In 1912, Rudolf Friml (1879-1972) was touted as the “heir apparent” to Victor Herbert as America’s foremost operetta composer. Friml’s operettas included THE FIREFLY (1912), the fantastically successful ROSE-MARIE (1924), THE VAGABOND KING (1925), THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1928) & for films the score for the 1930 Jeanette MacDonald film, THE LOTTERY BRIDE. Like many other musical composers, Friml was classically trained (he studied in his native Prague with Antonin Dvorak) and was also a virtuoso pianist. Friml’s songs from his operettas were still popular as late as the 1950s and were featured in Pops Concerts as well as recorded by most of the Big Bands & Orchestras. In 1958, Friml, nearing his 80th birthday and still performing in concerts, was asked to record an album in his own arrangements of his most popular show tunes for Westminster Records in stereophonic sound. The resulting album, Westminster WST-15008, was one of the first stereo LPs released and was also released as a limited edition commercial 2 track stereo tape (Sonotape SWB-7028). One of those 50 years + old tapes was the source of this download. Like most early reel to reel commercially released audio tapes, which were produced one on one from a copy of the session master tape, the recording levels were kept at a maximum of – 6 db to prevent any possibility of overload distortion. Unfortunately, as anyone who has collected these pre Dolby 2 & 4 track tapes can attest, the hiss level was quite high but the superb dynamic range & sound more than made up for it. The FRIML PRESENTS FRIML tape which I used for this remix/remaster was no exception but although the noise level has been slightly reduced, I resisted the urge to remove too much hiss, which would have compromised the remarkable high frequency response of the original recording. I hope you find as much musical pleasure in listening to this wonderful recording from the earliest days of stereo sound as much as I have.

FRIML PRESENTS FRIML: The Composer at the Piano with the Friml Orchestra (recorded in 1958)
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Thank you,Sir!

So much great material you have brought to this site. Thank you so much!

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Once again, thank you for your fantastic posts !

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Thank you share!

A real treasure!

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Thank you for sharing!

Thanks a lot for this excellent share. I once purchased this recording back in about 1960, but it became water damaged. Now, thanks to you, I have it again!!

thanks