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.
Richard Pennycuick
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