Click on the link here for Audio Player – NBC Blue Network – The Magic Key – St. Louis Symphony, Cond. Vladimir Golschmann w/Soprano Helen Traubel – in concert – March 27, 1938 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection.
More rare and historic concerts featuring American Orchestras of the 1930s. This week, it’s the St. Louis Symphony conducted by Vladimir Golschmann and featuring Metropolitan Opera Soprano Helen Traubel.
Golschmann, born in France, became the orchestra’s longest-running Music Director, heading up the Orchestra from 1931-1958. During that time he made a vast amount of commercial recordings, mostly for RCA Victor Records throughout the 1930s and 1940s. His association with the orchestra took him all the way into the lp era and into the early days of Stereo recordings.
Guest artist Helen Traubel was a noted Soprano, who happened to be from St. Louis. So the concert is a kind of “visit home” for her. Her tenure with the Metropolitan Opera went from 1937-1953 when she began to pursue a career as a Cabaret singer, also appearing in films and TV.
As part of the weekly Magic Key series, the concert offers a wide range of lighter classics, from Beethoven to Richard Strauss, Mendelssohn and Wagner.
So here is that concert, as it was originally broadcast on March 27, 1938,
I treasure all Golschmann recordings…..he was able to support all kinds of repertoire so well…thanks a million !
Composer George Antheil said that the orchestral sound made by Golschmann was unique, and that that one could instantly identify it even durig a radio broadcast. He would turn on the radio, and after a couple bards he and his wife Boski would exclaim: “Vladimir!”