Nikolai Sokoloff and the Cleveland Orchestra - Polovtsian Dances 1 ('Prince Igor' - Borodin) (1928)

From Wikipedia: Nikolai Grigoryevich Sokoloff (28 May 1886 – 25 September 1965) was a Russian-American conductor and violinist. He was born in Kiev, and studied music at Yale. From 1916 to 1917 he was musical director of the San Francisco People's Philharmonic Orchestra, where he insisted on including women in his orchestra and paying them the same as men. Sokoloff was the founding conductor and music director of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1918 where he remained until 1932. Between 1935 and 1938 he directed the Federal Music Project, a New Deal program that employed musicians to perform and educate the public about music. From 1938 to 1941 he directed the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. When he was a conductor he gave a violin to then nine-year-old violin prodigy Yehudi Menuhin.

The Cleveland Orchestra entered into a recording contract with Brunswick in December 1923 and made a number of recordings from 1924 to 1928. The 'Polovtsian Dances' were recorded on 9 May 1928. By that stage, Brunswick had dropped its unsatisfactory 'light ray' method of electrical recording, and the quality of its recordings had improved significantly.

This recording - made on 9 May 1928 - is reasonably impressive for its day, and the orchestra plays under Sokoloff with great elan. Although the original recording I used to make the transfer is not in mint condition, I felt that it should be uploaded as a souvenir of a much-underrated conductor.