Customer Reviews

Stokowski Conducts Klemperer, Vaughan Williams, Ravel, Brahms, Novácek

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Let's face it, the main reason for buying this newly remastered of a previously released Stoky concert is the Brahms 4. If you own the old one, get rid of it, because the remastering on this one is far superior. I'll skip commenting on the other selections and go straight to the Brahms 4. Stoky, being a Brahms lover has many surviving recordings of the 4th Symphony. I am a frim believer that his studio recording of this same work is the GREATEST recording EVER of this symphony. That was recorded a few weeks after this concert. Having said that, there is a level of excitement here in the live performance that make it worth acquiring. The French Horns have a full forward sound through out that make the supporting melody and counter melodies exciting. There is a level of excitement that one rarely hears. Given this, there is really not that much difference between the studio recording and the live performance. Obviously the studio recording has better sound, but this one sounds pretty good. I wish the the opening of the 4th movement has the nice full bodied string sound that was captured in the studio though, but that's a tiny gripe. It's staggering to think that Stoky was 92 when he gave this, his last concert in Britain. It's worth acquiring just to hear the master conduct this exciting performance. Sure the live performance has a few slight passages, but no matter, the excitement of this performance is over whelmning. The speed of the coda in the first movement is taken at an incredibly quick pace and Stoky ignores the light breath pauses at the end to make it thrilling. I dare ANY condctor to match the intensity, brilliance and excitement of this incredible performance. If you love Stoky and Brahms this is the one to own! Rush out and order it now!

This disc has 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.

It 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 Nováèek 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.

Stokowski had just turned 9 when the bulk of this concert from Albert Hall was recorded (the Novacek item is from ten years earlier). He retained is control and style, and the only sign of age was a tendency to rush, as if to make sure the audience knew how vigorous he remained. In every respect the program is a revisit to strength -- Stokowski had always been a master at Ravel and Vaughan Williams. Because of his famous string sonority, based on free bowing, it's no wonder that the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis is as rich as warm butterscotch. But there's also good rhythmic control, so the long melodic lines never become droopy or soupy. The only flaw is that dynamics remain on the same, fairly loud plane, neglecting the rise from hushed softness to climactic grandeur that shows the work off at its best.

In Ravel Stokowski never attempted to imitate the French; he has his won coloristic style, bolder and brighter. The pure Gallic idiom belongs to Martinon and Monteux, and Karajan extracted unbelievable refinement, but Stokowski's Rapsodie espagnole has more inner life and drama than either.

The detailed liner notes point out that Klemperer and Stokowski were poles apart as conductors, which hardly needs saying, but more surprisingly that the unbending, forbidding Klemperer admired the publicity hound and Disney movie star Stokowski. Klemperer was a composer, and his only semi-popular work, the cheerful, echt Viennese Merry Waltz, makes a touching start to the program, in tribute to Klemperer, who has died the summer before at 88.

The main work, the Brahms fourth, lies outside Stokowski's kingdom; he played the German classics but never made Mozart, Beethoven, or Brahms the center of fascination, and except for the Schumann Second, he avoided tht composer's music on disc. In his glory years with Philadelphia he was bold enough to pull Brahms in strange directions, but in general Stokowski was respectful. His arc rival Toscanini had set a fashion for quick, even hectic tempos, and this performance of the Fourth Sym. is in that mold, although Stokowski is more relaxed, even at high speed. The reading has plenty of vigor and extroverted energy but is short, perhaps, on careful phrasing and emotional depth. Happily Stokwski brings sweep and excitement to the finale, and one can't help but be touched, realizing that this was his next to last public concert. the last came a year later in Rouen when he conducted some of is signature Bach transcriptions. Valuable as a memento, this CD also captures in 78 min. a satisfying vision of Stokowski's art. The bBC's stereo sound is excellent, with a suggestion of the spacious reverberation heard in the immense London hall.