PSO Discography Blues
Shortly after I got my copy of Play On: An Illustrated History of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, a book-length history of the PSO by Hax McCullough and Mary Brignano, I scoured the ten-page discography in order to better understand the PSO's historic strengths, its recorded legacy chosen both to reflect and shape its identity. I found the hyper-representation of Central European composers I had expected (there are no fewer than four recordings of Brahms's First Symphony), and indeed I found far more recordings than I realized the orchestra had ever made. But I quickly discovered how limited a discography it is. This post is less about the discography as an index of the PSO's history and more, alas, about this particular printed discography's shortcomings.
The printed discography is, perhaps (there is no account of how it was assembled), a list of the PSO's commercially released recordings. Of the classical tradition. That are not special editions. Or compilations released by WQED broadcasts. Or bootlegs. Or video recordings, as can be found on YouTube and even the PSO's own website. And it certainly does not include any of the recordings made for subscribers or special donors (most of them from the Jansons years). Each of these qualifiers unnecessarily excludes PSO recordings that may be found here and there, at least in Pittsburgh's used record outlets. Furthermore, there are no dates in the discography whatsoever. There is no way to tell which Reiner recording is the earliest, and no effort to track the various re-releases and re-packagings of many of the recordings. Suffice it to say that my discography is now full of annotations, most of them taken from my own collection of PSO CDs. I have begun to assemble a more complete discography in a table on another page of this website, as a supplement to the PSOliloquy blog.
Among the omitted recordings are John Harbison's Ulysses' Bow under Previn, The Songs of Stephen Foster album, all of the Previn & the Pittsburgh broadcasts (excerpts of which are available on YouTube), the Harbison and Mahler performances on the DVD A Celebration of Faiths: The Papal Concert of Reconciliation, a video excerpt of Mozart's Concerto for Three Pianos given by the Casadesus family on the 1967 Bell Telephone Hour's program "Casadesus: First Family of the Piano," the many streamed concerts available from WQED radio, and, sadly, the only PSO recording under Victor de Sabata, of Strauss's Don Quixote and parts of Tristan und Isolde (Urania, 1948). There are many missing treasures, as my discography reveals.
Besides omitting numerous recordings, the discography has a number of errors. Vaughan Williams's Five Tudor Portraits is listed under "Williams," as if it was a movie score by John Williams. Similarly, Steinberg's recording of the Tallis Fantasia is listed as by a guy named "Vaughan." Mozart's name is repeated. Previn's recording of an excerpt from Falla's El amor brujo is carelessly absent. The organization and editing also lacks consistency. If Robert Russell Benett gets the composition credit for both Stephen Foster: A Commemoration and Symphonic Story of Jerome Kern, why then does Gershwin get the credit for Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture, which Bennett also arranged? And why is Maazel's arrangement of Tannhäuser listed as Wagner/Maazel instead of either by the composer (à la Gershwin) or the arranger alone (à la Bennett)?
Though we can be thankful for this largest published discography of the PSO, it must be treated as a first draft. Will any readers send me any other missing tidbits? Is there any recording of Otto Klemperer leading the PSO, perhaps in the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro?
