RACHMANINOV: Symphony No. 3 in A Minor, Op. 44; Vocalise, Op. 34, No. 14 (orch. Rachmaninov) – National Philharmonic Orchestra/Leopold Stokowski
Newton Classics 8802024, 46:19 [Distr. by Naxos] ****:
Newton Classics reissues the Leopold Stokowski reading of the Rachmaninov A Minor Symphony (1936) originally issued on Desmar Records and then given a CD incarnation via EMI (CDM 5 66759 2). Even the liner notes by Edward Johnson grace this latest version of this romantic coupling, inscribed 28, 30 April and 1 May 1975, when Stokowski was already 93 years of age.
Critics and the public at large have been reticent on the subject of A Minor Symphony, arguing that while the work absolves Rachmaninov of any debts to Tchaikovsky, it still plays as a hazy shadow of the E Minor Symphony, Op. 27. There are economical changes in the composer’s style, a tightening of form, and he condenses the Adagio and Scherzo (Allegro vivace) into one innovative seamless movement. Stokowski himself led the music’s debut performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra (6 November 1936), though he did not perform the work again nor record it with that esteemed ensemble.
Yet, having returned to the score after forty years, Stokowski builds up a magisterial tension very slowly, ever alert to the subtle shifts in meter and dynamics, and always playing fully the composer’s trump card in warm effulgent melodies. Stokowski’s fixed attention to the melodic ostinati and low brass appears idiosyncratic, but it works. The occasional modulation to distant and even possibly disturbing harmonies finds a perennial foil in Rachmaninov’s sure sense of colorful orchestration, and he always relies on the Dies Irae sequence to remind us that nostalgia must concede to mortality. The second movement invokes a solo violin, flute, bass clarinet, and harps in an ardent melody, a step away from Scheherazade. The music pays homage–it seems–to Liadov and that composer’s luxuriant sense of color combinations. The deft transition to the Scherzo suggests Rachmaninov had gleaned much from Sibelius in matters of symphonic compression. The last contrapuntal movement cuts loose with the battery of the National Philharmonic, requiring hard mallets, snare drum, tympani, triangle, all the time recycling impulses from earlier in the score. Forever convinced of the composer’s innate sincerity, it would seem that Stokowski were making amends for years of neglect, compensating with a potent expression of belated love and passion.
The forever charming Vocalise floats and charms at once, diaphanous and exquisitely tender, a simultaneous tribute to Wagner’s dream of “endless melody” and Rachmaninov’s fluent and lyric genius. [All the new Newtons that have come thru here have been exemplary remasterings from the original discontinued discs – bringing them into current sonic standards. And of course this one is stereo…Ed.]
–Gary Lemco
