An interesting find in the Marchant tape archives - a piece of music and composer that were hard to track down. This is the information that was on the box:
Fantasy in Technicolor
with
Bernhard Weiser, pianist
and
St. Paul Pops Orchestra
under
Robert Wagner
Radio Broadcast August 8th, 1948
Play tape at 15 inches/second
I could not find any references to "Fantasy in Technicolor" until I added Robert Wagner into the search box - then I found reference to a JOSEPH Wagner and the piece:
oac.cdlib.org/...
(search for "Technicolor")
The earliest reference to a performance in that document is 1956 leading me to believe this might be a debut?
The recording is not as good as a lot of the Marchant tapes with continual fades/dips in volume. It being recorded at 15IPS (double the normal speed in the archive) means those dips are more magnified. There are tools to repair these things but cost many hundreds of dollars so I wasn't able to try them out. Still the recording might be historic so I'm going to upload it. The piece is really interesting - Gershwin meets Stravinsky? Plus the piano playing is electrifying!
Any ideas about this piece or its composer? Please share!
More about the composer (does not mention this piece unfortunately):
www.alexanderp...
More about the piano player - unfortunately not much available other than this obit:
www.newspapers...
Technical information:
Scotch 111
7" CINE reel
15IPS