Richard Pennycuick wrote:

>Steve Schwartz wrote of Barber's Toccata Festiva:
>
>>Second that!  The classic recording is E. Power Biggs and (I dimly
>>recall) Ormandy leading the Philadelphia.
>
>Dimly perhaps, but accurately.  The LP also had Richard Strauss's
>Festival Prelude (bombast, it's true, but I used to think it was *very*
>tongue-in-cheek), and Poulenc's Organ Concerto, the first version of
>this I ever heard.  The further we get from the LP era, the less it will
>be remembered that Ormandy did record a wide range of stuff and not the
>standard repertoire by which he's largely represented on CD. I still
>regret passing on a couple of Cowell symphonies (8 and 9, were they? on
>RCA? - anyone remember? Karl?) years ago and spending the money I had
>on something else.

I would dearly love to have this LP converted to CD (it's still my
favorite performance of the Poulenc), but it seems likely that it will
be an EXTREMELY cold day in Hell before these 78s and early monos are
made available.

Bruce