George Kleinsinger - prolific American composer, who oddly is best known as the composer of Tubby The Tuba.
Music Of George Kleinsinger – 1945 – Past Daily Weekend Gramophone
– George Kleinsinger – Western Rhapsody – American Youth Orchestra – Dean Dixon, cond – February 11, 1945 – WNYC Sound Archives –
Music of George Kleinsinger this weekend. His Western Rhapsody for orchestra with Dean Dixon conducting the American Youth Symphony in a broadcast from WNYC in New York on February 11, 1945.
Straight off – the sound is terrible. The original transfers are appalling, but apparently the discs themselves were in badly deteriorated shape and it seems not much could be done to make the sound any better. So there’s that – and apologies up front.
George Kleinsinger was an American composer and conductor from San Bernardino, California. He studied music at the Juilliard School in New York and was a music director for Civilian Conservation Corps camps. During World War II he was music supervisor for the U. S. Army’s 2nd Service Command. His Broadway stage scores include “Shinbone Alley,” and his television scores include “Greece – The Golden Age”, and “John Brown’s Body”.
He lived for much of his life in Manhattan’s famous Chelsea Hotel, with a forest of plants, flying birds, exotic fish (including piranha), a tarantula and even a giant snake! One day a tuba player came up to him and said “Mr. Kleinsinger, nobody’s ever written a concerto for a tuba.” He was touched by the idea of this highly trained musician who only played harmony, and so he wrote “Tubby the Tuba” with his friend and lyricist Paul Tripp. “Tubby the Tuba” quickly became what is probably the most well-known children’s symphonic work after Sergei Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf.”
That said, George Kleinsinger was a prolific and versatile composer whose work, aside from Tubby The Tuba is all but ignored. However he was drawn to somewhat esoteric subjects for some of his other work; his Baseball Cantata certainly figures prominently, as does I Hear America Singing and Pete The Piccolo.
Strictly mid-century American Orchestral and Symphonic music of which this Western Rhapsody is but one sample.
Again, apologies for the rotten sound.
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