There is a picture
in biographies of Vaughan Williams (and
reproduced in this CD’s booklet), of
Stokowski studying a score with the
composer. It was taken at the composer’s
London home a year or so before RVW’s
death. The score might well have been
of Vaughan Williams’s Eighth Symphony
recorded here at a September 1964 London
Prom performance. Of that performance,
The Times reported, amusingly
yet astutely, "The composer was
in his 84th year when he
threw aside all past restraint and flirted
shamelessly with instrumental colour
in his Eighth Symphony. Mr Stokowski
is only in his 83rd year
but he could meet the composer on common
ground because all his life he himself
has made sonority one of his big loves."
Yes, indeed, for this
irresistible, hedonistic youthful symphony,
brightly coloured with, unusually dominant
treble percussion is thrust forward
with typical spontaneous Stokowskian
raw energy. The bells, xylophone and
celesta are to the fore. There is zest,
rhythmic bite, baleful humour and thundering
yeoman defiance. This is balanced by
fond nostalgic backward glances in the
opening movement and sparkling jubilation
in the finale. The shrill grotesqueries
in the brief Scherzo seem to carry over
some of the ‘hell’s kitchen’ material
from RVW’s Sixth Symphony. Contrastingly
Stokowski’s realisation of the Cavatina,
third movement, written for strings
only, is touching warm tenderness. Stokowski
makes one sense a subtle coalescence
of ‘Tallis’, ‘Lark’ and ‘Pilgrim’.
On his 90th
birthday, Maestro Stokowski received
a touching tribute from Dmitri Shostakovich,
one of very many on that day but none
more heartfelt. Stokowski had been one
of the Russian composer’s earliest and
most ardent advocates. He had conducted
no fewer than four US premieres of Shostakovich’s
symphonies over three decades. The Fifth
Symphony was arguably Stokowski’s favourite
and he conducted the London Symphony
Orchestra every time he performed it
in the UK. This 1964 Prom performance
was the last occasion.
Stokowski delivers
a blisteringly powerful reading with
growling bear-like brass and plangent
strings. Those crushing inhuman chords
of the outer movements, here speak only
too eloquently of the iron authoritarianism
of the Soviet State that impelled Shostakovich
to write this symphony as "a practical
creative reply to just criticism."
Stokowski invests the short Allegretto
movement with penetrating irony, his
dance is iron, the impish fiddle solo
bitingly sardonic. The lovely Largo
is touchingly, almost painfully poignant
reaching a most anguished climax.
A blisteringly powerful
Shostakovich Five and a zestful reading
of RVW’s youthful Eighth Symphony make
this a compelling disc that will appeal
to all Stokowski fans and admirers of
both composers.
Ian Lace
London Symphony Orchestra/Leopold Stokowski 
