Cala has given us a
brace of arch alchemist Stokowski’s
Vaughan Williams Symphonies in
previous releases. The Fourth was a
scorcher and the Sixth was in phenomenally
restored sound – much better than has
ever been heard before: a revelation
in fact. And now we have the valedictory
Ninth in the work’s American premiere
given in September 1958. Composer and
conductor went way back – back to 1896
in fact when they were both at the Royal
College of Music – and Stokowski was
to conduct six of the nine symphonies
throughout his long career.
This performance of
the Ninth is the one that provoked Percy
Grainger to write to the composer’s
widow in praise of it ("perfect
in every way") and indeed there
are some typically alchemical touches
and wonderful instrumental playing.
The harp and bass clarinet in the first
movement are vividly demonstrative even
if the tape is not sufficiently focused
to limit spread and diffusion in the
lower strings and percussion. The solo
violin registers well in its veiled
intimacy – in fact Stokowski constantly
stresses the lyricism here – and the
brass nobility is palpable. The Flugel,
the instrument that so entranced VW,
is a heroic presence in the Andante
sostenuto and Stokowski brings out the
bardic writing of the slow movement
with driving drama; he was always magnificent
at what I’d call evocative tension and
so it proves here. Perhaps it takes
an American band – at least in 1958
- to give us the kind of cocksure saxophones
that grace the third movement, and the
percussion as well, in the bluffly warm
Scherzo. The finale is very strong on
incident, on local colour, and evokes
time and place with eloquence; what
it can’t do is to effect quite the sense
of architectural surety that others
find in it. It’s by some way the longest
movement and needs to be kept on a tighter
rein but Stokowski’s final pages certainly
have culminatory force, and power.
Riegger’s New
Dance is a feisty, rhythmically intense
little piece strong on dramatic attack
– and strongly played – and Creston’s
Toccata continues the abrasive-but-not
unbearable theme. Though it courts brash
paraphernalia along the way there’s
a lyrical Rachmaninovian kernel to the
Toccata that tends to inspire admiration.
And few were better suited to explore
the cantilever of that kind of lyricism
than ex-Philadelphia’s Stokowski who
plays it to the hilt. The other Symphony
is Hovhaness’s Mysterious
Mountain (No.2) commissioned and
premiered by Stokowski and the Houston
Orchestra (the conductor famously took
a shine to Hovhaness and gave the US
premiere of a number of his works including
the earlier First Symphony). From the
massed Tallis string choirs through
orchestral shimmer to the fine trumpet
part, Stokowski keeps a tighter hand
than he had in the finale of the VW.
The middle movement’s double fugue is
compellingly argued and excellently
voiced by Stokowski’s eponymous orchestra.
Cala’s booklet is,
as ever, graced by Edward Johnson’s
excellent note and some evocative photographs.
The tapes are in generally fine condition
– nothing will mediate between the listener
and grateful appreciation of this memorable
concert, memorably conveyed to us here.
Jonathan Woolf
See also review
by Rob Barnett
Leopold Stokowski and his Symphony Orchestra