As a reward from my wife for being a good husband (most of the time %)
while she raises money for the new orchestra hall here, she bought me
the set of recordings issued by the Philadelphia Orchestra to mark its
centennial.  After a couple of days it has become one of the most treasured
parts of my collection.

It is built mainly out of commercial recordings never released on CD and
radio broadcast tapes; the sound engineering is at times astoundingly good.
I haven't listened to everything yet and space doesn't allow a full table
of contents, but thus far by far the highlight for me are the Stokowski
performances, especially the ones from his return during the 1960s.
Heifitz fans will be fascinated by an earlier recording he did with Stokie,
of the Sibelius, which Heifitz refused to authorize because he fought so
much with the conductor.  The Ormandy selections contain some unexpected
gems (the Piston 7th, Pendereski), and a Shostakovich 6th.  The Muti disk,
is, well, Muti; enough said.  I'm not sure I understand the rationale
behind the Sawallisch selections, except for a stunning account of the
Martinu 4th; I would have dropped the Brahms Haydn Variations in favor
of the wonderful Schoenberg orchestration of the Brahms piano quartet of a
few years ago.  But, I feel churlish complaining.  There also performances
by visiting conductors (such as Walter, Toscanani and a wild Mahler 5th
led by Scherchen)

In sum, if you're interested in the history of orchestral music
performance in America, or if you're just a fan of the PO, you'll
want to own this collection.  You'll be hard pressed to find this set
outside Philadelphia, but you can order it from the orchestra's web site
(http://www.philorch.org), where you can also acquire their most recent
recording, made with an analog vaccum tube system (!!!)

(p.s.  my wife doesn't work for the orcherstra, so we don't benefit
financially)

Robin Mitchell-Boyask
Temple University
Philadelphia PA