The Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski - Complete 1960 Philadelphia Return Concert (2010)

We are very privileged to have access to the two tapes prepared for Stokowski by the original station that broadcast the concert, WFLN-FM in Philadelphia, which passed on the conductor's death first to his assistant Jack Baumgarten, and then on to Edward Johnson at the Stokowski Society.

It would appear both that these are direct copies of the actual broadcast tapes (which would have been played out a few days after the concert itself, with commentary added after the concert), and that the stereo broadcast has never been heard properly. The commentary here was recorded in standard stereo, but the entire concert was encoded in Mid-Side (MS) stereo, a format used mainly for broadcast purposes and not designed to be replayed without considerable technical intervention to recreate a proper stereo image. Prior to this correction, one would hear the M (or mono) signal from the left speaker and the difference (the S or side component which contains the stereo spacial information) from the right speaker, creating a very bizarre and confusing soundstage. I have corrected this and inserted small fades between radio commentary and music to cover the abrupt cut edits of the original.

Soncially the recording is otherwise very similar to the original tapes, with very minor adjustments to equalisation and a degree of convolution reverb added (reverb was required for previous Philadelphia issues by Baumgarten) to ameliorate a very dry acoustic caused by close miking, probably in order to get a good stereo spread with the Academy's narrow proscenium and cut down on audience noise. A very small amount of pitch flutter is occasionally apparent towards the end of the first half, but otherwise sound quality is excellent.

In the process of researching this release, I learned the following from Mark Obert-Thorn, who is based close to the city of Philadelphia:

The original station that broadcast the concert was WFLN-FM in Philadelphia (now changed to a rock station with different call letters). The engineering was supervised by Albert L. Borkow, Jr., whose company, Magnetic Recorder and Reproducer, produced the broadcasts.

The PO only started broadcasting in stereo beginning with the concerts of January, 1960, so Stokowski chose a good time to come back. This was only the seventh concert to be recorded by this team. Prior to this, CBS had broadcast concerts sporadically through the 1950s. The WFLN series lasted with few interruptions weekly into the 1980s.

There are oddities to these early stereo concerts. Magnetic's mixing boards were primitive, so when the outros had to be recorded over the applause at the end of a work, the applause was re-recorded and mono-ed out on one track (often at a much lower volume level) and the announcements added to the other track. Also, pauses between movements were often not shortened for broadcast. (I have a WFLN tape of Silvestri conducting Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony where there is about a two-minute long stretch of audience noise after the first movement!)

As Mark points out, there were some very long sections of applause in the original broadcast. These have been edited down to something more appropriate. I have retained all the announcements, which are mainly provided by the Philadelphia Orchestra's then assistant conductor, William Smith. The broadcast concluded with a short speech by Stokowski, made facing his audience at the end of the concert, and this too has been retained.