Considering a 12" TV set was over $3400 in today's money back in 1948, only the well-off - and TV engineers and people in the corner bar or shoppers in Macy's - would have had the opportunity to watch Arturo Toscanini conduct the NBC Symphony on this special performance performed live on Saturday, April 3, 1948, at 6:15pm ET. Therefore, aside from the chosen few television owners, this broadcast was primarily enjoyed by the radio audiences of NBC.

This performance was heavily advertised and was also used as incentive for people to rush out and buy the new RCA Victor Eye Witness Television set! Of course, since maybe only 200,000 people could have watched this on television, millions more listened live on the NBC Radio network, on both AM and FM.

NBC (RCA Television) used their still-new kinephoto (kinescope) process to make a film of the television screen. RCA Victor would make a simultaneous recording of the performance as well as NBC making Orthacoustic Transcriptions of the broadcast.

This video features the video of the original 1948 NBC kinescope which has been color-corrected and stylized from a poor source. The synchronized sourced audio comes from the RCA Victor magnetic recording of the performance - which has been restored using the Dyna-Stereo process.

The video begins with Act One with one of Toscanini's famous rants, which will be transcribed at the end of this comment section.

Then we move on to the Second Act - the actual broadcast from NBC Radio City Studio 8-H in Rockefeller Plaza in the old RCA Building (now the Comcast Building) - yes, the same studio where today's Saturday Night Live is televised from (after many re-modifications, of course).

Tying in the advertising of the day, we begin with a short retrospective of the period - and you even get watch Toscanini like people had to in 1948 - complete with period WNBT Channel 4 artwork and station ID cards and original announcements - made to appear like it may have to viewers at the time.

However, instead of the boring monaural audio that had accompanied this kinescope in the past, only now will you get to hear the NBC Symphony, under the direction of Arturo Toscanini, in bright, restored Dyna-Stereo!

Also of note: Toscanini hated microphones. They were suspended from the ceiling - and they were notoriously difficult to mix properly (monaurally, of course).

The performance is of Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, Opus 125 - including the familiar "Ode To Joy' chorus at the end of the Symphony.

OPENING SEQUENCE GOOGLE TRANSLATION of the TOSCANINI RANT:

Arturo: "(Italian): Body of Christ! - Contra-Basses! - You are always late! Always late!!! You have no ears, no eyes! - (Italian): Body of the most sacred God! - You! You! You! You! You! - The first bass - you are always late! - You have no ears, no eyes, nothing at all! - (Italian): Body of the most sacred God! - But, what are you to me? You! - God?, No! - (Italian): Body of the most sacred God! - You are not a musician, you have no ears, you, you, you, you, no eyes. Look at me! And follow me!

((((( FINAL NOTE TO YOU WHINERS ))))))

Look, this production was an experiment, OK? NOT an archival piece. Get over the fact that I reduced the hiss, re-EQ'd a mono track into six tracks and notch filtered each to create stereo - in addition to using lots of plug-ins which created what you hear - instead of a AM-radio sounding crappy film optical track which would not have been what you heard on TV... Even then, TV had FM sound - but kinnies don't. So forget the 'mono' and the slight reverb effect as I attempted to recreate the quality of what was actually heard on TV - with the bonus of 'presence'. Now go have an orgasm with your Victrola.

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