Out of Print Gems: Smetana, Stauss, & Stravinsky

Since the advent of recorded music, classical music has remained the hardest type to collect: after all, a popular composer is likely to have his pieces recorded by every label in the business, and the process of tracking down the definitive recording of any composition is usually as difficult as it is subjective. A further consequence of the continual rerecording and reissuing of classical music is that inevitably, as record labels change formats, switch owners, or cease to exist, some recordings fall out of print - even those once considered outstanding, or even authoritative.

Two such works are offered here. The first collection consists of the only recordings led by the famous conductor Jascha Horenstein to have fallen out of print, originally issued in 1954 on the Angel label, #35101. The A-side contains Igor Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms; the B-side, Richard Strauss' Metamorphosen for 23 Solo Strings. It has been unavailable commercially since its original release. The second is from a 1965 German release, Telefunken 30237, a 10" record featuring selections from Má vlast by Czech composer Bedřich Smetana, conducted by Joseph Keilberth. These recordings have been sparesely reissued on CD in Europe and Japan but are not available in the United States; these files in particular, like the Horenstein recordings, were ripped from LP. The recordings are uniformly excellent, particularly Horenstein's Psalm CL and Metamorphosen and Keilberth's Vltava. They can be downloaded here.