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Historic music recordings deposited at the University of York

Posted on 20 April 2006

A unique collection of broadcast recordings, collected by Lord Harewood since the 1930s and featuring seminal performances by some of the leading classical music performers of the 20th Century, is being donated this spring to Music Preserved. The distinguished Music Preserved collections are on deposit at the Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York.

The Harewood collection of off-air recordings, dating back to the 1930s and 1940s, includes nearly 1,500 acetates and reel-to-reel tapes of broadcast public performances, with special focus on opera and art song. In particular, it features first generation recordings of far superior quality to most known recordings of a similar vintage.

This special collection will join other Music Preserved collections that have been deposited at the Borthwick Institute for Archives. At the same time, the University will become the third Music Preserved Listening Centre, following the Barbican Music Library in London and Trinity College of Music in Greenwich. As a Music Preserved Listening Centre, the University will offer secure access to these special collections for research and teaching.

Through the generosity of Lord Harewood, this unique group of recordings will now become more widely accessible

Professor Roger Marsh

The Harwood collection’s historic gems include 1930s performances of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Götterdämmerung featuring Kirsten Flagstad and Lauritz Melchior, conducted by Fritz Reiner and Wilhelm Furtwängler respectively.

From the 1940s, the collection features Strauss’s Elektra conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham, Victoria de los Angeles and Richard Lewis singing Falla’s La Vida Breve with the Philharmonia Orchestra, and Sir Adrian Boult conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Berg’s Wozzeck.

The head of the University of York’s Department of Music, Professor Roger Marsh, said: "Through the generosity of Lord Harewood, this unique group of recordings will now become more widely accessible. The Harewood recordings have marvellous sound and depth – often completely changing our perception of the quality and nature of the performances."

Lord Harewood, who was Chancellor of the University from 1963 to 1967, said: "I have always been interested in historic performance, which of course extends way back but also concerns what has until recently been the present. I often persuaded my technically more competent friends to record performances for me and have for years had them on tape and cassette.

"There are not many problems but one of them is that tape gets brittle as the years go by and recently I was playing a recording of Benjamin Britten playing a Mozart Concerto at a past Aldeburgh Festival and, when I needed to stop it to do something else, the tape snapped. I got my friend Roger Beardsley to mend it and he then issued the recording, the result being very well received by critics who heard it.

"Music Preserved in York is obviously an appropriate place for these recordings to find a home, and hopefully they will be useful to a large number of people who borrow them in the future."

The donation of the Harewood collection to Music Preserved and the launch of the University of York as a Music Preserved Listening Centre will be marked at a reception at the University’s Music Research Centre on Tuesday 25 April, 2006.