Beethoven (1944 Stereo): Adagio from Concerto for piano and orchestra No.5 - Gieseking/RO Berlin

Historic Stereo-Recording from 1944 with Walter Gieseking as soloist and Arthur Rother and the Großes Berliner Rundfunkorchester. 2009 we can celebrate the 65th anniversary of stereophonic tape recordings. So I thought it might be interesting to upload a few recordings that Mr. Helmut Krüger made at the RRG in Berlin in the early 40´s with the AEG-Telefunken K7 stereo tape recoder (Krüger was nicknamed by his radio colleagues Krüger-Krüger, in witty reference to his habit to record everything with at least two microphones in stereo).
After the soviets brought the complete RGG-archive to Moscow in 1945 unfortunately from the hundreds of Stereo recordings only a handful found their way back to Berlin. And in a very bad condition.
The over 60 years old tape (with a long and sad history btw.) was transfered directly to digital equipment w i t h o u t any processing. Enjoy!

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Gieseking
• Beethoven
• Concerto
• for
• piano
• op73
• Berlin
• RRG
• WWII
• AEG
• Telefunken
• historic
• tape
• recording
• Neumann
• german
• orchestra
• klassik
• classic
• Kultur

[videogamehistorian]

The story about these tapes is a bit wrong. The Russians knew about those sound archives and had been warned not to bomb the place, where around 1500 tapes were taken by the russians. These tapes contained those famous Furtwangler live recordings (as well as some rehearsals), and a lot of lieder with Michael Raucheisen and various singers, including a young Elizabeth Schwartzkopf. The Raucheisen recordings have been released on a 66-CD pack which is still available.

[blechmusik]

@videogamehistorian: Only a handful of stereo recordings found their way back to the SFB and were first published at the AES Meeting in Karlsruhe some years ago. Melodia and (after reunifacation) DG released some of the mono tape recordings.

[videogamehistorian]

@blechmusik That's correct but this still doesn't explain why almost none of the 250+ stereo recordings never surfaced. They are believed to have been lost in bombings, but some must also have been erased. If you listen to those Raucheisen CDs, you'll hear at silent moments some light background music from previous recordings. One one of the first tracks of CD1, it seems that the Brahms violin concerto was recorded before Raucheisen. Still, the early Melodya LPs sound a lot better.

[videogamehistorian]

The Furtwangler were issued on LP in the USSR back then, re-issued several times by Melodyia, who even issued them again on 15 CDs (easily found on the net). Deutsche Grammophon also issued them on two packs. Some other CDs contain these recordings as well. Other interesting recordings were issued by Tahra and include early Karajan, Knapertsbusch etc. Some are still available, the discontinued ones still show up on the bay. All tapes were returned in 1991. Hope this helps a bit !

[videogamehistorian]

@TheMrmagnetophon It has been released on LP byt Varese Sarabande, and on CD by the AES in 1993, and by Iron Needle. The LP still shows sometimes on ebay. I got my copyt there for $10, cheaper than my AES CD ! The AES CD contains ALL known stereo tape recorings by the way.

[TheMrmagnetophon]

Does anyone know where i could purchase this recording?

[TheMrmagnetophon]

It has the brilliant, long lasting tube sound that i describe, it sounds brilliant, unlike typical recording today. This no questions asked sounds better.

[peterlunow]

this is almost frightning:-)  1944 ,Berlin and it sounds like its recorded today.

how did you get your hands on this material?? thank you so much for sharing this!

[legOldtimer]

After more then 60 years, this tape sounds wonderful.

I have tapes from the early 50s who are really bad.

You wrote about the 'sad history', can you tell us more about these tapes?

Where there any technical problems with the transferring, drop-outs or loss of the magnetic coating?

This is so very interesting to know !!

So please, tell us more about the tapes.

Thanks for posting.

[Nostalgico80]

Early stereo recording, it sounds almost perfect.