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In his book, Harvey Phillips mentions playing in the 1961 production of Wozzeck at the Met. Does anyone know if he played on the 1959 production? That was the first Met production of Wozzeck. Both productions were conducted by Karl Bohm, feature mostly the same principle singers and both were done in English. At any rate, I discovered a friend had an open reel tape of the 1959 broadcast. Whoever is playing tuba on it sounds really good. I assume Joe Novotny was in the pit. I am wondering if Harvey Phillips was playing with the on-stage band as he did in the 1961 production. The whole brass section sounds quite good considering this was probably the first time most of them were playing this very difficult music. Mr. Phillips mentions having played Wozzeck earlier with the New York City Opera.

I have placed MP3 and FLAC versions in this Google drive folder:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1d_2lw ... E9WSvOhJb7" target="_blank
There is one file for each act and an info file. The stage band and much of the interesting tuba parts occur in the second act. Check out starting around 10:15 and then again around 18:45 and going for several minutes.

mike

I'm not totally sure of his dates but Herb Wekselblatt was the tuba player with the Met for years. Joe followed Bill Bell into the NY Phil.

I was surprised to find that there is no biography of Herbert Wekselblatt online. There is little record of his many years in the Met orchestra. He played in the orchestra there from at least the early 1960's until the 1990's. Someone who has information about him should publish a page for him in wikipedia. Unbelievable.

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot on Joe Novotny online either, unless I am just not looking in the right place.

mike

Weren't there some fairly recent ITEA Journal articles on both of these men? Maybe just wishful thinking?