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about this album
In the immediate post war years the composer Miroslav Moesche lived in Vienna in an apartment which was situated in a building overlooking the marshalling yards of Wien Praterstern railway station. The marshalling yard had been completely destroyed by Allied bombing during the war, but by 1947 much of the track had been relaid and what passed for a normal service, in those times of post war austerity, had resumed. Using a war reporters phonograph recorder, which he won in an illegal game of poker, Moesche made recordings of these yards. These recording were later to prove useful when, in 1950, Moesche began to experiment with the use of recorded sounds in the context of orchestral pieces. This piece, entitled ‘and without’, was begun in Vienna 1951 and finished in New York in 1962. It features said recordings of the Wien Praterstern marshalling yards (re-played on pneumatic tape), with the New York Philharmonic, and also Doug Davies on amplified high tension wire bands and the 1024 bit Kovos Computer, at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall in New York City. The accompanying programme notes included the following section: STRATEGIC BOMBING OPERATIONS of the Fifteenth Air Force in Austria 10th September 1944: 344 B-17s and B-24s bomb 5 ordnance depots, industrial areas and 2 oil refineries, South East Vienna. Hailed as a critical success the piece was subsequently performed at the United Nations Head Quarters in New York on 7th August 1964. On this occasion, however, Moesche
