Today I exulted in the rare privilege of taking a 62-year-old record album on its maiden voyage. RCA Red Seal DM-1340 was recorded in San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House on April 19, 1949. It is two 12" discs, making four sides in all. Sides 1 – 3 contain Ottorino Respighi's splashy but effective orchestral transcription of the Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor by Bach. Side 4 holds the lovely Sinfonia from Bach's Christmas Sinfonia. Pierre Monteux conducts the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.
My copy of DM-1340 came to me still factory sealed, amazingly enough. It has snoozed down these six-plus decades, quietly sitting in its brown paper wrapper, hardly aging at all while the world changed around it. There was no question of my leaving it in its factory seal; the only digital dubs I own of both pieces leave a great deal to be desired, and I had determined to make a dub out of the record, even if that meant taking its factory-sealed virginity. I vowed that my digital dub would be the record's first-ever playing, which has duly taken place.
One doesn't get the opportunity to hear a factory-new 78 RPM disc very often. They don't make them any more, after all. Needless to say it plays beautifully. New 78s aren't as slick as vinyl LPs; surface noise is endemic to the medium no matter what the record's playback history. Nor are brand-new 78s completely free of inner-groove distortion. But a factory-fresh 78 plays without the pops and clicks that come from age and damage. You hear just the basic sound of the hard shellac running past the needle, that familiar frying-pan sound reminding us that this is indeed a bygone technology, albeit one with abundant and potent charms.
In some ways the jacket itself is even more remarkable than the records, since most 78 RPM record jackets one encounters today have a distinctly lived-in look. Scuffs, stains, corners knocked off, dirt and grime, and the musty odor of age are the norm. But DM-1340 is crisp and unmarked, its print and full-color artwork vivid and bright. Outside of a bit of paper browning on the inside label, it could have come out of the store yesterday.
But DM-1340 isn't the only factory-sealed 78 RPM album in my current possession. I have three more, all with Monteux conducting the San Francisco Symphony: Darius Milhaud's Protée Symphonic Suite (DM-1027, recorded 1945), Vincent d'Indy's Istar Symphony (DM-1113, also recorded 1945), and the Beethoven Eighth Symphony (DM-1450, recorded in 1950 and apparently RCA's last 78 RPM release for the SF Symphony.) All three sit wrapped up tight in their original RCA Victor brown-paper wrapping; the Milhaud and Ibert for 66 years; the Beethoven for 61.
I am straddling the horns of a dilemma. Uncomfortable. I have perfectly good dubs of all three pieces from other copies that I own. However, my Beethoven Eighth dubs are all from the LP (it's from 1950, after all!) and my Istar is from a slightly beat-up copy. My Protée is in quite good shape, obviously not quite as pristine as a factory-sealed copy but still quite good. So a dub of each would have its use. But…they're factory-sealed, untouched. I open them and that's the end of that.
So: do I open those other three? Or do I let them continue to age, coasting down the years with their grooves completely untouched?
The argument in favor of opening them: what use is a record if it isn't played? Leaving those three unheard is like buying a fine violin and locking it up in a safe. They're valuable but not overly so. They aren't über-rare and über-desirable collector's items that you could retire on, nor will they ever be. Their current market value is about $100 apiece in their unopened state. If I open them, their market value drops to about $50 each.
The argument in favor of leaving them wrapped: I don't really need them in the same sense that I needed DM-1340 to get decent dubs of recordings I had only in mediocre transfers. Thus they could stay in their pristine condition. Perhaps a later generation might get them in their unsullied state. There's a lot to be said for conservation in such circumstances.
I'll sleep on it—maybe for a while.
RCA Red Seal DM-1340: this is what a 78 RPM album looks like brand new