Leopold Stokowski and
his Symphony Orchestra set down these
riveting recordings in 1953, with the
exception of the 1950 Borodin Polovtsian
Dances arrangement. The recording location
was the Manhattan Centre and the players
included the crème de la crème
- John Corigliano, William Lincer, Leonard
Rose and Robert Bloom amongst them.
That said there were obviously not too
many of them – maybe sixty - and the
recording technicians compensated with
what is on occasion a Gothic amount
of reverberation.
Much as I love this
performance of Night on Bare Mountain,
heard in its 1940 Stokowski arrangement,
I can’t really take the reverb and I
couldn’t recommend it to more hair shirted
listeners; to sybarites, of course,
the recommendation is total. The brass
is satanic, Bloom’s oboe has a caressing
beauty and the flute principal is just
as worthy. Earnest Stokowskians – if
there are any such – might prefer the
1940 Philadelphia or the three 1960s
London recordings, two with the LSO
and one with the RPO. Then there’s the
Fantasia soundtrack of course.
The Khovantchina Suite
consists of the two Rimsky orchestrations
and Stokowski’s own orchestration of
the Act IV Entr’acte – Prince Galitsin’s
Journey. The quietude and subtlety of
the wind playing is richly evident in
the awakening of the Act I Prelude.
Then there’s the sheer succulence of
the Corigliano-led strings in the Act
IV Dance and the big, fat vibrato-wide
trumpet principal who wouldn’t have
been out of place in Svetlanov’s Bolshoi
and USSR State recordings. Stokowski
reserves ominous power in his own splendid
orchestration.
Veterans will not necessarily
want to hear yet another Russian
Easter Overture but this one has
a famous Stoky twist – the replacement
of the solo trombone by the bass Nicola
Moscona. This is widely held to be a
triumph but even this fully paid up
member of the Stokowski fan club finds
it vaguely ridiculous. Moscona’s voice
builds in size, via control room knob
twisting, as he intones the melody;
the effect is rather like watching Christopher
Lee, fangs bared and arms outstretched,
striding inexorably toward the camera.
Add this by all means but prefer the
1929 Phily; if you really want to hear
Moscona hear him in the 1942 NBC recording
that he made, gimmick free in sound
terms, with Stokowski. It’s also on
Cala in their Russian Masterworks disc
CALA CACD 0505.
Stokowski was an idiomatic
Borodin conductor as his 1925 and 1937
recordings attest. The Polovtsian
Dances, here called the Dances
of the Polovetzki Maidens, is heard
in Stokowski’s colourful and vibrant
arrangement. He does all manner of things
here. Unlike the 1937 recording he reintroduces
the women’s chorus and stitches together
a delectable eighteen-minute piece.
The transfers were
taken from commercial copies. I’ve never
heard them so I can’t make comparisons
but previous reissues from Cala have
gone back to source material with sometimes
spectacularly beneficial results. So
that’s a small disappointment as it
would have been important to know how
much better the original tapes might
have sounded. Certainly close miking
didn’t flatter things in the Tchaikovsky
and elsewhere microphone placement was
sometimes ineffective. Nevertheless
this is still an enjoyable disc - varied
and visceral.
Jonathan Woolf
for details
Leopold Stokowski and his Symphony Orchestra
