New digital audio restoration
Albert Sammons (violin)
BBC Symphony Orchestra cond. Sir Adrian Boult
St Andrew's Hall, Norwich, 28th April 1946

To play these MP3 files on a PC: (909 KB) - for full online documentation click here

Transfer and restoration ©2000 Andrew Rose.
Copyright notice: The copyright of the original broadcast recordings has now expired, and this is why these music files can legally offered. However, copyright does exist in these transfers and restorations and this is held by the webmaster. The files are provided for educational and listening use only, and are not to be used for any profitable gain.

Albert Sammons performed the Violin Concerto on 28th April 1946 for the second and last time at the Norwich Festival, a performance broadcast (on Medium Wave) by the BBC. A private recording of this broadcast was made, from which an unknown but very limited number of copies were later created, all on 78 rpm acetate discs.

One of the copies went to the soloist, Albert Sammons (pictured), and this set of 4 discs has recently been rediscovered. It is just possible that the discs had been previously owned by Moeran - certainly until this recent discovery it was assumed that Moeran's was the only other set made.

The discs are in quite reasonable playing condition given their delicate nature and age; it is not known how many times they might have been actually played. Sammons had many discs in his collection, including a large number of test pressings from Decca of his commercial releases. Visual inspection suggests these too have rarely been played, but their storage seems to have left much to be desired.

Acetate Disc Label

The four Moeran discs were somewhat dirty, and despite careful cleaning the original sound quality was less than perfect. Coupled to this was a hum which may have been inaudible on contemporary loudspeakers but which is annoyingly clear on a modern system. For audiophiles there is a difficult choice to be made here: does one attempt optimum analogue-only sound transfer, warts and all, or does one attempt a full digital restoration? An excellent, unadulterated CD transfer of this material exists on the Symposium label (Cat. 1201), and their discs do sound in better shape than these - mine were copies made probably from Symposium's - so I elected to throw the full digital restoration works at them.

The Symposium Concerto transfer, coupled with two other historical radio recordings - Leon Goosens / Carter String Trio's performance of the Fantasy Quartet for Oboe and Strings and the full Proms performance of the Serenade in G - are now available from Amazon, together with audio excerpts. Click here for more.

Violin Concerto page at Moeran.com.