Toscanini in his prime was hailed as the ultimate Beethoven conductor. Not everyone agrees today, citing his relentless tempos and hard-driving intensity. But in pieces like the Fifth Symphony, or the present Overture, this style is just what is needed. Beethoven was not naturally inclined to ope...

First published in Philadelphia in 1838, “Old Rosin the Beau” likely comes to us from the British Isles. The words and melody are ‘traditional’, meaning there is no known lyricist or composer on record. For the longest time, we naturally thought the title referred to the “bow” that is “rosined” t...

Andrew Jackson's decisive American victory over the British at the Battle of New Orleans is the stuff of legend. Fought at the end of the War of 1812 stories, movies and even songs have been written about it. The most popular tune was written in 1821. It lionized the Kentucky long rifle and the m...

Three brief orchestral numbers from Prokofiev’s bizarre fairy tale opera, conducted by a magician who delighted in bringing the new and strange to his audiences. This is perfect Stokowski material, exotic and well off the beaten path. During his years away from the Soviet Union from 1918 to 1936,...

“The “Battle Cry of Freedom” was composed by professional song writer George F. Root for a July 1862 Chicago war rally. The rally was in support of President Abraham Lincoln‘s call for an additional 300,000 volunteers to fill the ranks of the shrinking Union Army. The song was published In 1862 b...

Schubert’s Ave Maria, perhaps the best known of his over 600 songs, here played in an arrangement for violin solo by the youthful virtuoso Jascha Heifetz, then only 19.
Recorded in 1918 by Victor Records on a heavy 78 rpm disc, it was only recorded on one side; the other was left blank. It sold f...

THE BONNIE BLUE FLAG

The flag itself - a single white 5-point star on a dark blue field - first appeared in 1810 as the banner of the 'Republic of West Florida', but was quickly ushered off history's stage by the Louisiana Purchase after hardly 3 months. Some years after, another version reappe...

From the extensive “O’Grady Collection” is The 1812 Overture, as recorded in 1910, with historical information and pictures to accompany the music. This acoustic recording was performed by Charles Adams Prince and Prince’s Band for Columbia in New York City. The music was gathered by a large acou...

Adrian Boult and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, 1934. A classic old warhorse in a great performance from the earliest days of the BBC Symphony, created largely by Boult just five years before. Composed by Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo de Suppé, the prolific creator of over 300 works and best known...

In America of the early 1800s, nonsense songs were frequently written about larger than life characters. This tune, written by Dan Emmett and published in 1843 by Charles Keith Company of Boston, Mass. is a great example. The song was popularized by Emmett’s band, the “Virginia Minstrels,” and is...

A charming extended piece of music (about 30 minutes) by an American composer who is seldom heard nowadays, but whose music was highly popular in the 1920s and is well worth hearing now. Deems Taylor was almost a household name in those days, being prominently seen and heard in magazines and on r...

Willem Mengelberg and the New York Philharmonic, 1925.
An early electric recording of this famous overture by an old-school Wagnerian conductor. It’s a good example of the late nineteenth-century approach to this music, all storm and melodrama. Mengelberg was regarded in his day as one of the gre...

A highly dramatic orchestral fantasy written in the old grand manner, and not as famous as it used to be, it can still be exciting and highly evocative in a good performance. This one is exceptional, with just the right orchestral balance, and very full sound just a few years before the age of th...

An old-fashioned overture of the kind that was loved by American summer town bands a century ago, played by Arthur Pryor’s band in 1908. Pryor was a trombone virtuoso who had played in Sousa’s band. The recording was made acoustically, that is with no electric amplification and with the whole ban...

Charles Gounod, Funeral March for a Marionette. Sir Henry Wood and the London Philharmonic, 1940
A droll piece of very French humor, this very popular item will be familiar to listeners today from its appropriation by Alfred Hitchcock for his television series in the 1960s. The renowned Sir Henry...

Julius Fucik: The Entry of the Gladiators; Massed Brass Bands of the Aldershot Searchlight Military Tattoo, c.1927
Two famous marches of the nineteenth century given great effect by a huge outdoor group of band instruments. The Aldershot Tattoo was an annual event for many years, an institution o...

Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody in a classic orchestral arrangement by Karl Müller-Berghaus from 1870, and recorded by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1936. This was the first record my father ever purchased, in a record store in Brooklyn in 1937. It came in a plain brown pa...

Storm interlude from the opera The Maid of Pskov, also titled Ivan the Terrible. Albert Coates and the London Symphony, 1938.
A brief but wonderfully atmospheric evocation of a winter storm from a saga of Ivan the Terrible’s Russia in 1570. Conductor Albert Coates was born in St. Petersburg and ...

Published in 1855 in Briggs' Banjo Instructor, “Circus Jig” and “Jim Along Josie” were popular minstrel banjo tunes of the day. In this episode, the banjo player begins tentatively picking out the tune and is soon joined by his band mates who begin to fill out the melody one-by-one, until all are...

This song’s sheet Music was published at Boston, MA by C. H. Keith in 1843. It included an endorsement “As performed by the Virginia Minstrels, words by Dan Emmett.” The sheet music does not mention the melody’s composer. However the melody’s author is mentioned in the preface of “White’s New ...

The origin of this folk song is lost to history. “The Girl I Left Behind Me” is claimed by both England and Ireland. It is said to date to the mid-1700s or even possibly back to the 1600s. The earliest known publication in print that lists the title and lyrics dates to 1791 in “The Charms of Melo...

Private John Dinkins, Co. C 18th Mississippi Volunteer Infantry described the march of Mc Law’s Division – including Kershaw’s South Carolina Brigade, of which the 2nd South Carolina regiment was one – towards the Battle of Sharpsburg/Antietam of 1862. Dinkins recalled, “The men moved along at a ...