George Szell/NY Philharmonic: Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony 1947

George Szell conducts the NY Philharmonic in performance of Schubert’s Symphony in B minor, D.759, aka Unfinished Symphony on December 21st, 1947. Broadcast by CBS, simulcast to WCCO Minnesota where Reynolds Marchant recorded it on tape.

I wish the quality of this recording was better - but given I cannot find this performance anywhere on the internet I figured it would be worth sharing anyway. I did some work trying to reduce the impact of the distorted parts with mixed results.

This is by far the earliest NY Philharmonic radio broadcast I’ve come across in the archive - a clue is the paper-backed 3M tape - something that was only produced in 1947 (with the black oxide). You can tell it’s paper because on the reels you see a white or light grey - that’s the paper. In my other videos you would see acetate or other plastic backed which appears brown or black.

The super early formulation of tape might be part of the fidelity problem, but I think mostly Reynolds had not worked out the kinks on how to get a radio broadcast cleanly onto tape. It was clearly recorded too loud. By the time the rest of the recordings I’ve already put online were captured in 1949, 1950 and beyond - he really had a great system and the quality of those is mostly stellar. But what do you think of this recording?

The program for the performance:
https://archives.nyphil.org/index.php...

Technical info:
Unknown Scotch, probably 100A
7” Reel
7 1/2 IPS

00:00 - Allegro moderato
10:57 - Andante con moto