For the closing concert of the 1953 Helsinki Festival, one of
Sibelius’s greatest international champions, Leopold Stokowski,
was invited to conduct the Helsinki City Symphony Orchestra. Part
of the programme was familiar Stokowski territory. He had made
the first ever recording of Finlandia in 1921 (with the
Philadelphia Orchestra) and had set down the First Symphony not
long before, in 1950. But, although he had conducted the American
première of the Seventh Symphony (Philadelphia 1926) his sole
studio recording of it, with the All-American Youth Orchestra
(1940), had remained unissued and appeared only in 1994. Furthermore,
the present five movements from Pelléas et Mélisande may
be his only surviving recording of this music.
Sibelius
himself listened to the concert on his radio at home. The booklet
reproduces his letter to Stokowski of September 10th
1953 in which he says that “Your concerts here last June are
unforgettable for us all”. As Robert Matthew-Walker points out,
if “we possessed broadcast recordings of … orchestral music
by, say, Tchaikovsky or Brahms, made when the composers were
still alive and possibly giving their approval of the performances
– such aspects of ‘authenticity’ which we, in our history-obsessed
age, seek to recreate, would be there for us to experience…”.
All
the same, I think too much can be made of this. During his unproductive
later years, Sibelius seems to have been a fairly assiduous
listener to broadcasts and recordings of his music and expressed
his gratitude for quite a range of interpretative solutions.
Just to give one example, in Koussevitsky’s première recording
of the Seventh Symphony, the strings of the 1933 BBC SO can
be heard applying quite lavish portamenti. Since Sibelius was
delighted with the recording it may be supposed that he liked
this sort of playing. But portamento was already in its death
throes. The next issued recording, by the St. Louis SO under
Vladimir Golschmann (1942), already sounds like normal modern
orchestral playing. Sibelius’s favourite interpreter at the
end of his life, Tauno Hannikainen, set down a number of recordings
which made no attempt to revive portamento. He also adopted
a more austere, literal interpretative style than that of earlier
conductors, including Sibelius’s favoured interpreter in his
younger days, Robert Kajanus. In other words, in the end we’re
simply left asking ourselves, as we do with Mozart or Beethoven,
whether the performance communicates something to us and whether,
perhaps, it meets our – necessarily subjective – criteria of
what is “Sibelian”.
Another
problem is that I sincerely hope Sibelius himself enjoyed better
wireless reception than did the home taper to whom we owe the
present disc. The announcements show it to have been a relay
by an American broadcasting station and the ether was pretty
busy that evening. Swishes and fizzes of varying intensity provide
a fairly constant barrage, and they seem to go round in cycles.
This is particularly noticeable in long-held chords, which acquire
blips in the middle as the disturbance reaches its apex. They
then recompose themselves as we await the next wave. The general
lines of the music come through but in all truth, a listener
who didn’t already have a clear aural picture of the trio to
the third movement of the First Symphony, to name one especially
bad patch, just wouldn’t understand anything at all. Still,
it does offer a fascinating peep into the past.
Critical
tastes evolve, of course. The 1955 edition of “The Record Guide”,
which enjoyed almost Biblical status in its day, told us stiffly
that “The deleted Stokowski SP set [of Symphony 1], with its
technicolor recording, had made us think ill of the Sibelius
– an unfair judgement corrected by the magnificent recording
conducted by Anthony Collins”. If Stokowski himself ever read
this, he no doubt took consolation in the above-mentioned letter,
in which Sibelius himself described the recording as “wonderful”.
Maybe we’re more ready today to accept a range of different
solutions. I doubt if anyone would deny Collins’s “magnificent”
centrality, but I was quite bowled over by the 1950 Stokowski
(see review).
Rob
Barnett was also highly impressed. It’s obviously of some
interest to hear that the conductor could create the same white-hot
tension three years later with a lesser orchestra, but in view
of the sonic problems I doubt if even the most rabid Stokowski-phile
would need to hear the point proved more than once. It may be
of worth noting that the timings are fractionally faster in
1953, but by a mere few seconds. Or perhaps they were not, really.
The present CD is marginally sharper in pitch compared with
the studio recording. For all I know, concert pitch may have
been a tad higher in 1953 Helsinki than in 1950 New York but
I think it more likely that the amateur taping plays just a
little too fast, probably not enough to affect our perception
of the performance but enough to lop a few seconds off each
movement. It’s interesting to reflect that, in view of the very
full timing, had the tapes been transferred at the same pitch
as the New York version, the entire concert would not have fitted
onto the CD.
I’m
afraid I found “Finlandia” rather irritating on account of the
way Stokowski never plays two consecutive bars in the same tempo
in the big theme. This, to my ears, is merely capricious and
I retreated gratefully to Jensen’s fervent performance, where
the tensions seem to arise from the music itself.
The
“Pelléas” pieces certainly demonstrate Stokowski’s ability to
create a potent atmosphere and his plastic moulding of phrases.
Yet, turning to Berglund’s more austere versions I find the
atmosphere if anything more hypnotic still, with a sense of
shadow more in keeping with Maeterlinck’s play.
Stokowski’s
1940 Seventh Symphony was to have been the second recording
ever, the first studio recording and the first American recording
except that, as I noted above, it wasn’t issued till 1994. Unusually
for those days, the first recording was made live, by the BBC
SO under Koussevitzky. It was a hard act to follow. In spite
of the old-fashioned portamento, there is a vibrancy and fervour
to the string playing, and a bite and precision, that remain
amazing. The tempi are fairly broad and the overall impression
is of passion, power and grandeur. Both this and the next issued
recording, under Golschmann, took around twenty minutes and
the pacing of the individual sections is not dissimilar. Golschmann
could hardly screw up the tension like Koussevitzky but the
more pastoral sound of his orchestra has its own attraction.
Tension builds up over the span of the work while the closing
bars, leading to the enigmatic “Valse triste” quotation and
the final crescendo with its hair-raising suspensions that seemingly
never want to resolve, are handled with great poetry and insight.
Probably not an essential version, but Sibelians who come across
it will not regret hearing it. I don’t know the 1940 Stokowski
or the 1942 Beecham.
It
will probably not be thought surprising that the live Boult
performance issued fairly recently on BBC Classics also takes
around twenty minutes, or that Berglund – I have his Helsinki
version – takes a minute more. Slightly more unexpectedly Bernstein’s
recording in his 1960s cycle – from the days when he was still
more firebrand than sage – adds another minute still. But the
point about these details is that Stokowski gets through the
piece in a mere seventeen minutes – the timing given above includes
applause. Just occasionally he sounds a little breathless, or
the orchestra does. The big trombone theme is passed over with
remarkably little emphasis and the poetry found by Golschmann
at the end is not attempted. Nor do the final clashing suspensions
really register. From one point of view, Stokowski could be
found distressingly superficial. On the other hand, he does
have sweep. There is an inexorable surge from beginning to end,
and he seems willing to sacrifice any details that might get
in the way. At times the combination of fuzzy recording, edge-of-seat
playing and speed suggest a writhing Debussian seascape rather
than the Northern pine forests in their sharply-etched, snow-clad
detail. The trouble is, without the possibility to hear this
interpretation with a clear recording and a front-rank orchestra,
it is difficult to be sure if this is what Stokowski was actually
aiming at, or even what his listeners heard. And another difficulty
is that, if we dismiss it as impressive but not quite what Sibelius
was driving at, we have to explain away the fact that Sibelius
apparently enjoyed it very much. The 1940 recording should help
to clarify Stokowski’s view of the piece, but a quite detailed
review I have seen – not on this site – describes a different
sort of performance altogether, the opening slow and grand,
for example. Under the circumstances Stokowski’s admirers can
hardly afford to miss the present issue, whatever its shortcomings.
For the more general music lover, the historical Sibelius Seven
you really can’t be without is the Koussevitzky, but Sibelians
may like to make up their minds about a performance that is
sui generis.
Christopher
Howell
see
also Review
by Rob Barnett
Helsinki City
Symphony Orchestra/Leopold Stokowski 
