1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Historical Stokowski, indispensable for the Stokowski admirer, December 20, 2007
This review is from: Leopold Stokowski: The New York Philharmonic Columbia (US) Recordings, Volume 1 (Audio CD)
This well-filled disc (76:50) gathers historical recordings made for Columbia by Stokowski with the New York Philharmonic (then called the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York) between 1947 and 1949. They all make their first appearance on CD. Other than Wagner's Flying Dutchman-Overture and perhaps Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini (Stokowski's first of three recordings), they are not standard repertoire (the Walküre music is Stokowski's arrangement). The two rarities are Griffes' languid and early Debussy-reminiscent "White Peacock" - the orchestration of a piano piece from 1915 and Stokowski's only recording of a composition which he had premiered back in 1919 - and Messiaen's L'Ascension - the conductor made a famous stereo remake in 1970, but championing and recording Messiaen in 1947 was amazingly prescient. The Messiaen is also the most original-sounding composition on the disc. The sound is mono and somewhat unidimensional, but the transfers (made by the Sony Music Studios in New York) are great, with almost no surface noise. This release is of course indispensable for the Stokowski admirer.
There are two companion dics to this one: Volume 2 has more Wagner, Khachaturian's Masquerade Suite, Sibelius' Maiden with the Roses, Schoenberg's Song of the Wood-Dove from Gurre-Lieder, Tchaikovsky's Waltz from the Serenade for Strings and excerpts from Copland's Billy the Kid - material not as substantial as on this volume 1, in my opinion (
Leopold Stokowski: The New York Philharmonic Columbia (US) Recordings, Volume 2), but volume 3 has Stokowski's only recording of a Mozart Symphony (the 35th) and of Vaughan Williams' 6th Symphony (in its original version) as well as Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet and a rarity, Thomas Scott's "From the Sacred Harp" (
Leopold Stokowski: The New York Philharmonic Columbia (US) Recordings, Volume 3).
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Legendary performances!, August 10, 2007
This review is from: Leopold Stokowski: The New York Philharmonic Columbia (US) Recordings, Volume 1 (Audio CD)
Leopold Stokowski was a consecrated director who always felt a visible passion for diffusing more widely the compositions of Russian composers and somehow this distinctive feature captured his entire and devoted attention around the sense of drama and tragedy nestled in the most intimate core of its own nature.
Like most of prestigious directors, his approach around certain scores was out of this world, due many times he conducted taking into account the mythic gaze and the wild expression of the work, with sharp details of orchestration, and remarking with absolute eloquence special accents and conveying the listener into new horizons never before explored.
In the case of this performance we have a beating sample of what we mean about this mesmerizing power of transporting the dramatic vein in terms of incandescence melodic.
Certainly this version of Francesca is considered among the most brilliant and idiomatic ever made, its ferociousness and implacable roughness is displayed with mercurial bravura and a sinister environment of febrile desperation.
This performance is part of the legend in which insurmountable interpretative solvency concerns.
Don't miss this one!
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