Frederick Stock Conducts The Chicago Symphony, Vol. 4 – Symphonic Works of TCHAIKOVSKY; MOZART; R. STRAUSS; SIBELIUS; IPPOLITOV-IVANOV; SAINT-SAENS; WEBER; SCHUBERT (complete content listing below) – Pristine Audio PASC 721 (2 CDs: 2 hr 26:05) [www.pristineclassical.com] *****:
Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer Mark Obert-Thorn proffers the fourth of his recorded testaments to conductor Frederick Stock (1872-1942), this edition devoted to the post-1939 documents that mark the return of the CSO to their original Columbia label. In his informative liner notes, Obert-Thorn points out that the actual recording process, utilizing lacquer master discs, had improved the sonic quality of CBS records. The repertory selected by Stock, moreover, tended to offer competitive alternatives to the Leopold Stokowski renditions produced for RCA Victor. While most of the Stock legacy would appear on the Entre label of Columbia vinyl records, the readings of Weber’s Euryanthe and the Strauss Also Sprach Zarathustra never had an LP incarnation.
I decided to audition Stock’s legacy with his 1940 rendition of the Saint-Saens Danse Macabre, whose incisive, pungent motion rivals my favorite interpretations from Toscanini and Mitropoulos. Besides the rasping, violin solo entries from John Weicher, Stock’s brisk tempos, his flair for dynamic nuance and clarity of contrapuntal line, make for a vividly memorable account. In an equally sensitive mode, the Sibelius tone-poem The Swan of Tuonela (rec. 1940), featuring Robert M. Meyer in the solo cor anglais part, projects a tragic, lyric intensity that has us wishing Stock had left us more Sibelius in his store of recorded documents. The opening mood injects a pathos into the occasion quite singular in effect, soon joined by horn, harp, and cello to place a musical shroud over the martial last pages, in which the strings and timpani add their own dire contribution. The light-hearted Procession of the Sardar enjoys an oriental swagger, certainly reminiscent of Stokowski’s version, although Stokowski added In the Village from the suite. The last of the four 1940 “encores,” Weber’s Euryanthe Overture, receives a whirlwind treatment, quite explosive in its own terms, though no less lyrically poised for the main melody and nervously meditative prior to the central counterpoints.
The 1939 Nutcracker Suite reveals a leaner, less old-world approach from Stock, who has relinquished much of the Romantic mannerism he had shared with Mengelberg in the 1927-1930 documents. Slides and portamento applications string playing have become less frequent. The Children’s March whistles and stings in its active delivery. The Sugar Plum Fairy proves delicately luminous, the celesta apparent in the colors. The two longest sections, the Arabian Dance and Waltz of the Flowers, respectively, bask in Tchaikovsky’s hued, rhythmic pulsations, the erotic elements subdued but still potent, a la Stokowski. Admirers of good woodwind playing will relish Stock’s Chinese Dance and Dance of the Flutes.
Having owned the vinyl LP version of Stock’s Mozart 1787 Prague Symphony, I knew full the fleet power of Stock’s rendition, how much, in a manner not far from the robust virility of someone like Albert Coates, Stock could project Mozart’s bright energies. The CSO woodwinds have found their natural, buoyant medium even as the strings shimmer and glow in Mozart’s imaginative filigree. The first movement’s modulation from the minor Adagio into the boisterous D major Allegro breezes by with a bravura confidence equal to what Mengelberg had achieved in Amsterdam. The ensuing Andante combines melancholy pathos and elegance with pastoral and stately serenity, hard to define but elegantly sumptuous in lyrical ideas. Rarely has an operatic motif so dominated a symphonic movement as Mozart’s Presto has been, by the Marriage of Figaro’s Act II duet between Susanna and Cherubino. Having dispensed with any form of Minuet, Mozart proceeds to demonstrate pure symphonic wizardry: an impetus 2/4 sets the tempo for true frolic led by the CSO flute, moving to a number of acrobatic maneuvers in counterpoint and instrumental sleight of hand. The suave facility of means hides the art behind the wise craft of composer and sympathetic performer.
Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony first recorded the 1896 Richard Strauss tone-poem after Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, in 1935. Stock’s opening sequence C-G-C “World Riddle” over a ground pedal from 1939 proves no less robust, his “Sunrise” setting the standard for a future series of CSO musical investigations – among which, that by Fritz Reiner in stereophonic sound, stands supreme – of Nietzsche’s philosophical essay that announces “God is dead” in order to liberate mankind from any false reliance on metaphysical consolations, so that each individual may assume full responsibility for his fate. Strauss exploits harmonic ambiguities that leave us pondering the great questions, meanwhile offering some delicious moments of sumptuous scoring. Stock builds potent tension in the course of progress, especially from “Of the Great Longing” to “Of Joys and Passions,” which attain a colossal momentum.
The clarity of Mark Obert-Thorn transfers illuminate the brilliant, high register, stirring motifs “Of Science and Learning” bear joyous fruition in the well-lauded “Dance Song,” that “recovers” (as a sign of convalescence) Nietzsche’s admonition of Amor fati, love of fate, as a declaration of the supremacy of the individual will. Violinist Weicher and orchestra indulge in virtuoso colloquy in C major, fluttering with impulses from “Sunrise” and “The Gravesong.” Twelve strokes of midnight announce the final sequence, “Song of the Night Wanderer,” the clash of B and C leaving the “Riddle” unresolved, assuming the “Riddle” remains Man himself. Stock elicits elegantly transparent sonorities from his ensemble, strings, winds, and harp lustrously present. T.S. Eliot may prove relevant here at the compressed Apocalypse: “This is the way the world ends.”
Stock’s well-mounted, exciting Schubert Symphony No. 9 (rec. 1940) concludes the collection, and it comes as a muscularly sweet reward to round out a full program. The established pulse, along with fine interior lines, create a fixedly consistent point of departure for the Andante – Allegro ma non troppo evolution of the first movement, the trumpet work rhythmically evocative. The sense of driven momentum in metric precision aligns Stock with Toscanini on several points, including the final measures of peroration, insightfully noted by the late Mortimer Frank, cited by Obert-Thorn.
Stock’s second movement Andante con moto in A minor establishes a martial resolve that refuses to bend, despite the lyricism of the secondary materials, though a sense of consolation shines forth. My own preference in Furtwaengler’s Berlin account notwithstanding, Stock’s vision offers persuasive testimony to his mastery of the Schubert ethos. The textural balances themselves offer moments of bravura execution. The disparate parts and cross rhythms – listen to those studied pizzicatos in the strings – coalesce into a jubilant performance. With the Scherzo the key of C major returns with a fleet vengeance, a mirthful energy that flies along in competing impulses. The woodwinds arrive in glorious harmony for the Trio section, an imitation, rustic cathedral sound. The da capo keeps the explosive insistence with which it began, a singing, dynamic expression of vibrant life. The emotional whirlwind culminates in the Finale: Allegro vivace, in which Frederick Stock is not to be outdone by the likes of Willem Mengelberg, at least if the first trumpet, ostinato strings and winds have anything to say about it. The graduated building of dramatic tension – again in the Toscanini mold – attests to Stock’s having imbibed Italian and German models of controlled, crystalline dynamics and lyrical energies, a monument of a performance.
If any collector must invest in one historical, symphonic CD set this season, they have found it here.
—Gary Lemco
FREDERICK STOCK CHICAGO SYMPHONY VOL. 4
TCHAIKOVSKY: Nutcracker Suite, Op. 71a;
MOZART: Symphony No. 38 in D Major, K. 504 “Prague”;
R. STRAUSS: 1Also Sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30;
SIBELIUS: The Swan of Tuonela, Op. 22;
IPPOLITOV-IVANOV: Procession of the Sardar from Caucasian Sketches, Op. 10;
SAINT-SAENS: 1Danse Macabre, Op. 40;
WEBER: Euryanthe – Overture;
SCHUBERT: Symphony No. 9 in C Major, “The Great,” D. 944
1John Weicher, violin
