STOKOWSKI Schoenberg: Gurrelieder - Dubensky: The Raven - Hindemith: Kammermusik No. 2 (1932) - PASC612

Although completed at a time when his compositions had become increasingly atonal, Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder is an apotheosis of late Romantic music, starting with the influence of the “Liebesnacht” from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and ending with a huge choral affirmation that might have come from his mentor Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. It was perhaps the connection to the latter work that led Leopold Stokowski, who had first put the Philadelphia Orchestra on the national map by conducting its U.S. première in 1916, to try for a similar achievement with Gurrelieder. For besides being a first-rank musician, Stokowski was also a showman; and the idea of mounting such a huge work (532 performers were involved) during the depths of the Depression must have been an irresistible challenge.

That RCA Victor recorded the work live is an equally amazing feat. The performances were given in Philadelphia’s Metropolitan Opera House, perhaps to accommodate the huge choral forces without having to build out the stage of the Academy of Music, as had been done for the Mahler Eighth. The first performance on Friday, April 8th 1932 was marred by singer and ensemble problems, and the final two sides were left unrecorded. The following day, a second attempt was made directly onto 33⅓ rpm wax masters and issued on Victor’s short-lived “Program Transcription” series. The third performance on April 11th, presented here, was recorded on twenty-seven 78 rpm sides. The following month, Stokowski set down an explanatory talk which was used as a filler to the album, which initially cost $28 (the equivalent of $531 in 2020!)

While Gurrelieder was recorded direct to disc with a switch sending the audio signal from one wax matrix to the next without overlap, RCA began experimenting with a different system for live recording later that year. In December of 1932, three concerts by Stokowski and the Philadelphia were recorded during performances in the Academy of Music using optical film tracks that were later dubbed to wax disc masters. A number of works were taken down using this method, including a Wagner-Stokowski Siegfried Synthesis and Richard Strauss’ Tod und Verklärung, but only one would ultimately be issued: Arcady Dubensky’s setting of Poe’s The Raven for speaker and orchestra, reuniting Stokowski with Benjamin de Loache from the Gurrelieder cast. Two ten-inch picture records were issued, with a photo of the conductor and an illustration of the poem on one side of each disc and the complete text on the other sides. Never issued outside the U.S. on 78 rpm, the original discs are among the rarest Stokowski/Philadelphia records, and command high prices among collectors (though still not as high as the “Program Transcription” version of Gurrelieder).

The final work, Hindemith’s Kammermusik No. 2, was one of the recordings from this series that was not issued on 78 rpm. The soloist was Minneapolis-born pianist Eunice Norton, who had studied in England with Tobias Matthay. The performance only survives in a private collection as a worn acetate dubbing of five original 12-inch shellac sides whose whereabouts are now unknown. The source for Gurrelieder was a nearly complete set of vinyl test pressings, augmented by shellac discs; and The Raven was transferred from vinyl, as well. Some distortion in the first side of the Wood-Dove’s song is inherent in the original master.

Mark Obert-Thorn