PSO Discography and Videography

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This list of recordings of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra aims to be the most complete published discography of the PSO. It includes recordings that are available for collectors, even if they were never commercial releases. As with all such lists, it is a work in progress. For the present, I include only those recordings not listed in the largest published PSO discography, located at the end of Hax McCullough and Mary Brignano, Play On: An Illustrated History of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (Pittsburgh Symphony, 2011). Many of the recordings listed here were released as special or limited editions, or have been released since the publication of the book. Over 140 recordings are here added to the McCullough-Brignano discography; these items are marked with an asterisk (*) in the table below and may be selected by entering "*" in the search box.

 

This discography includes recordings with only partial membership of the orchestra, as long as the recording acknowledges that a group of the performers are associated with the PSO. Such recordings are performed by the Pittsburgh Symphony Brass and the popular music recordings with Richard Jones, Marvin Hamlisch, and Henry Doktorski. The various names of these derivative ensembles are provided and include billings such as "members of the Pittsburgh Symphony," "the Pittsurgh Symphony Strings," and even "The Pittsburgh Chamber Orchestra." Such records are treated as integral albums, with pieces and composers listed in the same row, rather than spread over many separate entries, one song per row. They usually include a large selection of music and thus are marked with the word "Anthology" in the Notes column. Solo and chamber music discs by PSO members are excluded from this list unless the group or the project is explicitly linked to the PSO as an institution. The goal is to embrace the ways an orchestra may present itself, without providing a discography for each player's personal projects. 

 

The Pittsburgh Symphony has a long and lively history of recording arrangements of popular music. Among the earliest are the three albums of American standards conducted by Richard Jones, followed by Robert Russell Bennett's arrangements of music by Stephen Foster, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, and Frederick Loewe, Previn's many performances of movie music on Previn & the Pittsburgh, Maazel's recording of light music by former Pittsburgh Orchestra conductor Victor Herbert, several holiday albums by the Pittsburgh Brass, and most recently Cinema Serenade, a collection of movie music conducted by John Williams. Such recordings are marked in the Notes column with the word "Pops." Searching for "Pops" will list only these recordings. Pops records are treated as integral albums, with all pieces and composers listed in the same row, rather than spread over many separate entries, one song per row. Distinguishing between a pops album and a classical recording is necessarily subjective, as with the music of Offenbach and Grofé, and can yield seemingly contradictory classifications, or when Robert Russell Bennett's symphonic arrangement of Stephen Foster is listed as a pops record, while Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which sounds far more jazzy, is listed as a standard classical work. Despite these pitfalls, the distinction between popular and classical music is very longstanding and helps in assessing the recorded history of the PSO.

 

Also included here are bootleg recordings, most of them taken from live radio broadcasts. As much information about these recordings is included as is available; the available information, however, is both incomplete and in need of verification. Such recordings are marked "Bootleg" in the Notes column. Searching for "Bootleg" will list only these recordings. 

 

A handful of videos of the PSO are listed here, some from as early as the 1950s, but most since the advent of YouTube and Vimeo. Some of these recordings are apparently endorsed by the PSO, as they are listed on the PSO website, which links to numerous interviews and excerpts of works not listed here. Never commercially released after their television broadcasts, a list of Previn & The Pittsburgh episodes may be found here; several excerpts of these broadcasts may be found on YouTube. The URLs of these clips are not listed, but should be easily found with the appropriate search terms.

 

Some unusual performances on this list include Steinberg conducting Hindemith's Pittsburgh Symphony, Roland Leich's The Town of Pittsburgh, Aaron Copland conducting Haydn, videos of performances in Berlin and Vatican City, and a film score by Dimitri Tiomkin (but not two film scores: it appears that the PSO did not record the soundtrack to Tiomkin's Land of the Pharaohs (1955), despite numerous online assertions to the contrary). 

 

The PSO has recorded or been reissued on the following labels: Alanna, Albany, Angel, ASCAP, Capitol, Columbia, Command, Curtain Call (a Pittsburgh Symphony label), EMI, Everest, Exton, IMP Classics, Legacy International, MCA Classics, New World, Nonesuch, Pentatone, Philips, Pittsburgh Symphony Society, Reference, Seraphim, Sony, Telarc, U.S. Steel, VAI, and WQED.

 

I would like to express my gratitude to the late Hax McCullough and Mary Bregnano for their work that inspired this discography. My thanks extend also to the helpful staff of the Music Department at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (main branch) and to James H. North and Uts Ubaldi for their encouraging words and detailed eyes.

 

Additions and corrections are welcome! Please contact me at one of the addresses at the bottom of the page. This list may not be fully functional on mobile devices.

 

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