Our Club member and music collector/connoisseur Chuck Klaus has been involved in music presentation for many years, including for NPR & PBS stations and also teaching at Syracuse University. He started collecting records at the age of 5, and hasn’t stopped since.

He presented his “Highways and Byways of Recorded Music”, as a DJ playing and discussing interesting samples of his recordings representing the history of recorded music. He reviewed basic recording milestones rather than a full professional history. The first music recording was in the 1860s.

Among the prominent historical recordings were original soundtracks from Sousa conducting “Stars & Stripes Forever” (1929, mellower than today), Brahms playing “Hungarian Dance #5” with voiced intro (1889, recorded in wax), Grieg playing Wedding Day at Trollhaugen” (1903), Strauss conducting “Ein Heldenleben” (1944), Elgar conducting “Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past” (1928, organ & choir with early stereo effects), and Stravinsky conducting “Rite of Spring” (1960).

American music history included Gershwin playing “Rhapsody in Blue” (1927), and Copland performing “I Bought Me a Cat” (1951, composed for children). Recordings of great voices included Tamagno singing Verdi’s “Othello: Esultate!” (1903). He ended up with Horowitz playing Sousa’s “Stars & Stripes Forever” (1951, piano).