"A rousing performance ... Mr. Stokowski led a dramatic performance that had special drive and crispness in the scherzo and that built up into a series of big climaxes in the last movement." - New York Times, 1941
Never previously issued, and with only the final movement broadcast by NBC in 1941, this fabulous performance of Beethoven's Ninth 'Choral' Symphony - itself something of a rarity in Stokowski's recorded output - has only ever been heard by those who attended the concert at New York's Cosmopolitan Opera House on Armistice Day in 1941, exactly one month before the USA entered the Second World War.
Now for the first time Pristine has brought together that broadcast recording with an in-house line recording of the first three movements, captured in stunning sound quality, to present only the fourth Beethoven Ninth in Stokowski's commercially available output - astonishing for a prolific studio career which stretched from 1917 to 1977. It's a very special recording: ""he chose a solemn day in a momentous time to set forth once more Beethoven’s affirmation of the brotherhood of man." (NY Times)