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Live performance beautifully captured on this recording
Notes on the recording: This recording was rebroadcast by BBC Radio on Christmas Day, 1977 and captured in excellent quality on quarter-inch open reel tape, from which I was able to make a highly effective remastering. Restoration work consisted mainly of removing a number of coughs and extraneous noises present in the original live broadcast. XR remastering served to further bring out the rich and full sound of the New York Philharmonic, while the addition of Ambient Stereo processing does an excellent job of filling out the acoustical space that is the Carnegie Hall. Now you've read all of that you can probably forget it! This is one of those wonderful recordings where the music simply takes over and sweeps you away - and there's nothing in the sound quality to come between you and that concert on a February Sunday in 1951.
Notes on the 24-bit download: Please see this page for test files and further information regarding this format. Although restoration work is done at a sample rate of 44.1kHz, we have upsampled the final 24-bit master to 48kHz for additional replay compatibility of our FLAC download. Our twenty-four bit FLAC downloads can be replayed in full quality using a standard DVD video player, a DVD writer and an inexpensive piece of PC software - see here for more information about replay from Video DVD discs.
Bruno Walter biographical notes from Wikipedia
Bruno Walter (September 15, 1876 – February 17, 1962) was a German-born conductor and composer. He was born in Berlin, but moved to several countries between 1933 and 1939, finally settling in the United States in 1939. He was born Bruno Schlesinger, but began using Walter as his surname in 1896, and officially changed his surname to Walter upon becoming naturalised in Austria in 1911.
Early Life Born near Alexanderplatz in Berlin to a middle-class Jewish family, Bruno Schlesinger began his musical education at the Stern conservatory at the age of eight, making his first public appearance as a pianist when he was nine. However, following visits to one of Hans von Bülow's concerts in 1889 and to Bayreuth in 1891, he changed his mind and decided upon a conducting career. He made his conducting début at the Cologne Opera with Lortzing's Waffenschmied in 1894. Later that year he left for the Hamburg Opera to work as a chorus director. There he first met and worked with Gustav Mahler, whom he idolized and with whose music he later became strongly identified.
Conducting In 1896 Schlesinger took a conducting position at the opera house in Breslau – a job found for him by Mahler. The conductor recorded that the director of this theater, Theodor Loewe, required that before taking up this position he change his name of Schlesinger, which literally means Silesian, "because of its frequent occurrence in the capital of Silesia", although other sources attribute the change to a desire to make his name sound less Jewish. (Note: It is often stated that Walter was his middle name and he merely dropped the surname Schlesinger. This is not true; he had no middle name and "Walter" had never been one of his names.) In 1897, he took an opera-conducting position at Pressburg, and in 1898 he took one in Riga, Latvia. Then Walter returned in 1900 to Berlin, where he assumed the post of Royal Prussian Conductor at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, succeeding Franz Schalk; his colleagues there included Richard Strauss and Karl Muck. While in Berlin he also conducted the premiere of Der arme Heinrich by Hans Pfitzner, who became a lifelong friend. In 1901 Walter accepted Mahler's invitation to be his assistant at the Court Opera in Vienna. Walter led Verdi's Aida at his debut. In the following years Walter's conducting reputation soared as he was invited to conduct across Europe – in Prague, in London where in 1910 he conducted Tristan und Isolde and Ethel Smyth's The Wreckers at Covent Garden, and in Rome. A few months after Mahler's death in 1911, Walter led the first performance of Das Lied von der Erde in Munich, as well as Mahler's Symphony No. 9 in Vienna the next year.
Munich Although Walter became an Austrian citizen in 1911, he left Vienna to become the Royal Bavarian Music Director in Munich in 1913. In January of the following year Walter conducted his first concert in Moscow. During the First World War he remained actively involved in conducting, giving premieres to Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Violanta and Der Ring des Polykrates as well as Pfitzner's Palestrina. In Munich Walter was good friends with Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII).
United States Walter ended his Munich appointment in 1922 and left for New York in 1923, working with the New York Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall; he later conducted in Detroit, Minnesota and Boston.
Berlin Back in Europe Walter was re-engaged for several appointments, including Berlin in 1925 as musical director at the Städtische Opera, Charlottenburg, and in Leipzig in 1929. He made his debut at La Scala in 1926. In London, Walter was chief conductor of the German seasons at Covent Garden from 1924 to 1931. In his speeches in the late 1920s, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler complained bitterly about the presence of Jewish conductors at the Berlin opera, and mentioned Walter a number of times, adding to Walter's name the phrase, "alias Schlesinger." In 1933, when the Nazis took power, they undertook a systematic process of barring Jews from artistic life. Walter left for Austria, which became his main center of activity for the next several years, although he was also a frequent guest conductor of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra from 1934 to 1939, and made guest appearances such as in annual concerts with the New York Philharmonic from 1932 to 1936. At the time of the Anschluss in 1938, Walter was at a recording session in Paris; France offered Walter citizenship, which he accepted. (His daughter was in Vienna at the time, and was arrested by the Nazis; Walter was able to use his influence to free her. He also used his influence to find safe quarters for his brother and sister in Scandinavia during the war.)
Return to the United States On November 1, 1939, he set sail for the United States, which became his permanent home. He settled in Beverly Hills, California, where his many expatriate neighbors included the German writer Thomas Mann. While Walter had many influences within music, in his Of Music and Making (1957) he notes a profound influence from the philosopher Rudolf Steiner. He notes, "In old age I have had the good fortune to be initiated into the world of anthroposophy and during the past few years to make a profound study of the teachings of Rudolf Steiner. Here we see alive and in operation that deliverance of which Hoelderlin speaks; its blessing has flowed over me, and so this book is the confession of belief in anthroposophy. There is no part of I my inward life that has not had new light shed upon it, or been stimulated, by the lofty teachings of Rudolf Steiner ... I am profoundly grateful for having been so boundlessly enriched ... It is glorious to become a learner again at my time of life. I have a sense of the rejuvenation of my whole being which gives strength and renewal to my musicianship, even to my music-making." During his years in the United States, Walter worked with many famous American orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the NBC Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic (where he was musical adviser from 1947 to 1949, but declined an offer to be music director), and the Philadelphia Orchestra. From 1946 onwards, he made numerous trips back to Europe, becoming an important musical figure in the early years of the Edinburgh Festival and in Salzburg, Vienna and Munich. His late life was marked by stereo recordings with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. He made his last live concert appearance on December 4, 1960 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and pianist Van Cliburn. His last recording was a series of Mozart overtures with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra at the end of March in 1961.
Religion Although raised a Jew, near the end of his life Walter converted to Catholicism.
Death Bruno Walter died of a heart attack in his Beverly Hills home in 1962.
Notes from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Walter
Brahms - Symphony No. 2 in D, Op. 73 notes from Wikipedia
The Symphony No. 2 in D, Op. 73 was composed by Johannes Brahms in the summer of 1877 during a visit to the Austrian Alps. Its gestation was brief in comparison with the fifteen years which Brahms took to complete his First Symphony. The symphony is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, and strings. The cheerfulness of the Symphony has been likened with the pastoral mood of Ludwig van Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. In contrast, Brahms' First Symphony was marked by its sombre tonality (C minor). The composer had written to his publisher (November 22, 1877) that the forthcoming symphony would be music of melancholy, that indeed the score must come out in mourning. And while the work is neither tragic nor especially dramatic, the mood of the first two movements, largely quiet or contemplative and reaching climaxes in the minor, suggests that this letter may not have been entirely a creation of wit. The last two movements are lighter in mood but also much briefer. The subtle interplay of contrasting melodies overlapping and being passed around throughout the instruments of the orchestra allow the conductor to dictate the mood by emphasizing different parts. The premiere was given on December 30, 1877 in Vienna under the direction of Hans Richter. A typical performance lasts between 40 and 50 minutes.
In the Second Symphony, Brahms preserved the structural principles of the Classical symphony, in which two lively outer movements frame a slow second movement followed by a short scherzo:
Notes from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._2_(Brahms)
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