DESCRIPTION:
Royale Records was one of the significant flagship budget record labels for the Eli Oberstein junk/budget record empire, spanned the 1940s and 1950s. This is one of the earliest LP releases for the Royale label. The catalog begins with 1201, and this is release number 1216, making this the 16th release. The video features the reissue cover (The original has the same art, but the background color is a semi-hot pink); let's just say that the reissue cover is much prettier than the original. Ok, enough about the album cover. The neat thing about these early releases is that they have LINER NOTES (which in the budget record world are often not offered in favor of a back that features a discography of releases). The back provides a blurb about the composer's life and a little background on the pieces presented.

The initial run of Royale Records LP releases was pressed in a strange shellac/vinyl mix, which happens to be very breakable. To those that collect 78 rpm records you know just how fragile and noisy shellac pressed records can be. I have attempted to reduce the surface noise, but it is still very there. Lucky it worked well enough to push the surface noise below the music. This album's first side runs for 30 minutes, and the second side runs for just 15 minutes. The album could have fit the fouther track the jacket advertises on the front (and this would have been an actual "An Hour Of Tchaikovsky" album).

Now on with a review on the content of the album. As you may know, Tchaikovsky was one of the greatest composers of all time, and this album features three selections that are among his best known. The selections are 1812 Overture, Romeo and Juliet Overture, and Swan Lake. The orchestra is your run-of-the-mill, no-name European orchestra that Oberstein used to record music for his labels in the 1950s. The source points to the possibility that these recordings were from WW2-era German tapes ( the recording quality puts it at the same time). The conductor is listed as Leopold Ludwig, with the orchestra being the "Berlin Symphony Orchestra."

Release date 1951. The compositions on this album are all by Peter Tchaikovsky and are in the public domain. The original artists are long dead, and these recordings are owned by no one. n. The video was put on the web on 8-10-13.