Stokowski first conducted at The Library of Congress in 1929
with the Philadelphia Orchestra. With this issue Bridge releases his third
and last performance there, over thirty years later with the Symphony
in the Air – an orchestra in part derived from the dissolution of the
NBC Orchestra after Toscanini’s retirement in 1954. Toscanini and Stokowski
had, for an uneasy and short time, been co-conductors of the NBC. The
Symphony of the Air initially played conductorless though in its early
days Leonard Bernstein had a prominent role in development and direction
until, all too soon, it was to disband amid financial problems - three
years, in fact, after this Library of Congress concert. A number of names
in the orchestra’s personnel for 1960 leap out – the concertmaster was
Michael Tree and in the second violins sat Charles Treager. The superb
Bernard Zaslav sat at the first desk of the violas. And these are just
the string players.
The most exciting feature here is the preservation
of the Siegfried Idyll. For all his Wagnerian Syntheses and his overture
recordings (four recordings of the Tannhäuser Overture and Venusberg
Music, four of the Rienzi overture, five of the Walküre Magic Fire
Music and so on) incredibly Stokowski never got around to the Siegfried
Idyll. This Library of Congress survival is also, so far as I’m aware,
the only known broadcast to have emerged and this uniqueness adds lustre
to Bridge’s selection. The Idyll itself is phrased with naturalness,
simplicity and has numerous delicious touches – the portamento is discreet
and sparing and used to heighten the expressive quality of the music.
Stokowski shapes the violas and cellos with especial care, weighting
them with precise gradations; there is some trumpet blare at climaxes,
not helped by the unflattering acoustic that tends to expose lines,
and also at such moments the balance does go temporarily awry. But this
is overall a very convincing performance and a marvelous addition to
the Stokowski discography.
The other two items from the concert were Stokowski
favourites and appeared coupled on a Victor LP in 1952. Five versions
of the Tallis have survived including this one, dating in time from
1948 to 1975, and three of the Schoenberg, two with His Symphony Orchestra.
The Tallis opens quite briskly, animated by strong percussive pizzicati,
but suffers somewhat in the unforgiving acoustic – whether this accounts
for the rather overemphatic entry points is difficult to say. A little
tension is dissipated around the half way mark where there is a little
overindulged phrasing though it does rise to a good peak and if the
end seems to be resolutely unmoving it’s maybe a feature of the recording
as much as Stokowski’s own vision. Verklärte Nacht starts well,
with an intense anticipatory tension. At 4.50 the declamatory strings
are marked by affectionate clarity and expressive freedom, a characteristic
of the performance and an example of the obvious preparation that had
gone into the work. He gives a supercharged erotic lift to the passage
around 10.00 and by 15.40 he is sonorous and impressive albeit there
are some instrumental fudges along the way – this is by no means an
immaculate performance and the relative coldness of the location exposes
the lapses unmercifully, not least the ensemble slippages. Still, whilst
neither the Tallis nor Verklärte Nacht can be said to be essential
these 1960 traversals always manage to be useful adjuncts to the commercial
recordings. The Siegfried Idyll of course is an essential item for Stokowskians.
Jonathan Woolf
The Symphony of the Air/Leopold
Stokowski