This 3 CD box set comprises discs all previously released and
reviewed separately here on MusicWeb International. I refer
you to those excellent reviews by colleagues Marc
Bridle, Ian
Lace and Jonathan
Woolf respectively for more detail, especially as I heartily
endorse their enthusiastic judgements. All three discs have
benefited from 20 bit digital re-mastering which has removed
any fuzziness and clarified detail without creating edginess.
There is a sense of the vast space which is the Albert Hall;
reverberance without too much reverberation.
This new bargain compilation offers a very affordable and wonderfully
disparate programme performed by a conductor whose instinct
for making theatrical impact was tempered by an instinctive
empathy for the idiom each piece requires. He thus provides
some of the most vibrant and exciting music-making to be found
on disc.
But first, two caveats: the Resurrection Symphony is
mono and the Proms audience for this performance appears to
include refugees from a local TB ward; the worst of their wholly
unguarded, phlegmy hacking is nearly always judiciously timed
to erupt in the quietest most reflective passages. Although
the re-mastered mono sound for the Mahler is really very good,
it is not really possible, as some commentators have optimistically
suggested, to mistake it for early stereo but it mostly remains
spacious enough to do the music justice.
Having got those drawbacks out of the way, I am left with nothing
to do but go into rapture over this collection. It provides
a showcase for Stokowski’s still under-rated mastery and the
perfect introduction to his art, ranging across a hundred years
of music and four great traditions: Austro-German, Russian,
French and English. All are live recordings positively crackling
with creative energy and there isn’t a less than arresting performance
among them. Some might lament the absence here of any of his
trademark Bach
transcriptions; personally I can do without them and am
delighted by the anthology as it stands.
Already in his early eighties at the time of the 1963 Mahler
performance and into his nineties in the 1974 Proms programme,
Stokie’s only concession to age was to press even harder seemingly
to prove that there was no way he was slowing down. The ferocity
with which he attacks that opening stringendo figure
in the Allegro maestoso of the Mahler symphony is startling.
The pacing of the second and third movements is just perfect;
no lingering but plenty of cunning shaping of phrases with recourse
to generous and fluid rubato which never sounds applied or self-conscious.
The last movement, especially when the trumpets blare tipsily,
is just occasionally more suggestive of the circus than post-Apocalyptic
events but the grandeur of the climactic resurrection theme
intoned by brass and chorus is inevitability overwhelming. The
addition of a crescendo for the tam-tam is a typical Stokie
indulgence but forgivable. Some have patronisingly detected
“promise” in the young Janet Baker’s “Urlicht”; to me she is
already a fully-formed and deeply moving artist of extraordinary
vocal richness and nuance. Soprano Rae Woodland – a late replacement
for Elizabeth Harwood- is touching and more than adequate. There
is the occasional blurt and blip from the woodwind, such as
a squawk from the oboe’s early in the first movement but in
general the confidence and virtuosity of the LSO are phenomenal.
The sustained, stabbing intensity of the opening of his Shostakovich,
tempered by gorgeous string tone, works in stark contrast to,
for example, the bleaker melancholy of Previn’s Fifth. Previn
is all icy chills, Stokowski’s Fifth all burning agony. The
swagger of the Allegretto pizzicato invites a parallel
with his delivery of the Scherzo in the Mahler; no-one does
a demonic dance better than Stokowski. The Largo yearns
and swoons, achieving a tragic status; the finale is triumphant
and leonine. Stokowski claimed a special affinity with Slavic
music; Shostakovich acknowledged and honoured him for it. I
certainly know of no finer performance of this favourite symphony
than this one.
The second disc features two composers with whom Stokowski was
personally acquainted and indeed friendly; the pictures in the
liner notes show him applauding Shostakovich and working on
a score with Vaughan Williams – possibly the symphony here.
The Eighth is arguably the most dreamily lyrical, colouristically
adventurous and essentially English of Vaughan Williams’ symphonies.
There is a certain charm in hearing an 82 year-old conductor
conduct an 84 year-old composer’s music with such affection
and indulgence. Some find the Fantasia and Cavatina
too languorous but it seems to me that Stokowski captures their
ethereal stillness, his careful moulding and firmness of line
compensating for the diffuseness of the melody. The Scherzo
is zestful, the Toccata exuberant. Vaughan Williams’ prominent
use of an expanded percussion section is a gift to an exhibitionist
like Stokowski. He gives us a portrait of an Elgarian London:
all rumbustious urban bustle and tolling bells.
The third disc is mostly the tribute concert for Otto Klemperer
who had died ten months previously, beginning and ending with
bon-bons: the echt-Viennese Merry Waltz from Klemperer’s
opera Das Ziel and a taut 1964 recording of Stokowski’s
transcription of the Perpetuum mobile by Ottokar Nováček
which displays the virtuosity of the LSO’s shimmering strings.
Its centrepiece is the red-hot performance of the Brahms 4,
by no means a Stokie staple but played here with sweep and virility.
He doesn’t do restrained, “sensitive” Brahms. This is more in
the line of the phallocentric heroism favoured by his rival,
Toscanini although less hard-driven and the Andante is meltingly
tender. Phrasing can be almost wilful in its ebb and flow but
it’s wonderfully pliant. This account has Stokowski’s love of
the music plastered all over it none too subtly – and I love
it. Clearly the audience do, too, as they break into unprecedented
applause after the first movement.
The performance of the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
is simply gorgeous, the strings soaring ecstatically. The occasional
cougher strikes tellingly as if impervious to the sonorous glories
around him/her but in general an air of rapt stillness attends.
Stokowski’s Ravel is more voluptuous than the usual Gallic delicacy;
the music exhales an exotic, erotic perfumed breath – when the
coughers give it a chance.
Ralph Moore
Track-listing
CD 1
Gustav MAHLER (1860-1911)
Symphony No. 2 in C minor Resurrection [79:59]
Rae Woodland (soprano); Janet Baker (contralto)
BBC Chorus and BBC Choral Society
London Symphony Orchestra/Leopold Stokowski
rec. 30 July 1963, Royal Albert Hall. Mono
Originally released as BBCL4136-2
CD 2
Dmitri SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)
Symphony No. 5 in D minor (1937) [40:51]
Ralph VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (1872-1958)
Symphony No. 8 in D minor (1953-5) [30:15]
London Symphony Orchestra/Leopold Stokowski
rec. live, Royal Albert Hall, London, 15 (8) 17 (5) September
1964.
Originally released as BBCL4165-2
CD 3
Otto KLEMPERER (1885-1973)
Merry Waltz from the opera Das Ziel (1915) [3:02]
Ralph VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910) [17:02]
Maurice RAVEL (1875-1937)
Rapsodie espagnole (1908) [16:02]
Johannes BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Symphony No.4 in E minor Op.98 (1885) [37:36]
Ottokar NOVÁčEK
(1866-1900)
Perpetuum mobile Op.5 No.4 transcribed Leopold Stokowski
(1940) [3:55] ¹
New Philharmonia Orchestra/Leopold Stokowski
London Symphony Orchestra/Leopold Stokowski ¹
rec. Royal Albert Hall, 14 May 1974; 21 September 1974 (Nováček)
Originally released as BBCL4205-2
ADD stereo/mono
BBC LEGENDS BBCL5007-2 [3 CDs: 79:59 + 71:40 + 78:24] 
