The Finnish national broadcaster YLE Radio 1 has the most extraordinary treasure trove of historic MP3 downloads on their website. I can't even list the riches available, but the artists include Dinu Lipatti, Pablo Casals, Alfred Cortot, Kirsten Flagstad , Yehudi Menuhin, Arturo Toscanini, and many, many more. There are lots of downloads for each artist, and the technical quality is very good. The whole site is in Finnish, but navigation is intuitive. Just select the artist from the left hand side list, then select the Real Audio or MP3 hyperlink under the composition. Each download has a spoken introduction of around 20 seconds in Finnish, but don't let that put you off. This is an extraordinary discovery. I am listening to Toscanini conducting the adagio molto e cantabile from Beethoven's 9th as I write - beautiful. Here is the link, and many thanks to reader Walt Santner for the heads-up.
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If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Discovered - the online Arnold Schoenberg jukebox
