[1] The Victor Talking Machine Company had employed a studio orchestra since the days of acoustical recording early in the 20th century.
This group consisted of musicians primarily from nearby Philadelphia and New York City and was created by longtime Victor staff conductor and arranger Nathaniel Shilkret.
The name was later used for free-lance orchestras, mainly in New York City, assembled as needed to make recordings for RCA Victor through the early 1960s.
The RCA Victor Orchestra recorded with several notable conductors including Leopold Stokowski, Fritz Reiner, Dimitri Mitropoulos, William Steinberg and Leonard Bernstein.
The orchestra was disbanded in the early 1960s when RCA Victor began moving much of its Red Seal recording activity to Europe and established the RCA Italiana Orchestra at its studios in Rome.