Editing NBC Symphony Orchestra (section)

==Recordings==
[[RCA Victor]] began making studio recordings of Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra for commercial release early in 1938; [[Mozart]]'s [[Symphony No. 40 (Mozart)|Symphony No. 40]], [[Joseph Haydn|Haydn's]] [[Symphony No. 88 (Haydn)|Symphony No. 88]], [[Rossini]]'s [[William Tell Overture|''William Tell'' Overture]] and the second and third movements from [[Beethoven]]'s [[String Quartet No. 16 (Beethoven)|String Quartet, Op. 135]], were among the first works to be recorded. The orchestra recorded initially in Studio 8-H, but RCA Victor producer Charles O'Connell soon decided to hold most of the studio recording sessions in Carnegie Hall. However, many live broadcast performances originating in Studio 8H were also released on records, and subsequently on CD. The dry acoustics of Studio 8-H, designed for broadcasting, were found to be less than ideal for recording. Acoustical modifications began in 1939 were thought to have greatly improved the sound of Studio 8H; although most NBC Symphony recording sessions were shifted to Carnegie Hall in 1940, the orchestra recorded in 8-H sporadically as late as June 1950, after which the studio was converted for [[television]] broadcasting. From the autumn of 1950 until June 1954, all NBC Symphony radio broadcasts and RCA Victor recording sessions took place in Carnegie Hall.

RCA Victor released the orchestra's recordings on its flagship [[RCA Red Seal|Red Seal]] label on the then-standard 78-rpm record format. In 1950, a 1945 recording of [[Ferde Grofé]]'s ''[[Grand Canyon Suite]]'' became the NBC Symphony's first LP release (LM-1004). A mainstay of RCA Victor's Red Seal catalog through the 1950s, most of the Toscanini/NBC Symphony recordings were reissued on the lower-priced [[RCA Victrola]] label to celebrate Toscanini's [[centenary]] in 1967. In the 1980s, RCA began digitally remastering recordings of the orchestra for release on [[compact disc]]. A complete reissue of all Toscanini's RCA Victor recordings was released on CD and cassette between 1990 and 1992 and again in 2012. Later advances in digital technology has led RCA (now owned by [[Sony Music]]) to claim further enhancement of the sound of the magnetic tapes for later reissues, changing original equalization balances and adding acoustical enhancement, but critics are divided in their judgment. RCA Victor has only reissued recordings that were personally approved by Toscanini, including some broadcast performances such as the seven complete operas he conducted at NBC between 1944 and 1954; however, several other labels have released discs taken from off-the-air recordings of NBC broadcast concerts. Toscanini's final two broadcast programs, in the spring of 1954, were experimentally recorded in stereo, but he did not approve their release; many years passed before they were finally issued unofficially by labels other than RCA Victor. Recorded in rather primitive and "minimalist" two-channel sound, the stereo antiphonal effect is striking (if crude); but the complete performance from March 21, 1954, of the Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 ("Pathetique") is not entirely stereo as the master 2-track tape of the entire 'Allegro molto vivace' third movement had apparently been lost; an artificial stereo synthesis is substituted. {{citation needed|date=March 2016}} The missing portion of the stereo recording of the third movement was later found.

The complete series of ten NBC Symphony telecasts has been issued on [[VHS]] and [[LaserDisc]] by RCA in 1990 and on DVD by [[Testament Records (UK)|Testament]] in 2006. While the videos derive from [[kinescope]]s, the sound tracks were carefully synchronized from the highest fidelity transcriptions and tapes that exist.

One of the NBC Symphony Orchestra's most ambitious projects was the recording of the 13-hour musical score for NBC Television's 1952–53 series ''[[Victory at Sea]]''. [[Robert Russell Bennett]] conducted the orchestra in his arrangements of [[Richard Rodgers]]' musical themes for the 26 documentary programs (recorded in Rockefeller Center's [[Center Theatre (New York City)|Center Theatre]]). The series is currently available on DVD. The first RCA Victor LP of excerpts was recorded by Bennett and the NBC SO musicians in July 1953. Bennett would later lead stereo recordings of volume 2 in 1957, a re-make of volume 1 in 1959, and a concluding volume 3 in 1961, conducting the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra (members of the Symphony of the Air). RCA has reissued all of these recordings on CD.

In 1954, shortly after the orchestra's final concerts with Toscanini, Stokowski made stereo recordings for RCA Victor of excerpts from [[Prokofiev]]'s ballet ''[[Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)|Romeo and Juliet]]'' and [[Gian Carlo Menotti]]'s ballet ''Sebastian''. The recordings were originally issued (monophonically) as "Leopold Stokowski and his orchestra", but reissued as "members of the NBC Symphony Orchestra". On April 6, 1954, just two days after Toscanini's final concert with the orchestra, Guido Cantelli made a recording in Carnegie Hall of [[César Franck]]'s [[Symphony in D minor (Franck)|Symphony in D minor]]. Though the performance was recorded in stereo, RCA Victor initially issued the recording in mono. The label finally issued the stereo version in 1978.