For some reason I enjoyed listening to the YT transfer above on my TV more than the Sony CD transfer on my main rig. If you can't stream youtube to your stereo, you can find those transfers here:
"Hold your Hat!" - These were the words inscribed inside the album cover for the first copy I owned of Vaughan Williams conducting his Sym...
shellackophile.blogspot.com
(I'm pretty sure the LP is in the public domain now.)
Thanks. But they are not in the public domain, if they came out in 1956. They would still have been in copyright protection from their first term in 1979 when the law in the U.S. changed to extend copyright protection to 75 years after the publication date for corporate copyright holders. Those 28-year terms could be renewed once, so a recording has to have been made before 1923 to be absolutely sure it's in the public domain. And if the copyright was not renewed, it would have to been published before 1950 to have made it to the public domain before the law changed. The music itself is not in the public domain--Vaughan Williams composed the 4th in 1935 as I recall, but it was protected in Great Britain where it would have retained copyright through his life and for 75 years thereafter. (The 1978 Copyright Act was intended to align U.S. copyright law with common international copyright law at the time.) He died in 1958, so we have a dozen more years to go before his works become public.
But that doesn't mean I'm not downloading it, even though I've already found and bought a sealed library-service version on Ebay.
Story about Ashkenazy: When I lived in San Antonio about thirty years ago, I attended a symphony concert in which Ashkenazy was the guest artist. He had arrived the previous day and rehearsed with the orchestra that morning, and had found that the piano (a Baldwin) provided by the symphony was "unsuitable". During the day, the powers that be hit the phones with the movers and shakers in the Symphony League, and they found a lady in Alamo Heights (the wealthy area) who happened to own a 12-foot Boesendorfer Imperial. The symphony paid to transport it to the hall, tune it, and after the series, transport it back and tune it again. Mr. Ashkenazy made an unanticipated announcement from the stage before his performance, telling the story and bringing the lady to the front to be publicly admired. So, all in one day--what was apparently a hissy fit about a piano he didn't like, but also a very warm display of gratitude to a lady who made her $50,000 (at the time) piano available. A high-dynamic-range individual. I don't recall what he played, funny enough. (I also heard George Bolet play a Boesendorfer on another occasion, and he made that Imperial positively
roar. Ashkenazy's playing was not quite so memorable, but the occasion was.)
The strongest live performance I've ever heard of a Beethoven piano work was Emanuel Ax playing the stuffing out of the 5th.
Rick "still doesn't have an opinion of the best Mahler 2, however" Denney