The Cleveland Orchestra

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Telarc’s first two major recordings were with the musicians of the Cleveland Orchestra, and that productive relationship continued through more than twenty recordings. 1977’s Direct From Cleveland “put us on the map,” said Jack Renner.1 1978’s Frederick Fennell and the Cleveland Symphonic Winds was “The Bass Drum Heard Round the World” and set the early standard for high-fidelity digital recording. The complete cycle of Beethoven Symphonies with music director Christoph Von Dohnanyi, recorded between 1983 and 1988, was a foundational release in the Telarc catalog. Other projects included music of Schubert, Sibelius, Prokofiev, and Berlioz with Dohnanyi, Yoel Levi, and Lorin Maazel.

Recording session with the Cleveland Orchestra. Photo shows Christoph von Dohnanyi, Bob Woods, and Jack Renner.
In the control room:
conductor Christoph von Dohnanyi,
producer Bob Woods, engineer Jack Renner

In October 1985, Telarc scheduled the third recording session for the Beethoven cycle, to record his iconic Symphony No. 9. In The Cleveland Orchestra Story: Second to None, Cleveland music writer Donald Rosenberg writes that the recording turned out to be unusually tricky:

The first challenge was vocal. James King, the distinguished American Heldentenor, sang the Severance Hall performances, which convinced Dohnanyi that he was past his prime and not suitable for the recording. Luckily, German tenor Siegfried Jerusalem was available for the sessions. The recording went smoothly and everyone went home. Then Telarc realized that the discs could never be released: a ruinous electronic hum was present throughout the performance. Somehow, the orchestra was able to reassemble the same vocal quartet and rerecord the symphony two weeks later.2Donald Rosenberg, The Cleveland Orchestra Story

The hum had been inaudible in the session control room due to environmental noise, but was very apparent when the recordings were cued up in the editing studio. The recording was completed successfully, edited, and released in time for the orchestra’s first European tour with its new music director in February 1986. 

The Cleveland Orchestra has generally avoided exclusive recording contracts with any given label. During the years that Telarc was working with the orchestra they also recorded with Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, CBS, and others – Donald Rosenberg’s discography of the orchestra, compiled in 2000, runs twenty-one pages.3 Telarc eventually focused its efforts on other orchestras with whom it was able to secure a more exclusive relationship.

Last updated on April 16th, 2024 at 09:10 am

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  1. Jack Renner, Interview with Irv Joel (AES Legends Series), October 12, 2003. ↩︎
  2. Donald Rosenberg, The Cleveland Orchestra Story : Second to None, 1st ed. (Cleveland: Gray & Company, 2000), 500. ↩︎
  3. Rosenberg (2000), pp. 651-672 ↩︎