Biography
From the middle decades of the twentieth century, the Robert Shaw Chorale ranked among the most distinguished and arguably the best-loved American choral ensembles. Across a span running from the final days of the 78 rpm format in 1948 through the height of the stereo LP period in 1965, the R.S.C. presented numerous memorable performances and produced extensive recordings for RCA. Shaw and the ensemble achieved the first classical album to surpass one million copies sold while collecting multiple honors that included several Grammy awards; across his lifetime Shaw earned fourteen such awards in total with the Chorale and additional choral organizations.
Robert Shaw (1916-1999) had already secured recognition as one of America’s leading choral conductors during the 1930s and 1940s. After impressing Fred Waring through his direction of the Pomona College Glee Club, Shaw was invited in 1938 to lead the Fred Waring Glee Club, a position he held until 1945 when other commitments, among them preparing the NBC Symphony Orchestra & Chorus for Toscanini, claimed his attention.
In New York City during 1948 Shaw established the Robert Shaw Chorale, an ensemble typically numbering about forty professional singers whose size fluctuated according to the program. Its earliest RCA Victor sessions took place that same year: the first, a collaboration with Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra in Brahms’s Gesang der Parzen, and the second, excerpts from Saint-Saëns’s Samson and Delilah with Stokowski and the same orchestra. Further releases soon followed, among them the 1950 accounts of the Mozart Requiem and the Verdi operas Rigoletto and Falstaff, the latter again with Toscanini. The Chorale also explored lighter repertoire, recording Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess in 1950 and issuing, in 1951, both A Treasury of Easter Songs and Joy to the World. Subsequent popular ventures encompassed the 1956 album My True Love Sings and the 1958 collection The Stephen Foster Songbook. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the group toured extensively, its most ambitious journey being a 1960 circuit of thirty-six American cities undertaken by thirty-three singers and twenty-nine instrumentalists; a performance of Bach’s Mass in B minor at Manhattan Center during that tour remained among its most notable concerts. At its zenith in the late 1950s and early 1960s the R.S.C.’s popularity extended across several domains, illustrated by 1959 recordings of The Lord’s Prayer and Ave Maria made with then-prominent vocalist and television personality Perry Como. Despite this success the ensemble disbanded in 1965, allowing Shaw to pursue new projects, foremost among them his appointment as music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra beginning in 1967. Additional Robert Shaw Chorale recordings continued to appear through 1967, after which reissues surfaced regularly before gradually diminishing in the 1990s; by 2002 roughly forty R.S.C. albums remained widely obtainable, the majority on RCA.
Robert Shaw (1916-1999) had already secured recognition as one of America’s leading choral conductors during the 1930s and 1940s. After impressing Fred Waring through his direction of the Pomona College Glee Club, Shaw was invited in 1938 to lead the Fred Waring Glee Club, a position he held until 1945 when other commitments, among them preparing the NBC Symphony Orchestra & Chorus for Toscanini, claimed his attention.
In New York City during 1948 Shaw established the Robert Shaw Chorale, an ensemble typically numbering about forty professional singers whose size fluctuated according to the program. Its earliest RCA Victor sessions took place that same year: the first, a collaboration with Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra in Brahms’s Gesang der Parzen, and the second, excerpts from Saint-Saëns’s Samson and Delilah with Stokowski and the same orchestra. Further releases soon followed, among them the 1950 accounts of the Mozart Requiem and the Verdi operas Rigoletto and Falstaff, the latter again with Toscanini. The Chorale also explored lighter repertoire, recording Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess in 1950 and issuing, in 1951, both A Treasury of Easter Songs and Joy to the World. Subsequent popular ventures encompassed the 1956 album My True Love Sings and the 1958 collection The Stephen Foster Songbook. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the group toured extensively, its most ambitious journey being a 1960 circuit of thirty-six American cities undertaken by thirty-three singers and twenty-nine instrumentalists; a performance of Bach’s Mass in B minor at Manhattan Center during that tour remained among its most notable concerts. At its zenith in the late 1950s and early 1960s the R.S.C.’s popularity extended across several domains, illustrated by 1959 recordings of The Lord’s Prayer and Ave Maria made with then-prominent vocalist and television personality Perry Como. Despite this success the ensemble disbanded in 1965, allowing Shaw to pursue new projects, foremost among them his appointment as music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra beginning in 1967. Additional Robert Shaw Chorale recordings continued to appear through 1967, after which reissues surfaced regularly before gradually diminishing in the 1990s; by 2002 roughly forty R.S.C. albums remained widely obtainable, the majority on RCA.
Albums
