Albert Coates

The Anglo-Russian conductor Albert Coates was one of the pioneer conductors who rode on the wave of the new, electric mode of recording after 1925. Largely forgotten today, Coates’s recordings of Wagner display an excitement and variety of dynamics that made them seem decades ahead of their time. Coates made many recordings of the music of Wagner, and also some of the first records of sections of Holst’s The Planets. On Classics of the Phonograph, Saturday at 11 am on WILL-FM, we will sample some of these performances.