Recordings made as Stokowski approached and arrived at a hale-and-hearty 90, with the conjuror-conductor's powers shining as brightly as ever. The word 'evocative' hardly seems adequate for the orientally inclined impressionist hazes and haunted spaces of Stokowski's own Chopin Mazurka transcription - a lament for a Mazurka perhaps? Neither will the expression 'heartfelt' do for the way the LSO strings emote in 'Prayer of Christ ascending to the Father' which ends Messiaen's L'ascension - no mere meditation, but an imploration to rival Barber's Adagio in intensity. When not caught up in this vividly communicative music-making, you may stop to notice (but hopefully not to worry) that its very vividness is engineer-assisted. I found myself much more absorbed by Stokowski's way with these pieces - and the superlative playing of a totally committed LSO - than distracted by the more entertaining quirks of the original Decca Phase Four balances ('ping-pong' stereo, instrumental spotlighting and periodical injudicious lashings of reverberation). For example, it hadn't occurred to me before just how indebted the young Messiaen was to Roussel in L'ascension's joyous third-movement Alleluias and fugue.
Stokowski obviously saw the Franck Symphony as a turbulent piece, the Lento introduction - swift, determinedly unmonumental and charged with all manner of tempo and dynamic variations - being a true indicator of things to come. Sadly, the so-called Hilversum orchestra (real name: the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic) is not in the LSO league. And, possibly as a result, the extremity of the moulding of tempo and phrasing often has the feeling of manhandling - of the orchestra, and of Franck's score. Equally, the recording is less distinguished, with fortissimos more noticeably flattened out, and an occasionally murky view of the inner workings. Suffice it to say that two other equally vital octogenarians - Monteux and Beecham (EMI, 9/92 - nla) - left us accounts of the Symphony with a greater yield of its secrets, its shape and its purpose.
None the less, as a demonstration of a more than normally volatile Franck, it is likely to compel as often as it repels. And it is also worth hearing for Stokowski's way with the brass - the tuba often tolling away like a warning of stormy weather, the 'hot' upper brass nearly always tamed for maximum euphony in tuttis, and, at one point in the finale (one bar before fig. O, from 8'22'') the horns popping up with a little canonic imitation of the strings. As to that last example, Franck would surely have nodded approval with the words 'now, why didn't I think of that?'.'