Mitropoulos conducts Bartók’s Dance Suite Minneapolis Symphony 1947

Mitropoulos conducts the Minneapolis Symphony in performance of Béla Bartók’s Dance Suite for Orchestra. This is a premier of the piece for the Minneapolis Symphony.

I don’t have an exact date for the performance, but my guess would be late October or early November of 1947. On one of the reel boxes it said 45th Season (and also the announcer says it at the end of the recording) and by my calculations that is 1947-48. The announcer mentions it is the opening night of the season so that would be in 1947.

The audio quality on this is (mostly) sensational - keep reading for why.

I had to assemble this video from two different reels. The first reel had little information on it and was recorded a little too “hot” so the huge brass parts were distorted. Also the last 90 seconds were faded out. I found another reel (a 5” reel) miraculously right next to it that had a MUCH better recording, and included the missing 90 seconds at the end. However - it was missing a bunch of the middle. Clearly Reynolds spread the performance across two reels and tried to fix the audio issues with the 5” reel. Also the 5” reel was falling apart so I had to spool it onto a better 7” reel (what you see in the video).

So with some careful audio and video surgery I was able to get a mostly pristine recording of this exciting Bartok piece. It will be obvious from the video where the changes are (2 of them), but hopefully the audio part is seamless. Unfortunately a few moments of the distorted brass section remain in the middle but the rest of the recording is stellar sounding.

Like other Minneapolis Symphony recordings in the archive this was a radio broadcast. And interestingly on the box of the 5” reel Reynolds wrote “KUOM line from Northrup to Studio #4.” KUOM being the University of Minnesota’s radio station, and Northrup being Northrop Memorial Auditorium. Line means a direct line to the radio station. No wonder it sounds so incredible!


Technical info:
Unknown - both probably Scotch 100
7” Reel, 5” Reel
7 1/2 IPS