Richard Strauss in Philadelphia 1921 with Stokowski
1920 - Beethoven Symphony no 8 - Second Movement
During his career, Stokowski was not associated with the symphonies of Beethoven in the
way that a Toscanini, Furtwängler, or even Weingartner were. However, Stokowski made
several very good performances of Beethoven symphonies, with issued recordings of all
the symphonies, except the First.
Stokowski made his first and only commercial recording (with any orchestra)
of the Beethoven Symphony no 8 at that time, although there are at least three live performances which have since become available. This recording of the second movement of the
Symphony was recorded May 20, 1920. As was the practice at the time, Stokowski recorded
only this one movement (Stokowski would make the first Victor recording of a
full symphonic work in 1924, with the Schubert Unfinished).
This recording as with others between 1919 and 1924 was
done with a greatly reduced orchestral complement, with
the objective by the Victor engineers of increase
"clarity". Only 45 musicians were used in the
recording of the Beethoven second movement from the
Symphony no 8. You can also hear what seems to be
either a contrabassoon or a bass clarinet taking the
part usually played by the string basses.
This recording was issued on a 12 inch Victor Red Seal
record 74661, matrix C-24127-3 issued in 1921.
Click below to hear this recording of the 1920 Beethoven Symphony no 8 second movement.
This recording of the second movement of the Beethoven
Symphony no 8 used a similar re-orchestration of the
music as was commonly used by Victor from 1919 to 1924,
substituting bass winds for string basses. In the
opening of this movement, a bass oboe was employed,
rather than string basses. However, as can be
heard in the UK Columbia Weingartner recording of this
second movement from his complete London Symphony
Orchestra recording from November 27, 1923, string
basses were successfully (although less prominently)
recorded with the acoustic process. Listen to the
first few minutes of the Weingartner recording as
transcribed by Bryan Bishop.
1920 - Largo from the Dvorak Symphony no 9, "From
the New World"
In
1920, Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra
made the first of a series of four recordings of the
Dvorak Symphony no 9, "From the New World", although as
was the practice in the acoustic era, only of a single
movement. This was the second movement, "Largo"
recorded May 21, 1920.
In
fact, this movement of the Dvorak symphony was not their
first attempt to record the Symphony 'From the New
World'. Stokowski and the Philadelphians has recorded
the third movement, a scherzo, in December 1917 at one
of their earliest recording sessions. However, this
recording was one of the many sides rejected by
Stokowski and never issued.
They
recorded this symphony in full in 1925 with the
electrical process producing a famous album. This
later 1925 recording was first issued as a separate album,
containing the complete
New World symphony. Later, this album was revised to
became the first of the Victor "Musical Masterpiece" series,
the first of this new series, labeled "M-1". The
Victor Musical Masterpiece series continued until the end of the
78 RPM era. Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestr recorded
the New World Symphony again, and perhaps most successfully in
both sound and performance, in October, 1927. Somewhat
confusingly, the 1927 that recording was also assigned the
catalog number of M-1, replacing the 1925 recording. Further
confusing for collectors is that this 1927 recording was assigned
the same matrix numbers as the 1925 recording, although with
different 'take' numbers.
Stokowski and the Philadelphians returned to the Dvorak
Symphony no. 9 a final time in 1934, but this, in my
judgment was not so fine, either acoustically or as a
performance as the 1927 effort.
Listen to this fine 1920 acoustic
recording of the Largo movement of the Dvorak Symphony
no 9 'From the New World' by clicking on the link below.
In
1920, Stokowski also made the first of his six
commercial recordings of the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody no
2 for piano. The version on this side was orchestrated
by Karl Müller-Berghaus but heavily cut by Stokowski so
as to fit on one side of Victor Red Seal 74647.
The orchestration of this piece, and the prominence of
horns and woodwinds, and the reasonably effective recording
of the strings makes this one of the sonically more effective
acoustic Stokowski recordings. It is also a vigorous
performance.
This recording was made on May 20, 1920 with approximately 35
musicians in the newly renovated Camden Trinity Church
studio, purchased by Victor in 1918, and now referred to
as "Building no 22".
1920 - Johannes Brahms - Hungarian Dance No 1 in g
minor
The day
after Stokowski and the Philadelphians had recorded the
excerpts from the Beethoven Symphony no 8, the Dvorak
'New World" and the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody no 2, they
went back to Camden to record the Johannes Brahms'
Hungarian Dance No 1 in g minor. This Hungarian
Dance, following on from the first two Stokowski
recordings made in 1917 of the Hungarian Dances 5 and 6,
was in an orchestration based on the arrangement of the
piano music by Brahms' friend, Joseph Joachim.
The
1920 orchestral forces used for this recording were considerably
less than for the first 1917 recordings.
Approximately 40 musicians were used, compared with
approximately 95 in 1917. The sound and
performance of this Hungarian Dance no 1 seems to have less
impact than the 1917 Hungarian Dances 5 and 6, perhaps in
part because of this reduced orchestral complement. Stokowski
also may have been dissatisfied with this recording, even though he
approved it for release. The evidence for this is that he and
the Philadelphia Orchestra re-recorded the work in November, 1922 and
in May, 1923, although neither later recording was released.
The performance itself is significantly different than
would be heard from Stokowski's contemporaries. It
begins very slowly in the introductory theme, and the
speeds up to a rapid pace. This is a dramatic
effect, but does not seem to be based on what Brahms
wrote. But then Stokowski usually knew what he
wanted to accomplish.
The
following year, in 1921 Stokowski recorded probably well
over 100 acoustic sides, of which 11 were released.
This made 1921 the most prolific recording year by the
Philadelphians up to that point.
Following the Rimski-Korsakov and Wagner sessions of
March 25, 1921, Stokowski recorded the Sibelius Finlandia,
still a contemporary composition, composed just over
twenty years before.
Jean Sibelius
This is
another of the successful Stokowski acoustic recordings.
The performance is noble and inspired, and the
limitations of the acoustic process do not significantly
detract from the impact of this work and its
performance.
Brahms
was one of the composers most successfully conducted by
Stokowski, and he seems to have programmed either the Brahms
Symphony no 1 or Symphony no 3 whenever he needed an assured success
during his career. Given his affinity for Brahms, it is
surprising he did not record the Academic Festival
Overture commercially until 1974, nor the Tragic
Overture until 1977, both at the very end of his long
career. Also, according to Enno Riekena's superb
discography of Stokowski commercial disks, the only
recording issued commercially of Stokowski performing
the 'Variations on a Theme of Haydn' was a 1962 live
recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, when
Stokowski substituted for an ailing Fritz Reiner. At this
concert, Stokowski conducted the works Reiner had programmed.
This 1962 'Variations on a Theme of Haydn' recording was
issued by the Leopold Stokowski Society.
It is surprising that, according to C. G. Arnold's comprehensive
acoustic discography 'The Orchestra on Record, 1896 - 1926', this
Stokowski - Philadelphia Orchestra recording of the third movement
of the Brahms Symphony no 3 seems to be the first recording ever of
any movement from any Brahms symphony by any conductor (!)
3.
This 1921 Brahms recording also shows how Stokowski and the Philadelphia
Orchestra programmed their recording sessions and selected the 'takes'
to be issued. The third movement of the Brahms Symphony no 3 was recorded
in at least three recording sessions: February,
April and May, 1921. This issued recording came from the April
18, 1921 session. This would suggest that Stokowski listened to the results
of all three sessions, or at least the April and May sessions, prior to
selecting that of April 18, 1921. Also striking is that from the
February and May recording sessions, no recording were release (of any music
- not just the Brahms).
Click below to hear the third movement of Brahms Symphony no 3 in F major from 1921.
1921 - Strauss - Salome - Dance of the Seven Veils
At the end of 1921, on December 5, 1921, Stokowski and the
Philadelphians recorded their first and only acoustic recording of
music by Richard Strauss: The Dance of the Seven Veils
from Scene 4 Salome. In the opera, as he price for dancing
this dance, Salome demands from Herod, King of Judea, the
head of John the Baptist on a silver platter.
Richard Strauss had conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra on a number
of occasions, including during the tenure of Fritz Scheel, the first
conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra. In October,
1921, Strauss conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra in one concert in
Philadelphia, and five concerts in New York City, all of his own
works 4.
This fine recording of the Dance of the Seven Veils from Strauss's opera
Salome was released on two 12 inch single sided Victor Red Seal disks, Victor 74729
and 74730, matrix
C-25788-3 and C-25789-2.
Second - in the Chronological Discography page.
For example, links to a 1926 recording are also found in the
electrical recordings chronological discography page:
Chronological Discography of Electrical Recordings
This page lists all the electrical recordings from 1925 to
1940 made by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold
Stokowski and issued by Victor, including of course the 1926 recordings.
The mp3 files in this site are encoded at 128 mbps. This means that the
files are of different sizes, according to the length of
the music. For example, the second electrical recording, the
April 29, 1925 Borodin ‘Polovetzki Dances’ is small (3.6MB). In contrast,
the 1929 Le Sacre du Printemps file is large. Le Sacre part 1 is 14MB
and Le Sacre part 2 is 16MB.
This means that a large file will take a longer time to
download, depending on your internet connection speed.
Please keep this in mind when you click to listen to -
download a particularly music file. You may click
the link to the music file, but need to wait a number of
seconds or even minutes to listen to the file.
If you have any comments or questions about this Leopold Stokowski site, please e-mail me (Larry Huffman)
at e-mail address:
leopold.stokowski@gmail.com
