Conductor Sidney Beer was the founder of the National Symphony Orchestra based in London from 1941 to 1947 he recruited his musicians from those serving in the forces and stationed around London.

From 1944 to 1947 Decca contracted Sidney Beer and his orchestra to record a wide range of classical music. In the event only a few recordings were conducted by Beer himself.

The recording of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 5 was the first recording made by Beer and the NSO for Decca, it was also Decca's first orchestral recording made in London's Kingsway Hall using the newly developed ffrr (full frequency range recording) technique. Unfortunately the quality of shellac (The raw material for 78 rpm discs) available in war time Britain was not good and many hours have been expended by Beulah engineers trying to recover the sound of the first "modern" recording. The microphone placement favours the strings and the brass and percussion sounded somewhat distant. We have tried to correct this were there are important brass passages.

The orchestra was led by David McCallum and the horn soloist in the second movement is Dennis Brain.

Click on image for full size printable inlay image
Click on image for full size printable inlay image	1st movement 2nd movement 3rd movement 4th movement

The items below are adverts that will take you away from this site