It hardly seems credible that the man who prepared and recorded ingeniously wrought ‘symphonic syntheses’ of Wagner’s Ring, Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal (not to mention a whole host of separate Wagner overtures and preludes) never took Siegfried Idyll into the studio. This particular performance – taken from Stokowski’s third and last concert at the Library of Congress – has many beautiful moments, not least a tenderly expressed opening and a poetic coda. Stokowski had recorded both the Tallis Fantasia and Verklarte Nacht some eight years earlier for RCA (the coupling was briefly available here on HMV – 12/54 – before being reissued on a limited edition LP by the Stokowski Society) and I cannot pretend that these live performances, fine though they are, compare with their more painstakingly prepared commercial predecessors. The Vaughan Williams is well paced and forcefully voiced, but lacks a sense of aural perspective, whereas Verklarte Nacht starts out well enough but suffers from bouts of unkempt playing later on (after some rather prosaic duetting from solo violin and cello at 17'44''). Furthermore, although technically an outgrowth of Toscanini’s virtuoso NBC Symphony, the Symphony of the Air wasn’t quite in the same class. Still, Schoenberg’s final climax has considerable impact and the mono sound captures it with admirable fidelity.
In closing, I would say that this is ‘good’ rather than ‘great’ Stokowski and would recommend it primarily for the sake of a musically sympathetic – and discographically unique – Siegfried Idyll.'