Somebody's gotta break the bad news...
Bob Zeidler | Charlton, MA United States | 05/03/2003
(2 out of 5 stars)
"about this absolutely horrible release, and it may as well be I. So I'll suck it up and explain.
Toward the end of what can only be described as one of the most remarkable conducting careers in the history of music, Leopold Stokowski was back in the recording studios, busier than ever, making some astounding LPs that were released on the London (Decca) Phase 4 label, virtually all of them true audiophile delights.
Among those Phase 4 LP releases was one containing the two major works on this CD: Olivier Messiaen's "L'Ascension" and Charles Ives's "Second Orchestral Set." It is an LP that has been in my collection for more than thirty years, made from 1970 recording sessions when Stokie led the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. For its time, it was both a sonic blockbuster and an authoritative take on two works (and composers) with whom Stokie was long associated.
Based on this recollection, I snapped up this CD under review, thinking that the Music & Arts label had obtained a license from Decca to reissue these two works, combining them with other "late Stokie" efforts with which I was not familiar.
I knew pretty early on, in listening to the CD, that all was not right: audience noises, sloppy playing, numerous clams from the brass section, poor acoustical balance and other assorted problems told me that this was not the "real deal." The recording date (18 June, 1970) seemed about right, but everything else was way out of kilter. So I dragged out my Phase 4 LP and did some comparison reading between the two, for performance venues and track timings.
The track timings on the CD differ wildly from those for the LP, although the interpretations, to the best of my memory, are not all that different. (The quality of the performances is an entirely different matter.) And the recording venues are different, with the Phase 4 LP venue being Kingsway Hall and the Music & Arts CD venue being Royal Festival Hall. What this M&A release represents, then, is a quite different provenance: a live broadcast of a concert performed in conjunction with the Phase 4 studio recording sessions.
And, based on what I hear, barely a warm-up exercise for the studio work that lay ahead of Stokie in putting together the Phase 4 recording. It is a testimony to his still-vigorous energy that he clearly worked hard in the studio, as the Phase 4 recording has it all together. And it is a saddening measure of the man, at age 90 or thereabouts, that he wasn't able to do as well in the concert hall.
Of the fillers making up this CD, only the Britten "Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" can be considered passable. In particular, the live concert performance of Ives's famous "The Unanswered Question" is so poor that Stokie must be turning over in his grave now.
This latter is worth two comments from me. First, on the matter of the Ives, Bernard Herrmann (in an interview saved for posterity in Vivian Perlis's remarkable "Charles Ives Remembered: An Oral History") was on record as stating that it was easier to obtain "proper" performances of his music with British, rather than American, orchestras because the Brits heard Ives's compositions as "just music," whereas the Americans would always relate to the "borrowed" ideas in the music, and all too often play "against Ives's wishes" out of sheer habit and familiarity with the subsumed "borrowed" themes. After all my years of being an Ivesian, I still have trouble with Herrmann's argument. Perhaps it was true at the time he made the statement; perhaps not. In any event, "The Unanswered Question" here is about as unidiomatic as they get. Sadly.
Second, Music & Arts has nothing more than a commercial interest in these Stokie performances; certainly not an interest in preserving his proper legacy. I suggest, for those interested in this legacy matter, that they pursue the Cala Records catalog. The Stokie performances in this catalog have the imprimatur of the Leopold Stokowski Society, clearly a group engaged in preserving a proper legacy.
The booklet notes, such as they are, are little more than Stokie hagiography, and hardly worth the cost of the CD. What a Stokie fan needs to know about his musical career can be summarized in a sentence or two: Stokowski was the only conductor to have lived and performed so long as to cover virtually the full history of sound recordings, from the original Edison cylinder through early electrical recordings, 78's, LP's, and right up to the dawning of the early digital era in the late 1970's. He conducted virtually up to the end of his life, at age 95, with an active recording schedule that was regrettably cut short by his premature death.
This Music & Arts release does a severe disservice to the memory of a great man. Better that one remembers him for what he was at this stage of his life, by tracking down the Messiaen work on a Cala CD and/or the Ives work on a Decca CD, both properly remastered and having different couplings. (The Ives work on the Decca CD is coupled with Bernard Herrmann's equally authoritative recording of the Ives 2nd Symphony.) Or do what I plan to do: Burn the Phase 4 LP onto CD.
A measly extra star for the Britten work, passably performed for a wildly enthusiastic audience.
Bob Zeidler"
A valuable memento of late Stokowski in concert
Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 02/21/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)
"The grumpy reviewer below complains that these aren't studio recordings, but Music and Arts doesn't claim that they are, and their whole catalog is mostly based on concert transcriptions. These datte from between 1958 (the Barber Adagio from Moscow) when Stokowski was 76, and 1970 (Messiaen L'Ascension and Ives Second Orchestral Suite from London) when he was 88. The title for this collection, "Stokowski Conducts Music of the Twentieth Century) is accurate once one adds the silent qualifier "as long as the music isn't atonal or twelve-tone".
The grumpy reviewer exaggerates the faults of the sonics and the live perfrmances, which are both very good. These are in no way simply sketches for later recording dates, nor does Stokowski show the slightest decline in energy or concentration. The Messiaen, an early tonal work that only hints at the breakthrough he would make with Turangalila, is an appealing piece, if a bit shapeless, that alternates block chords in shimmering orchestrations with fast, almost bird-like passages. Stokowski and the London Sym. provide plenty of intensity.
The two Ives pieces are his relatively unknown Second Orchestral Suite, which has the atmosphere and color of Three Places in New England, and the very well known Unanswered Question. The Suite is in excellent if a bit distant broadcast stereo. It comes from the same 1970 concert with the LSO as the Messiaen and has the same vitues of intensity and coherence, though I'm sure one could quibble with the balances, as is true of most live concerts. The Unanswered Question dates from 1965, a concert in Tokyp with the Japan Phil. They aren't the greatest players, but Stokowski elicits the right hushed nocturnal mood. One could hope for a more incisive reading, however. Again we get good broadcast stereo.
Britten's Young Person's Guide from 1963 with the BBC Sym. in Albert Hall features more vivid, up-close sound. This reading has been reissued quite a lot and is marked by Stokowski's rather grave, measured interpretation. He takes this work more seriously than anyone else I've heard; the results are impressive, and more than once you think you're hearing him revisit one of his famous grandiose Bach transcriptions.
The Barber Adagio from 1958 (mono with the rather grainy-sounding strings of the Large Sym. Orch. of Soviet Radio and Television is nevertheless touching, taken not very slowly but with lyrical sincerity and no trace of soupiness. In all, this is a memorable collection, and even though each work can be found, I believe, on a commercial recording, the special feeling of the concert hall suffuses every moment."
Unvaluable musical files !
Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 11/22/2004
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This work always had in Stokowski one of his most fervent and vigorous defenders. Written in 1933 , reflects Messiaen's Catholic mysticisms and takes in text from Catholic liturgy and Scripture . Charles Munch conducted the premiere in 1935 with the Paris Conservatory Orchestra .
The charismatic presence and the distinguished authority in front the orchestra made of Leopold Stokowski an epitome of the conduction. Even if you do not agree in some of his performances , he had a certain affinity for certain and determined works like this one . He was a unexhausted defender of Charles Ives music .
Precision and passion , fierce and intellect, this colorist director made an important contribution and elevated the rank of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the American Symphony among others .
His special preferences for the British composers Vaughan Williams sixth symphony and Elgar and the impressionist French Debussy and Ravel allowed him to move from every corner in Europe .
And please do not forget the unsuspected contribution with the Czech Philharmonic in the early sixties , the Houston Symphony (Shostakovich 11 th ) and the London Symphony in the middle sixties with an extraordinary Mahler second .
Finally his unforgettable transcriptions of Bach music and a curious rearrangement of the Pictures at Exhibition and his memorable contribution with Disney widely criticized in the world in the film fantasy of the forties .
Listening his Messiaen you are convinced once more the enormous mesmerizing power of him to get involve the audience .
In the case of the piece Question without answer there is just one unbeatable recording: Bernstein and New York Philharmonic of the middle sixties ."
Track Listings (10) - Disc #1