Page "San Francisco Symphony" Paragraph 24

The first recording, of Auber's overture to Fra Diavolo, was made on January 19, 1925.

The early recordings, for the Victor Talking Machine Company, included music by Auber and Richard Wagner, conducted by Alfred Hertz.

They soon switched to electrical recordings with Victor, also conducted by Hertz, which continued until 1930.

These recordings were produced by Victor's Oakland plant, which had opened in 1924.

The 1927 recordings were made on the stage of San Francisco's Columbia Theater, now known as the American Conservatory Theater.

In 1928, the orchestra made a series of recordings at Oakland's Scottish Rite Temple on Madison Avenue near Lake Merritt, now the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California.

One early complete set was of the ballet music from Le Cid by Jules Massenet.

During the 1925-30 recordings, Hertz conducted music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Léo Delibes, Alexander Glazunov, Charles Gounod, Fritz Kreisler, Franz Liszt, Alexandre Luigini, Felix Mendelssohn, Moritz Moszkowski, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Franz Schubert and Carl Maria von Weber.

All of these recordings were issued only on 78 rpm discs and are prized by collectors, although restored versions are now available from France's Pristine Audio.