BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 5 in C minor, No. 6 in F Major “Pastoral”; Symphony No. 7 in A Major; WAGNER: Tristan und Isolde: Prelude and Liebestod; Parsifal: Good Friday Spell; Act III: Symphonic Synthesis (arr. Stokowski) – NBC Symphony Orchestra/ Collegiate Choir/ Leopold Stokowski – Pristine Audio PASC 591 (2 CDs) 73:10; 79:27 [www.pristineclassical.com] *****:
The 1942-1943 seasons at the NBC Symphony had Leopold Stokowski co-directing the helm, leading what otherwise would have been solely Arturo Toscanini’s ensemble; but at the time, the two musicians, starkly contrasted in personality and temperament, coordinated its efforts. Given the ‘incomplete’ rendition of the Beethoven Pastoral by Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in the feature Fantasia (1940), the NBC performance (24 March 1942) preserves Stokowski’s earliest recorded document.
Stokowski enjoyed a life’s commitment to the Beethoven Symphony No. 5 on record, having participated in a 1931 a “Program Transcription” LP! The present NBC performance (26 December 1943), from its outset, reveals pungent energy and rhythmic vitality, buttressed by excellent clarity of orchestral definition. The opening Allegro con brio suavely negotiates the obsessive, rhythmic articulation and its buoyant, lyrically contrary energies. At hyperspeed, the reading certainly does not “defer” to any Toscanini concept but maintains its own integrity at every martial or lyrical period. The last page offers a resounding closure to a gesture conceived in one, continuous motion.
Stokowski obviously sees the Andante con moto as the “heart” of the symphony, warmly kneading the fluent lines of variation in a panoply and pageantry of colors. Commentator Edward Johnson calls the performance – in fact all three of the symphony renditions – “spectacular,” and rightly so. In its more pompous guises, the music evokes the ominous four-beat rhythm in clear tones. The suave NBC string and woodwind lines remain a pleasure to savor for their homogeneity and resilience. Playing the melody tutti, with Mannheim Rockets rising from the depths, the NBC musicians dazzle us with their total security in this score. The Scherzo: Allegro maintains a lush, romantic appeal, richly sonorous in strings and brass. As remastered by Andrew Rose, the NBC basses and winds acquire a penetrating series in both counterpoint and strettos. A sense of playful anticipation marks the Trio, with pungent work in oboe, bassoon and pizzicato strings. Then the tympani sets the pedal point for a monumental spasm into the fiery Allegro final movement, certainly as resolute a transition as I admire in the famed Erich Kleiber performance with the Concertgebouw. We have a truly virtuoso performance, quite uncompromising in its focus, magnificently “present.”
Some collectors of Leopold Stokowski recordings will recall the 1954 Beethoven Pastoral on RCA (LM 1830), featuring “Sounds of Nature” as its hook, gimmicky as it seems today. Here, in 1942, from the much-maligned Studio 8-H, Stokowski leads a muscularly virile performance sans special effects – rather quickly paced, reminding me at some moments of the Hermann Scherchen approach. The clarinet and flute work in the last pages enjoys a sweet resonance. It is not often that a performance of the second movement, Scene by the Brook, instantly bears a kinship with Smetana’s The Moldau, but Stokowski transports us momentarily to faraway Prague. A third of the way through the movement, Stokowski transforms its 12/8 into a romantic waltz. In fact, the reading clearly embraces Beethoven’s personal pantheism, a sensibility that the composer’s “heart leaps up” in the wonderment of natural surroundings: the woods, trees, and streams.
The village dance movement moves rather manically, the Allegro’s having become a potent sprint to win some rural maiden’s hand. The tympani, along with piccolo and trombones inserts a feral storm that Shelley may well invoke as transported by the West Wind. The ensuing Shepherds’ Song lilts with a cosmic sweetness, deftly manipulated – in a manner not unlike that of Willem Mengelberg – by a rubato that seeks to inflect the last movement hymn so that a striking unity-in-variety emerges. Whatever one’s opinion of the post-Hollywood Stokowski, this restoration of the earliest of his Beethoven Pastoral Symphony readings never ceases to engross us as great music.
Stokowski leads the Beethoven Seventh in a performance of 22 November 1942. The audio quality of Studio 8-H appears better lit than its wont, and the resultant reverberation for the opening Poco sostenuto has a galvanizing presence, tautly portentous. Once the flute and strings introduce the Vivace, the ride has propulsion, precision, and unmistakable glamour: schwung. Stokowski deliberately slows the progression in the recapitulation for dramatic emphasis, a display of the woodwinds’ lyrical acuity and the brilliant acceleration of his string line. Stokowski brings in the tragic Allegretto attacca, a startling juxtaposition of energies. The mood becomes poignant and luxurious, at once.
Dramatically, the Presto movement suffers a momentary lapse of tension until Stokowski has the momentum in focus, the brass and tympany in tow. Stokowski omits the Trio’s repeat as if to thrust the Allegro con brio at us for a more explosive effect. Once this perpetuum mobile takes flight, the course proves ineluctable, thrilling as any of those same pages realized by Beecham and Toscanini. The Stokowski “organ” sound – and stretched tempo – plays out in teasing allusion to Bach. The whirlwind, having assumed its rightful place among the forces of creation, carries us, as it had the New York audi ence, to a dizzying, dazzling exhibition of controlled hysteria.
From the same 22 November 1942 concert, Stokowski proffers his Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. Typically, the extraordinarily lush sonority reveals the romantic tendencies in string slides and portamento that would indicate either Mengelberg or post-Hollywood Stokowski at the helm. The rich wind colors – the clarinet, oboes, bassoon, and well as the horns – complement the “Stokowski string sound” that eschewed unison bowing for a more overlapping effect from free bowing. The cumulative effect of the Liebestod might require every seat in the house maintain a cloth. A one-time church organist, Stokowski clearly enjoyed pulling out all the stops! Parsifal was the only Wagner opera that he conducted complete, with a Philadelphia concert presentation in 1933. He also began making “Symphonic Syntheses” of Wagner’s music dramas, and the “Good Friday Spell” is followed by one of these arrangements. Its music from Act 3 evokes the world of the Knights of the Holy Grail; and in this ‘live’ broadcast, Stokowski brings in a chorus from the opera’s final pages. It is a wonderful effect not realized in his three orchestral recordings of the Parsifal “Synthesis” and thus makes this performance unique in his immense discography.
—Gary Lemco
