Sokoloff Conducts Rimsky and Tchaikovsky

Last year I devoted a long post on my other blog to conductor Nikolai Sokoloff and his recordings with the Cleveland Orchestra, also a late LP with his La Jolla orchestra. Today, here is a brief coda consisting of a 78 that Sokoloff and the Clevelanders recorded in 1926.

This Brunswick disc couples Rimsky-Korsakov's Song of India (in an arrangement by Victor Herbert) with the famous waltz from Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty ballet music.

As with the previous post from this source, the music is played with great spirit from a remarkable ensemble that was founded less than a decade before.

These are electrical recordings, but were done with the GE "Light-Ray" method, which was inferior to the Western Electric process used by other companies. (The light-ray was soon extinguished by Brunswick). These recordings are not ideally clear, and become congested above forte. There are good enough, however, to demonstrate the sterling qualities of the conductor and orchestra. [Note (June 2023): These are now available in ambient stereo with better sound.]

My earlier post discusses Sokoloff's tenure in Cleveland, his dismissal in 1933, and his later career. This single was cleaned up from a needle drop found on Internet Archive.