Strauss: Don Quixote (Piatigorsky & Reiner)

Cover design by Alex Steinweiss
(restored by Peter Joelson)

About a year ago, I posted Emanuel Feuermann's great recording of Richard Strauss' strange and wonderful hybrid of variations, concerto and symphonic poem, "Don Quixote."  Fine as that recording is, I still maintain a great affection for the recording which functioned as its competitor when new, because it was my own introduction to the glories of this great work, about thirty-three years ago:

Strauss: Don Quixote, Op. 35
Fritz Reiner conducting the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra with
Gregor Piatigorsky, cello; Henri Temianka, violin; Vladimir Bakaleinikoff, viola
Recorded November 15, 1941
Columbia Masterworks set MM-506, five 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 84.7 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 48.5 MB)

Both Reiner and Piatigorsky would revisit "Don Quixote" in the recording studio a decade later, though not together - even though both had by then moved to RCA.  Piatigorsky recorded the piece with Munch and the Boston Symphony in 1953, and Reiner recorded it with the Chicago Symphony and cellist Antonio Janigro in 1959.