December, 2012: Te Deum / Choral Union of Janesville, Wisconsin, 1960

This month, thanks to the help of some colleagues on the West Coast, we secured an LP copy of an unusual performance of the Bruckner Te Deum that was performed by the Choral Union in Janesville, Wisconsin. By artistic standards, this is not a very important recording, but as a discographer, such discoveries are important. The intent of the discography is to list every Bruckner recording that has been offered to the public and this LP surely fits into that category. The disc itself has very little information on the cover. Fortunately the LP label contains the names of the soloists, but the date of the recording is not listed. Some web searching and a few telephone calls to Wisconsin gave us the information we needed. The Choral Union had performed the Te Deum in 1997 and in 1960. The LP (unknown to many of the current choral members) is clearly the earlier performance. The disc (a two 10 inch LP set which also contains a performance of the Haydn Mass in d minor) was custom pressed by RCA. The pressing itself is not very good or the LP was played on a record player with a heavy needle. Because of this there is a great deal of distortion in the massed choral sections, but given that the recording is over fifty years old and the local recording service is no longer in business, we will need to be content with this documentation. ============================== BRUCKNER: Te Deum -The Choral Union of Janesville, Wisconsin -Bernard Westlund, conductor -Madison String Sinfonia (plus instrumentalists) -Marie Endres, director -Vera Adams, soprano -Ruth Terry, mezzo-soprano -Thomas Mac Bone, tenor -Kay Graves, bass From: CHALLENGER LP LO8L-5491/2 Recorded in 1960 by Audio Services, Janesville, Wisconsin