Leopold Stokowski and British Music

In 1977, the year of Leopold Stokowski's death, an early biographer claimed that despite the maestro's London-based musical education, "even in his early years as a conductor in America, Stokowski did not play much English music and later on it was conspicuous by its absence from his programmes." The author of those words could be forgiven, since at that time John Hunt's Leopold Stokowski Discography and Concert Register (1996) was a long way from being published. Although not absolutely complete, it is the concert listing that provides the most fascinating glimpses of the conductor's range, confirming that his commercial recordings were by no means representative of his concert repertoire and showing that English music played a part in his programmes from the very beginning. We find, for example, that while still an organist at St James's, Piccadilly, Stokowski was conducting small theatre ensembles in London, and in November 1904 he performed Elgar’s Salut d'Amour during the interval of a Jerome K. Jerome play.

During his three seasons in Cincinnati, from 1909 to 1912, he learnt the basic orchestral repertoire and on November 24, 1911 he gave the US premiere of Elgar's Second Symphony. The Cincinnati Times-Star was unpersuaded of the work's merits: "Elgar does not convey the belief that symphonic writing is the most sympathetic medium for his undeniable genius. The composition is pleasant and it is interesting; but it is not great, nor in any sense convincing."

Undeterred, Stokowski introduced more Elgar to Cincinnati the following year in an all-British programme that included the Enigma Variations. Later, in one of his first concerts in Philadelphia, where he had moved from Cincinnati in 1912, he introduced Elgar's First Symphony to his new audiences and, in October 1918, conducted the Prelude and Angel's Farewell (the composer's orchestral arrangement of the opening and close of The Dream of Gerontius), Carillon and Le drapeau BeIge. Stokowski performed more Elgar in New York in 1922 when he and his Philadelphians accompanied the Belgian cellist Jean Gérardy in the Cello Concerto. The New York Times was unimpressed: "The thematic material is not rich; it is spun out, sometimes pretty thin …altogether the substance of the concerto is rather tenuous."

  Leopold Stokowski in 1915

Since Elgar was obviously not considered a great composer in America, Stokowski performed little else of his music thereafter, apart from the Enigma Variations. However, following a performance of this work in 1929, he wrote a famous letter to the composer:

"I have just been conducting your Variations in Philadelphia and New York, and feel I must thank you for such a profound and intense musical pleasure as I received from them ... your Variations gave me the most powerful impression of eternal vitality and architectural design - and also of something very difficult to express, a floating upward into a mystical level where time and space seem to cease."

Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis made its Philadelphia debut in October 1926, although one critic found it "grave, sombre and melancholic". Like the Enigma Variations, however, this was one English masterwork that was to remain in Stokowski's repertoire for many years to come.

   Stokowski's score of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Tallis Fantasia ¹

The English enfant terrible of those times was William Walton, whose Belshazzar's Feast was programmed by Stokowski during January 1934. The Musical Courier reported that "the chorus of 400 did well and Mr Dudley Marwick sang excellently". Gustav Holst died in May of that year, so as a tribute Stokowski conducted The Planets for the first time the following November. The tragedy is that although by now he had become an inveterate recording artist, none of the music of Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Walton or Holst was to feature on Stokowski's Philadelphia 78rpm recordings. The nearest he came to performing English music on shellac discs was in his own arrangements of Handel's Water Music and Overture in D minor, and two short pieces by William Byrd.

Click here to listen to Stokowski's 1937 recording of William Byrd - Earl of Salisbury Pavane and Gigue

On leaving Philadelphia, Stokowski formed the All-American Youth Orchestra for two summer tours, 1940-1941. His next major appointment came when Toscanini withdrew from the NBC Symphony at the start of the 1941-1942 NBC season. The war had its own influence on Stokowski's NBC programmes and he often advocated music from Allied countries. England was represented in 1943 by what The New York Times described as "a remarkable performance of Holst's great mystical tone-poem, The Planets" (Cala CD CACD0526). It was followed a month later by a broadcast of Vaughan Williams's Fourth, which the same newspaper declared to have been "a most satisfactory reading of this great symphony" (Cala CD CACD 0528.)

Cala CACD 0526 (left) features a tremendous 1943 NBC broadcast of Holst's The Planets, while CACD 0528 (right) has an equally electrifying reading from the same year of Vaughan Williams's Symphony no 4. This, and a 1944 broadcast of Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad on the same CD, were Stokowski's only performances of either work.

Stokowski became a chief guest conductor with the New York Philharmonic-Symphony for the 1946-1947 season and in January 1949 gave the New York premiere of Vaughan Williams's Sixth. He immediately made its first recording (Sony compact disk SMK58933), beating Sir Adrian Boult to that honour by 48 hours! "The more I study Vaughan Williams's Symphony in E minor," wrote Stokowski, "the more I have the impression that this is music that will take its place with the greatest creations of the masters". For his Columbia 78rpm sessions several weeks later, Stokowski calmed down somewhat from the hectic tempos he had adopted in his concert performances; but even so, the symphony's total timing of 29'09" makes his the fastest version on record. Reviewing the later LP transfer (Am. Col. ML4214), the American Record Guide wrote: "Stokowski's reading is unblemished by interpretative excursions, and the orchestra gives a stunning performance".

Cala CACD 0537 with a beautifully restored Vaughan Williams Symphony no 6

In 1952, Stokowski made the first of his two recordings of the Tallis Fantasia - also in New York - with a hand-picked ensemble of top session players described on the LP label as "His Symphony Orchestra" (Victor long play LM 1739; HMV ALP 1205). The American critic Irving Kolodin, in alliterative mood, wrote: "Stokowski and his singing strings are in superlative sonority here, producing prodigies of purple plush passage-playing". The Gramophone was less impressed: "Substantial vibrato in the string tone lends to it a warmth suitable for many works, but quite inappropriate for the remote tranquility of the Fantasia". Nevertheless, the composer was delighted and on September 24, 1952 wrote to Stokowski: "I feel much honoured that you have recorded my Fantasia", attaching his own hand-written copy of the original Tallis hymn tune.

Stokowski conducts the Tallis Fantasia: (above left) Cala CACD 0542 with His Symphony Orchestra, recorded 1952 for RCA Victor; (above right) Bridge 9074 with the Symphony of the Air, recorded "live" in 1960.  (below): Stokowski's Tallis score with Vaughan Williams' letter pasted on the final page. ¹

In May 1954, Stokowski made his first television appearance in England as well as two radio broadcasts with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He had already conducted Edmund Rubbra’s Fifth Symphony in a 1952 Maida Vale concert ("the greatest performance I have ever heard" was the composer's verdict) and continuing in the same vein the maestro told the BBC: "One of the things I would like to do is to conduct as much as possible the music of the most talented British composers of today". His broadcasts included Malcolm Amold’s Beckus the Dandipratt and Alan Rawsthorne's Symphonic Studies, with Amold Bax’s Tintagel and Vaughan Williams’s Dives and Lazarus also featured at Stokowski's own request. Malcolm Arnold was delighted and wrote to the maestro: "Thank you very much for the wonderful performance of my overture Beckus the Dandipratt. I am extremely grateful and consider it a great honour that you should conduct a piece of mine." However, as with so many of Stokowski's broadcasts of the early 1950s, no recordings were made (clearly no one foresaw the creation of the BBC Legends label), so his highly-praised performances of Rubbra, Bax, Rawsthorne and Arnold have been lost in the mists of time.

      Stokowski rehearsing with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London 1963

For Stokowski's first British TV concert on May 7, 1954, the BBC had requested "a little music by Purcell, whom many regard as the greatest of all English composers", so the conductor duly included his own five-movement Purcell Suite. (It was recorded by Matthias Bamert and the BBC Philharmonic in their Stokowski Transcriptions series and released on Chandos CHAN 9930.) Fortunately, Stokowski's entire programme has survived in the BBC-TV archives - excerpts were used in the video Great Conductors of the Past (Teldec DVD Video 42667).

Teldec DVD Video 42667 - The Art of Conducting: Great Conductors of the Past.  Excerpts from Stokowski's 1954 BBC TV concert are also uploaded on You Tube: his own five-movement "Purcell Suite" and the finale of Arnold Bax's Tintagel

Stokowski conducted The Planets again on August 28, 1956 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the following week made its first stereo recording (Capitol long play SP8389). Despite receiving short shrift from the British record critics ("The approach to this score is basically wrong" fumed Trevor Harvey in The Gramophone) the LP sold well over 6,000 copies in the UK alone and when reissued on the Music for Pleasure label achieved further sales of more than half a million. So much for bad reviews ! (EMI Classics CDM5 65423-2)

In August 1961 Stokowski opened the Edinburgh Festival with Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder and an LSO concert which included Tippett's Concerto for Double String Orchestra. At the work's conclusion the composer rushed onto the stage to kiss the maestro's hand. "The composer bowed his delight from the platform" reported one critic, "as well he might, for he'll possibly never hear his fine work better played." Fortunately this concert was recorded and much of it, including the Tippett, was issued by BBC Legends in 2001.

BBC Legends BBCL 4059-2 containing the Edinburgh Festival August 22, 1961 performance of Michael Tippett's Concerto for Double String Orchestra

On July 23, 1963, Stokowski became the first major international conductor to appear at the Proms in front of a packed Royal Albert Hall. William Glock, the BBC’s new Controller of Music, had wanted some Schoenberg but Stokowski demurred. Although he had championed Schoenberg extensively over the years, he preferred to perform "an interesting composition by a modern English composer". Glock gladly proposed Britten's Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell instead: "It is a brilliant and effective piece" he told Stokowski, "and would be a splendid tribute for his 50th year" (BBC Legends CD BBCL4005-2). 

To read a selection of newspaper reviews of Stokowski's July 17, 1963, all-British London concert click here.

The 1964 Proms saw Stokowski giving a performance of Vaughan William’s Eighth Symphony, a work he had first performed in the composer’s presence in 1957. Many critics had been so besotted by the notion that Stokowski was forever tampering with scores that Noel Goodwin, writing in the Daily Express, claimed there were "two unscored cymbal clashes". In truth, the orchestral parts came from the BBC's own music library and Stokowski played the music exactly as written, as can be heard when following the recording of his broadcast (BBC Legends BBCL 4165-2).

  BBC Legends BBCL 4165-2 containing the September 1964 Royal Albert Hall Proms "live" recording of Vaughan William’s Symphony no 8

The major lacuna in Stokowski's immense discography had been the Enigma Variations, so this omission was rectified with a "live" Phase 4 recording made in Prague during September 1972. Sadly, Stokowski injured himself on his way to the Czech capital; but he insisted in going through with the two concerts and it was from these that the final edit was made. The tentative air is explained by the circumstances, but many critics were still able to hail Stokowski's Czech Philharmonic Enigma for its warmth and nobility. The Elgar scholar Jerrold Northrop Moore reviewed the LP for Gramophone: "The entire performance has an astonishing personality of its own, as has everything Stokowski touches ... it does something vital for the Variations which no other interpretation I know has done ... it is very much a performance for Elgarians as well as Stokowskians" (Cala CD CACD 0524).

  Cala CACD 0524 with Elgar - Enigma Variations