John Dalmas wrote:

>Alison Bowcott asked:
>
>>Can someone help me (with Ormandy's 1962 Scheherazade)?
>
>There are a number of reasons why this occurs in a recording, and it is
>not always the conductor's fault.  Cuts and splices are done by recording
>engineers in the recording studio after the piece has been recorded, and
>sometimes with or without the conductor's approval.  There may have been
>a sour note, some extraneous noise or even a botched ensemble attack.

Actually in the case of the 62 stereo Ormandy, Ormandy peformed the
work with a cut.  It's in there even in the LP version.  A friend in the
Philadephia orchestra has told me that Ormandy occasionally performed works
with cuts.  In the case of the Rachmaninoff 2nd Symph., he preferred the
cut version over the complete work.  I've heard that he was not happy when
RCA insisted that he record the work complete.


>It is interesting that this happened with an Ormandy recording of
>Scheherazade, as in an earlier version of the work by Ormandy and the
>Philadelphians a stray dog wandered onto the sound stage from outside
>during the recording and barked ala The Incredible Flutist at a quiet
>moment in the score.  For some reason the engineers never caught it, and
>the record went out into stores around the country with Fido doing his
>thing.

Actually, the mono '54? ormandy has the dog due to the editing sessions.
The Academy of Music is a dry sounding hall, so Columbia used an echo
chamber(actually a stair well)to add reverb to the recording.  Somehow
a dog got let in and it showed up on early copies of the recording.  I
believe that you can't hear it on later copies.  IIRC, this was documented
by Michael Gray of the VOA a while back in one of the audiophile rags.

Aloha and Mahalo,

Eric Nagamine