Albert Coates (musician) - Recordings

Recordings

Coates made important early contributions to the representation of orchestral music on record, beginning in 1920 with Scriabin's The Poem of Ecstasy and afterwards conducting many excerpts from Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen and (in 1923 and 1926) two complete recordings of Symphony No. 9 of Beethoven. He was the conductor for the 1930 premiere recording of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, with Vladimir Horowitz as soloist.. Mostly or entirely with the LSO, he made many outstanding recordings of Russian nationalist masterpieces and perhaps the most powerful, dramatic and complete recording of the Mozart "Jupiter" Symphony (the only one in the 78 era to repeat the expositions of both the first movement and the finale) until James Levine, well into the stereo era, recorded the "Jupiter" in a similarly crisp, dramatic reading taking all repeats in the score. Coates also recorded Beethoven's rarely played late one-movement masterpiece known as the Gratulationsmenuett in E-flat major in a crisp, authoritative performance as the "filler" side for his decidedly mediocre, slapdash run-through of that composer's "Eroica" Symphony.