Like Toscanini, Boult and Barbirolli, Leopold Stokowski carried some of his finest interpretations well into old age – further in, actually, than they did, though often with impressive results. These two CDs resurrect recordings that Stokowski made in his 94th year for the Desmar company and are at their best in favoured territory. True, Vaughan Williams’s Tallis Fantasia hasn’t quite the mesmerizing control or textural allure of Stokowski’s 1952 Victor recording (12/54 – nla) with his own Symphony Orchestra, but it still delivers a handsome welter of tone, with tender quartet work and a hungrily impatient final climax. Dido’s Lament finds Stokowski coaxing and caressing precisely the sort of velvet sonorities that were common fare in his Philadelphia days and Rachmaninov’s Vocalise is not only beautifully phrased, but strong on impulse. No doubt about it, when it came to ‘the devil he knew’, Stokowski could still compete with the best. But when tackling new, or relatively new territory, at 93, his reflexes were rather slower to react.
Stokowski only ever gave one performance of the Dvorak Serenade during his career, and this is it. Some passages come off well, not least a warmly gauged opening and an affectionate if somewhat idiosyncratic approach to the third movement’s second set (track 5, at 1'08''), where Stokowski slows the pace in pursuit of maximum expressiveness. The principal problem here, apart from minor slips in ensemble, is a lack of clarity among inner voices.
In the case of Rachmaninov’s Third Symphony, there is the purely historical advantage of having a generally well-engineered stereo recording by the man who had conducted the world premiere back in 1936, though he had not conducted it since. As Edward Johnson points out in his sympathetic annotation, Rachmaninov kept Stokowski’s Philadelphia Orchestra in mind when he composed the work, so one might have expected at least some element of the Rachmaninov-Philadelphia-Stokowski axis to inform Desmar’s recording. And indeed at times it does: in the first movement’s repeated exposition (itself a pleasant surprise), for example, and for at least half of the last movement, which witnesses some of the most exciting playing on the disc.
Elsewhere, Rachmaninov’s “many tempo and metre changes, complicated off-the-beat cross rhythms, and sudden changes of mood” (I quote Johnson again) lead to ragged ensemble and a general feeling of executive confusion. There is little point quoting specific detail (too much goes awry for that) save for advising listeners to play the second movement. If that fails to cause mild alarm, then you too may appreciate “the vividness of the playing, its exciting quality, and the punch and precision” that Trevor Harvey noted in these pages 22 years ago. But if you are at all au fait with the recordings of Ormandy (Sony, 8/90 – nla), Svetlanov or Pletnev (see below) there is a chance that you will sense shifting sands. The recordings have an expansive, ‘period sound-track’ quality about them that suits the performances and the transfers seem excellent. Seasoned Stokowski buffs should proceed without caution.'