At this point in his life a refugee from the war in Europe, Bruno Walter is heard to conduct works of Mozart, Dvořák, Schubert and Schumann during his first decade of exile in America, 1940-48. Featuring both live and studio recordings by the New York Philharmonic and the NBC Symphony, these important sound documents, in which we here a somewhat more dynamic podium presence than his still important later recorded efforts conducting the Columbia Symphony, are the first chapters of Bruno Walter’s American odyssey that lasted for two full decades until his death in 1962 at age 85.
