievement of having it so freely available now, worldwide, on the internet!! Ergo, From Beethoven to recording technology to internet technology. Each in approx.100 year slabs. These last two milestones aren't really proximate, but by 2023 who even knows what else will come along!!

I posted a film here directed by Tod Browning in 1927 and that was made 100 years after the death of Beethoven and remains within that 30-year window of comparatively nascent (silent) cinema. Its main actor, Lon Chaney, died in 1930 and he would have been at school the year Liszt died!! And he was 14 when Brahms died although, coming from a home of mute parents, music would not have been part of his world. (Imagine the grievance and victimhood if he was our contemporary!)

[Peter]

Here's a 1928 recording of the 5th conducted by Richard Strauss

[Schenkerian]

Here is Brahms's friend Arthur Nikisch conducting the BPO in Beethoven #5 in 1913 - fully ten years before the version of the 9th posted above. Of course, there is no way of validating either date, except this Wiki entry might be some kind of proof - but I'm wary of Wiki generally:

On 10 November 1913, Nikisch made one of the earliest recordings of a complete symphony, Beethoven's 5th, with the Berlin Philharmonic, a performance later reissued on LP and CD by DGG and other modern labels. He also made a series of early recordings with the London Symphony Orchestra, some of which display the portamento characteristic of early-20th century playing.^[cit

Anyway, here is the recording.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcW3ZSbYPAs

[Peter]

Here is Brahms's friend Arthur Nikisch conducting the BPO in Beethoven #5 in 1913 - fully ten years before the version of the 9th posted above. Of course, there is no way of validating either date, except this Wiki entry might be some kind of proof - but I'm wary of Wiki generally:

On 10 November 1913, Nikisch made one of the earliest recordings of a complete symphony, Beethoven's 5th, with the Berlin Philharmonic, a performance later reissued on LP and CD by DGG and other modern labels. He also made a series of early recordings with the London Symphony Orchestra, some of which display the portamento characteristic of early-20th century playing.^[cit

Anyway, here is the recording.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcW3ZSbYPAs

Fascinating - apparently issued in Germany by the Deutsche Grammophon AG in February 1914 as a set of four, doubled-sided, twelve-inch discs.The Gramophone Company released it in Britain as a series of eight singled-sided twelve-inch discs, each movement on two discs being issued separately over a period of eight months, from January until August 1914, beginning with the Andante movement - surely the longest performance ever of the 5th!! The complete set of discs sold for a total of ?2 in Britain at a time when the average weekly wage was around ?1.33.

Also this recording could so nearly never have happened as Nikisch and the LSO were originally scheduled to travel on the Titanic.
https://www.wqxr.org/story/198674-ho...ed-titanic/the

[Schenkerian]

Eight single-sided twelve inch discs!! Imagine that!! You'd be forever taking them on and off and I'm certain they'd have spun like a whirling dervish!!

In 1914 I thought recordings were made on cylinders. A very close boyfriend from my late teens had one of these - an Edison original - as he was an antique collector. We used to spend time playing those black cylinders and laughing about the sound and the huge horn which projected this. It was literally in your face.

World War 1 interrupted the relationship between DG and a British company, but I'd like to know the nature of those recordings. On another music board which I used to frequent a fellow there was an expert on the history of recorded sound and he could have answered this question. Unfortunately he died nearly 2 years ago, but he had a profound knowledge of all these things.

[Arciom Nesterovich]

Incredible to think almost the same time lapse (100 years) from this recording to the composition date as there is to today

Treasure to hear such recordings!