Kodály: Dances from Galanta (Fiedler, Boston Pops)

Zoltán Kodály

If the most popular work by Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967) is the Suite from the opera "Háry János", then perhaps the second most popular is his brilliant answer to Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, the Dances from Galanta, written, as the Victor labels for its first American recording proclaim, "for the 80th Anniversary of the Budapest Philharmonic Society, 1934". Here is that recording:

Kodály: Dances from Galanta (1934)

Boston "Pops" Orchestra conducted by Arthur Fiedler

Recorded June 28, 1939

Victor Musical Masterpiece set DM-834, two 78-rpm records

Link (FLAC file, 36.15 MB)

Link (MP3 file, 26.29 MB)

Fiedler's excellent recording missed being the very first of this work by less than three months; Victor de Sabata beat him to the punch by recording it for Polydor with the Berlin Philharmonic in April, 1939. For all practical purposes, Fiedler's set would be the only way Americans would be able to experience this piece on record during the 1940s. (Fritz Reiner recorded it for Columbia in Pittsburgh in 1945, but that version was unreleased until Sony tapped it for a Masterworks Heritage CD in 1996.)

The first side of my copy is a bit noisy, I'm sorry to say - especially at the beginning and end of the side. It was a wartime pressing, after all.

More from Ormandy

Two more vintage Ormandy recordings, one of them a request.  The request happens to be for the first-issued album set to bear Ormandy's name, his Minneapolis Symphony recording of Kodály's Háry János Suite.  Due to a loophole in the Minneapolis Symphony players' contracts, which allowed the orchestra's management to use them to make records for no additional payments, RCA Victor, within a relatively short time (a few weeks in the Januaries of 1934 and 1935), waxed an astounding 170-odd sides with the orchestra.  Among these were many first recordings, including first American recordings of Mahler and Bruckner symphonies, and this one of the Kodály suite:

Kodály: Háry János - Orchestral Suite
Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy
Recorded January 17, 1934
Victor Musical Masterpiece Set DM-197, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 72.69 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 39.62 MB)

Ormandy also recorded the Sibelius First Symphony in Minneapolis, but that isn't the version I have.  What I have is the remake he did in Philadelphia six years later, a set sent to me by Ken Halperin of Collecting Record Covers:

Sibelius: Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39
Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy
Recorded October 25, 1941
Victor Musical Masterpiece Set DM-881, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 104.2 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 58.64 MB)

Both these works share the following facts in Ormandy's discography: he recorded each four times, first in Minneapolis, then one mono and two stereo Philadelphia versions.  And of the two stereo versions, one was for Columbia and one for RCA.