Leopold Stokowski has transcended ‘cult figure’ status to be remembered
as one of the greatest orchestral conductors of the 20th Century.
Born in London of Polish-Irish ancestry, Stokowski found considerable
success in the United States, where he was naturalised as an American
citizen. In addition to his sixty-year legacy of making studio
recordings Stokowski was an inveterate transcriber of music for
the symphony orchestra. He made some two hundred orchestral arrangements
of works which had started life in other forms, such as piano
solos, songs, organ music, chamber works. Stokowski’s status has
suffered a decline since his death in 1977, some of which was
due to a bad press and a change in fashion. There is currently
a resurgence of interest in his transcriptions with several high
quality recordings available in the catalogues.
With
discs of the undoubted quality of this Serebrier release and
an upcoming Naxos release of Stokowski’s Bach transcriptions
to come, again with Serebrier and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra,
the future looks bright. The other day I saw a posting on a
message board that described listening to Stokowski’s transcription
as, “a guilty pleasure.” I smiled to myself knowingly,
fully understanding the sentiment about that wonderfully lush
and rich ‘Stokowski Sound’.
As
a former Stokowski protégé, the Uruguay-born conductor and composer
José Serebrier, has the most impeccable credentials for recording
Stokowski’s transcriptions. He worked closely with Stokowski
from 1957 when he moved to the United States in order to study
as apprentice to the great master, becoming his associate conductor
for many years. The committee of the Leopold Stokowski Society
approached José Serebrier with the suggestion that he take these
scores into his repertoire and subsequently record them for
Naxos, a project that was undertaken in September of 2004.
Mussorgsky
wrote the score to A Night on Bare Mountain in
1867. He produced a second, choral version in 1872 as his contribution
to a projected collective opera, Mlada, and finally recast
it in the form of a choral introduction for Act 3 of Sorochintsy
Fair in 1873. The score to A Night on Bare Mountain or,
to use its proper title, ‘Saint John’s Night on the Bare
Mountain’ was inspired by a scene of a witches’ Sabbath
in Nikolai Gogol’s demon-haunted story of St. John’s Eve.
One of the reasons Leopold Stokowski decided to make his own
orchestral version of Mussorgsky’s score was his endeavour to
get closer to the original, bolder and wilder version, as opposed
to Rimsky-Korsakov’s cleaner, more Westernised revision. In
fact, Stokowski’s version is actually close to Rimsky-Korsakov’s
in content and form, while faithful to the original Mussorgsky
in the orchestration. The famous 1940 Walt Disney technicolor
film proved to be a perfect showcase for Stokowski’s grandiose
vision. This is a rich and colourful work and the Bournemouth
Symphony Orchestra under José Serebrier are resolute throughout
with a reading that is wild and exciting, bold and craggy, which
perfectly fits the requirements of the score. At point 01:39-02:35
the mysterious introduction to the work has a Middle-eastern
flavour. The orchestral effects are marvellously performed throughout,
particularly the stunning crash of thunder at point 05:33 to
05:39. There is superbly rich and clear woodwind playing especially
between points 04:32 to 04:49 and 07:08-08:42.
Stokowski’s
version of Mussorgky’s Khovanshchina fragment
(the Entr’acte to Act IV) transforms it
into a moving, heart-breaking statement. Stokowski’s own words,
printed in the published score explain: “Of all the inspired
music of Mussorgsky, this is one of the most eloquent in its
intensity of expression. A man is going to his execution. He
has fought for freedom – but failed. We hear the harsh tolling
of bells, the gradual unfolding of a dark and tragic melody,
with under-currents of deep agitated tones, all painted with
sombre timbres and poignant harmonies.”
Everyone
is on top form with a performance of unerring drama that easily
evokes the harsh and terrifying world surrounding the execution.
Credit must go to the Bournemouth strings who are in exceptional
form. The episodes featuring the gong and brass at points 00:46-00:59
and 01:46-01:56 are especially effective.
Mussorgsky
composed his supreme national opera Boris Godunov to
his own libretto after Pushkin’s historical drama on the same
subject and after Karamzin’s History of the Russian Empire.
Rimsky-Korsakov in an effort to make the opera more acceptable
to contemporary taste revised and re-orchestrated the score
in 1896, again revising it for performance in 1908.
Stokowski
gave the U.S. première of the original version opera Boris
Godunov in 1929. Over the years, Stokowski experimented
with several concert versions, including one with singers, eventually
leading to the present substantial Symphonic Synthesis
of Boris Godunov. The opera was not that well known
in the first part of the twentieth century, and Stokowski felt
that a symphonic version would help in bringing this great music
to the attention of a wider audience. At nearly thirty minutes
in length Stokowski has produced a substantial score. It would
have been helpful had index points been used on the disc.
Serebrier
and his orchestra have that special dramatic vitality to their
performance and cast a strong spell. The work opens in a long,
tense and serious manner. A change of mood at point 07:00 includes
the extensive use of tolling bells reminding the listener of
the church bells in Britten’s opera: Peter Grimes. A
majestic fanfare at point 08:53 builds up a head of steam at
10:59 to a climax at 12:04. A restful episode between points
12:04-14:03 changes to one of a scampering and light-hearted
vein (points 14:20-16-10). The extended restful section between
points 16:11-24:21 provides a welcome respite from what has
gone before, a mood that continues to the conclusion of the
score.
Mussorgsky wrote the piano suite Pictures at an
Exhibition in 1874, inspired by visiting a posthumous
exhibition in St. Petersburg of four-hundred or so paintings
and drawings by his good-friend Victor Hartmann. A painter,
water-colourist, stage designer and architect, Hartman’s death,
at the early age of 39, devastated Mussorgsky. It is likely
that composing the Pictures at an Exhibition as a tribute
to Hartmann’s art
provided the grieving Mussorgsky with an element of catharsis.
Mussorgsky wrote, “Ideas, melodies come to me of their own
accord, like the roast pigeons in the story - I gorge and gorge
and overeat myself. I can hardly manage to put it down on paper
fast enough.” In
the creation of the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition
Mussorgsky’s tableaux (or scenes) attempt to capture the essence
of each picture with vivid tonal realism and an astonishing
aptitude for revealing Hartmann’s most
subtle artistic creation.
There
were already several orchestral versions of the suite Pictures at an Exhibition by
the time Serge Koussevitzky commissioned Maurice Ravel in 1922.
Ravel’s score is by far
the most famous of all the orchestrations and is now established
as a core part of the orchestral repertoire and has become a
celebrated orchestral
showpiece. Stokowski knew that Ravel’s orchestration, that was
based on the Rimsky-Korsakov revision of the piano score, contained
errors and omissions. He also felt that Ravel’s orchestration
was a great symphonic work, but not sufficiently ‘Russian’ and
too subtle to do justice to Mussorgsky’s coarser idiom. Stokowski’s
version is shorter than Ravel’s, because he decided to remove
two pictures: Tuileries and The Market Place at Limoges,
presumably because he felt they sounded too French, and/or he
thought they were actually written by Rimsky-Korsakov. Maestro
Serebrier sees little point in comparing the value of the Ravel
and Stokowski orchestrations, as they both serve the work wonderfully,
albeit in different ways, sensing that the Stokowski version
will gain more devotees as time goes by.
Stokowski
chose to employ an organ in the opening Promenade walking
theme, which proves most effective as part of the colourful
orchestration. Maestro Serebrier and the Bournemouth Orchestra
provide a suitably menacing representation of Gnomus
and The Old Castle with its accompanying troubadour
is poignantly interpreted. In the tableaux Bydlo
the Polish ox wagon with huge wheels is persuasively portrayed
as it makes its stumbling progress that grows in sonority as
it approaches and then fades away. The cheeping and scurrying
in the scene of the Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks in their
Shells is especially compelling. Serebrier’s reading is
most convincing in the tableaux Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle
which represents one as rich and successful with a proud
stately melody and the other as poor and unassuming represented
by a humble indecisive subject. The orchestra in the Catacombs
scene provides a most sombre and unsettling melody; heavy
chords contrasted with a beautiful closing section of stillness.
The virtuosity and brilliance of the Bournemouth players is
superbly displayed in the tableaux The Hut on Fowl’s Legs.
In the great final scene The Great Gate of Kiev, spectacular
and exhilarating playing take the work to a sonorous and majestic
conclusion.
The
two Tchaikovsky fragments become mini-symphonic poems in Stokowski’s
palette. Firstly the Humoresque, from Deux
morceaux, Op. 10, No. 2 for piano, which was written in
1872. The middle section is based on a catchy street song which
Tchaikovsky heard in Nice during a Mediterranean holiday. Rachmaninov
used to play it as an encore, and Stravinsky used it in his
ballet The Fairy’s Kiss. Secondly the title Solitude
is Stokowski’s own; the original title was Again, as Before,
Alone, Op. 73, No. 6, the final song from a set of Six Romances,
on poems by D.M. Rathaus. In the hands of Serebrier these two
short symphonic poems are treated with love and affection bringing
out their contrasting moods splendidly.
Stokowski’s
own composition, the short Traditional Slavic Christmas
Music, is based on Ippolitov-Ivanov’s
In a Manger, which in turn is based on a traditional
Christmas hymn. Stokowski’s bare orchestration, which he first
performed in Philadelphia on 19 December 1933, interpolates
string and brass choirs (no woodwinds in this score), and has
a certain magic, and not surprisingly, an organ-like quality.
This mournful music is played here tenderly with an admirable
fondness.
The Naxos SACD sound quality, which I played on my
standard CD Player, is quite superb. The booklet notes by José
Serebrier and Edward Johnson of the Leopold Stokowski Society
are interesting and highly informative. On this form
the talented Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra display their credentials
as one of Britain’s premier orchestras and show how excellent
their partnership is with inspirational conductor José Serebrier.
Whatever superlatives
you hear about this disc I urge you to believe them. This
is undoubtedly one of my records of the year. Stokowski, Serebrier
and Naxos are a winning combination.
Michael Cookson
see also Reviews
by Jonathan Woolf and Colin
Clarke
On Naxos
an Interview with José Serebrier: ‘Serebrier on Stokowski’
To
mark the occasion of this new CD with the Bournemouth Symphony
Orchestra of Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky orchestral transcriptions
José Serebrier recalls his memories of Stokowski in an interview.
Serebrier discusses Stokowski’s attitude toward orchestral transcriptions,
and articulates his own approach to recording the music. For
the interview visit the Naxos website: link
[76:47]
