Pristine Classical Recorded Music

Leopold Stokowski

biographical notes from The Stokowski Society

 

Born in London in 1882 of Polish-Irish origin, Leopold Stokowski showed an early aptitude for music, entering the Royal College of Music at the age of thirteen. He sang in the choir of St Marylebone Church, becoming Assistant Organist to Sir Henry Walford Davies at The Temple Church, and in 1900 formed the choir of St Mary's, Charing Cross Road. He took his Bachelor of Music Degree at Queen's College, Oxford, became a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, and in 1902 was appointed Choirmaster at St. James's Church, Piccadilly.

In 1905 he took up a similar appointment at St. Bartholomew's, New York City, and it was in America that his career was to flourish. He moved from the organ loft to the orchestral podium when he made his concert debuts in Paris and London in 1909, and that same year he was appointed conductor of the Cincinnati Orchestra. Three years later he took over the Philadelphia Orchestra, a position he was to retain for a quarter of a century, during which time he transformed a provincial ensemble into a world class orchestra noted for its precision, virtuosity and tone-colour.

Stokowski championed living composers with hundreds of premières: he introduced to American audiences Mahler's 8th Symphony, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, Alban Berg's Wozzeck and many of the works of Richard Strauss, Rachmaninov, Sibelius, Shostakovich, Falla, Prokofiev, and countless American composers.

At the end of 1930s, Stokowski left Philadelphia to form the All-American Youth Orchestra and co-conduct the NBC Symphony with Toscanini. By this time he had appeared in a few films, notably the 1940 production of Walt Disney's Fantasia. Within a few years he had founded the New York City and Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestras, and in the late 1940s he became a chief Guest Conductor with the New York Philharmonic. From 1951 Stokowski began a new career abroad making frequent guest appearances with the world's finest orchestras.

From 1955-61 he was Music Director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra and in 1962 he founded the American Symphony Orchestra. In 1963 he made his debut at the Sir Henry Wood "Proms" in London - the first 'International conductor' to do so - and his concerts there included a memorable Proms premiere of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony. In 1972 Stokowski returned to England, where he remained until his death, giving many memorable concerts and making recordings almost until the day he died.

David Mellor wrote in Gramophone: "One of the great joys of recent years for me has been the reassessment of Leopold Stokowski... he is now recognized as the father of modern orchestral standards. He possessed a truly magical gift of extracting a burnished sound from both great and second-rank ensembles. He also loved the process of recording and his gramophone career was a constant quest for a better recorded sound. But the greatest pleasure of all for me is his acceptance now as an outstanding conductor of nineteenth- and twentieth-century music, including a lot that was at the cutting edge of contemporary achievement."

 

The Stokowski Society: http://www.stokowskisociety.net

 

 

Schumann - Symphony No. 2

musical notes from Wikipedia

 

The Symphony in C major by German composer Robert Schumann was published in 1847 as his Symphony No. 2, Op. 61, although it was the third symphony he had completed, counting the B-flat major symphony published as No. 1 in 1841, and the original version of his D minor symphony of 1841 (later revised and published as No. 4).

The symphony was sketched in 1845, but his depression and poor health prevented him finishing the work until October 1846. In the face of this adversity the uplifting tone of the symphony is remarkable. It is written in the traditional four-movement form, and as often in the nineteenth century the Scherzo precedes the Adagio. All four movements are in C major, except the first part of the slow movement (in C minor); the work is thus homotonal:

1. Sostenuto assai — Allegro, ma non troppo
2. Scherzo: Allegro vivace
3. Adagio espressivo
4. Allegro molto vivace

The first movement begins with a slow Introduction brass chorale, elements of which recur through the piece. (Schumann wrote the Six organ Fugues on B-A-C-H, Op. 60, at about this time, and this preoccupation with Bach suggests a chorale prelude, a quintessential Bachian genre, in the texture and feeling of the symphony's opening.) The following Sonata-Allegro is dramatic and turbulent. It is characterized by sharp rhythmic formulae (double-dotted rhythms) and by the masterly transformation of the material of the Introduction. The second movement is a scherzo in C major with two trios, whose main portion strongly emphasizes the diminished chord - its characteristic gesture being a rapid and playful resolution of this chord over unstable harmony. The Adagio espressivo, is a sonata movement in C minor, with the character of an elegy, its middle section strongly contrapuntal in texture. The finale is in a very freely treated sonata form, its second theme related to the opening theme of the Adagio. Later in the movement, a new theme appears: this theme has, as its sources of inspiration, the last song from Beethoven's cycle "An die ferne Geliebte" (cf. also Schumann's piano Fantasy in C, Op. 17), as well as Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." The coda of the Finale recalls the material from the Introduction, thereby thematically spanning the entire work.

A typical performance lasts between 35 and 40 minutes.

Notes from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._2_(Schumann)

 

 

Further information from Wikipedia:

• Vaughan Williams - biography
• Schumann - biography
• Enescu - biography
• Walton - biography
• The First of the Few (AKA Spitfire), 1942 film scored by Walton including Spitfire P&F: notes