The fourth and final volume in our series of Artur Rodzinski's 1938 broadcasts with the NBC Symphony Orchestra is now released. The programme brings together two sharply contrasted concerts given a week apart in December of that year: a Christmas Eve broadcast and a New Year's Eve concert from Studio 8H in New York's Radio City.
The Christmas Eve programme moves from the Prelude to Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel through two Bach chorales in Respighi's orchestral arrangements, Beethoven's First Symphony and Schoenberg's transformation of Brahms's Piano Quartet in G minor. A week later Rodzinski returned for a New Year's Eve programme of very different character, ranging from Vivaldi and Scriabin to Ravel, Debussy and the first waltz sequence from R. Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. Andrew Rose's XR remastering reveals the orchestra with exceptional clarity for 1938.
We are also marking the 27th anniversary of Yehudi Menuhin's death with a 10% discount on all Menuhin recordings in the Pristine catalogue. From early concerto recordings to chamber music and later stereo performances, his Pristine discography offers a wonderful way to revisit one of the great violinists of the twentieth century.
