Serge Koussevitzky's Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts were not broadcast during the 1948-9 season and all these recordings were ‘bootlegs’ made by the owner of a Boston recording studio who set up a microphone in a ventilating grill on the right of the stage, with a link to his disc-cutting machines. As direct line recordings, albeit with less than optimum microphone placing, they do not suffer from the limitations of an aircheck and offer surprisingly clear and detailed reproduction.
Thanks to Pristine's XR remastering and restoration by Andrew Rose, these recordings now sound almost as good as the day they were performed. With Ruth Posselt as soloist the album begins with the world première of Samuel Barber's revised Violin Concerto, followed by Honegger's Fourth Symphony.
It ends with the Sibelius Symphony No. 7 - in all a fascinating and hugely rewarding album in unexpectedly fine sound quality.