This remarkable historic document demonstrates just how good a recording it was possible to make as long ago as 1942. It must surely rate as one of, if not the best sounding recordings I have ever encountered from that era. Things would improve dramatically in the years immediately after the end of the Second World War, but it is unusual to find such fidelity during the war years, especially outside Germany.

The source for this recording was a set of acetate discs apparently prepared for South American broadcasters which, by the sound of them, were never actually played. Comparisons to other sources, such as those used for a previous issue of this concert, indicate just how quickly and badly these delicate discs deteriorated with use. Indeed the bonus track on this release gives the listener some indication of the difference - taken from the English language acetates we hear the familiar indicators of wear and tear even after extensive declicking and cleaning up in the extended commentary that preceded the NBC broadcast .

By contrast the mint acetates which provide the musical content offer a fidelity one might normally expect from a good late-1950s mono vinyl pressing. For the most part they provided me with a very straightforward task, with XR remastering bringing out the full tonal range of the orchestra, with very low surface noise and an exceptionally full frequency range for an early 1940s recording. As is common with disc recordings there was some gradual loss of treble towards the end of each side, and side changes were pretty brutally chopped, with no overlap to allow for cross-fading. But this aside, the only other challenge was the missing first note! This was ultimately patched in from another "digitally aged" recording of more recent vintage, as my other sources of the Stokowski performance were of such lower sonic quality. The result is a seamless patch and and entirely convincing opening.

It is a shame, but entirely understandable, that we have no 1942 photo of Stokowski and Shostakovich together. As our sleevenotes detail, it's amazing that Stokowski (and a number of other major US-based conductors) were even able to get their hands on a copy of the score. I am very grateful though to Edward Johnson for digging out and sending me the 1958 photograph of composer and conductor which grace the cover of this release. Stokowski was a great champion of the Soviet composer's work. Now at last we have his only recording of the "Leningrad" Symphony in sound which truly does justice both to the work and to the performance.

Andrew Rose

These two 1944 recordings continue to astound me weeks after I first heard them. Culled from the same source which provided us with Stokowski's 1942 Shostakovich "Leningrad" Symphony (PASC527) they again confound expectations as to what a recording of this vintage should sound like.

Here we find Stokowski conducting the brilliant NBC Symphony Orchestra in stunning renditions of Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony and Romeo and Juliet fantasy overture - made all the more so by the frankly incredible sound quality of the recordings. At times, stereo aside, one might be forgiven for thinking some of these recordings had been made last week, rather than nearly three-quarters of a century ago.

Naturally they weren't originally quite this good. Pitch jumps in the symphony had to be corrected, clicks and scratches evened out, and Pristine's XR remastering system employed to accurately re-equalise the sound and bring out the full glory of the NBC orchestra.

With a full frequency range, exceptionally quiet sides allowing an extraordinarily wide dynamic range, and very little in the way of other flaws or audience noise to get in the way of the listening experience, one is almost immediately drawn into the performances - and they are white hot, as Edward Johnson's excellent sleevenotes explain.

"It was a rousing performance ... Mr. Stokowski led a dramatic performance that had special drive and crispness in the scherzo and that built up into a series of big climaxes in the last movement." - New York Times, 1941

Exactly one month prior to the entry of the United States into World War II, on Armistice Day 1941, Leopold Stokowski conducted the NBC Symphony Orchestra in a rare performance for him of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. As the NY Times reviewer pointed out, "he chose a solemn day in a momentous time to set forth once more Beethoven’s affirmation of the brotherhood of man."

It's a performance that has never been heard in full since. A scheduling anomaly meant that whilst Stokowski performed the entire work before a packed house, radio listeners were treated only to the final choral movement. The first three movements were never broadcast, and as far as we can tell, have not been issued before.

They were however captured in a line recording, from which the present release is largely drawn, and preserved in stunning sound quality for the day. Indeed the finale, which was drawn from a recording of the broadcast (complete with closing commentary), whilst also of fine sound quality, struggles to quite match that heard in the opening three movements.

It should at this point be noted that a very short section at the end of the third movement was missing from the original source recording. We assume that the time recording was faded out at this point in order for the commentator to be heard on NBC radio. For this I have patched in a later recording by Stokowski, digitally aged to match the sound of the 1941 recording and spliced in so seamlessly that two Stokowski experts who heard it prior to release were unable to detect the change. It helped enormously that Stokowski's later performance matched the 1941 tempo almost exactly during that third movement. I have also reconstructed a shorter pause between third and fourth movements than was heard by the audience on the night - an extra delay was caused by the need to go "on air" prior to commencing the finale, as the Times' reviewer noted the following day.

And so we present an entirely new Stokowski performance of the Choral Symphony. As you'll hear from the sample  movement (the second) on this page, it really is a stunning sounding performance - and one you won't wish to be without.

Andrew Rose

STOKOWSKI
conducts a British Music programme at the NBC

British-born Leopold Stokowski came into the world in what is now called New Cavendish Street in London, just a block away from the BBC's Broadcasting House. He attended St. Marylebone School, just up the road, and sang in the choir of the adjoining St. Marylebone Parish Church. It was here, as a 12-year-old choirboy, that he took over the performance of a church service, perhaps choral evensong, when the regular choirmaster failed to show up. The experience gave him a sleepless night and instilled in him an overwhelming desire to become a conductor. He related these early conducting ambitions when choosing his 'Desert Island Discs' for the BBC radio show of that name in 1957 (it's readily available on YouTube!).

His musical precocity took him to the Royal College of Music in 1895 where, at the age of 13, he was the youngest student at the time to be admitted. Two of his fellow organ students, both a few years older, were Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams. These two were already firm friends, both having a strong interest in English folk music. Stokowski's teachers at the RCM included Sir Hubert Parry and Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. Needless to say Stokowski could not remotely have anticipated that one day he would be performing works by all four of these composers for American audiences.

In 1902, the young Leopold became the organist at St. James's, Piccadilly. Here he attracted the attention of the rector of St. Bartholomew's in New York City. He had come to England to find a new music director for this immensely fashionable church and was so impressed with the colourful individuality of Stokowski's organ playing that he immediately offered him the post of choirmaster.

Stokowski duly took up the appointment in 1905 and it was in the USA that he made his career and where in 1915 he became an American citizen. During those early years he spent his summers in Europe studying conducting. As a result, his ambition to become an orchestral conductor was fully realised in 1909 when he made his debut in Paris. The Cincinnati Orchestra was looking for a new conductor and their representatives who heard the concert were so impressed by the youthful maestro's "remarkable qualities" that he was immediately offered the job.

Stokowski's three-year apprenticeship in Cincinnati found him starting as he meant to go on. He studied and learnt the basic repertoire but he also included much that was being written by living composers. When it came to English music, Elgar's made its first appearance in a Stokowski / Cincinnati concert with the Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in 1911. Later that year, on 24 November 1911, came one of Stokowski's innumerable US Premieres when he introduced Elgar’s 2nd Symphony to America. The Cincinnati Times-Star was unpersuaded of the work’s merits: “The composition is pleasant and interesting; but it is not great, nor in any sense convincing.” Maybe that view still holds good even today, since none of the great American orchestras have yet made a commercial studio recording of the work!

In 1912, Stokowski left Cincinnati for Philadelphia where he conducted Gustav Holst's music for the first time with a performance of the Japanese Suite on 15 October 1925 in yet another US Premiere. He returned to Holst's music in 1934 when, on learning of the composer's death, he conducted The Planets by way of a tribute.

His next performance of The Planets came about during his three-season appointment as the NBC Symphony's chief conductor following Toscanini's temporary withdrawal in 1941. The war had its own influence on Stokowski’s NBC programmes and he often advocated music from the Allied countries. England was duly represented on 14 February 1943 by what the New York Times described as “a remarkable performance of Holst’s great mystical tone-poem.” The critic from the daily Brooklyn Eagle added that "Stokowski knew, of course, how to show The Planets their orchestral brilliance most graphically, while the orchestra lent its virtuosity to a good cause."

A previous incarnation of this same NBC performance several years ago elicited from critic Andrew Achenbach that it was “a Planets crammed full of interpretative incident, superbly played by a legendary orchestra ... Stokowski’s broadcast evinces a giant theatricality and abundant zeal that prove hypnotically compelling.”

Stokowski returned to the work in 1956 when he made its first stereo recording in Capitol's 'Full Dimensional Stereo Sound' with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. This reading proved controversial in several ways and was given short shrift in the Gramophone by Trevor Harvey who in any case confessed in print that he was no admirer of Stokowski. Even so, the LP's total sales, on the original Capitol label together with its Music for Pleasure reissue, reached nearly half-a-million copies in the UK which wasn't bad going!

Stokowski's next traversal of The Planets took place in the Royal Albert Hall in 1963 with the London Symphony Orchestra. The programme was all-British, with John Addison's Carte Blanche Ballet Suite and Vaughan Williams's Tallis Fantasia occupying the first half and Holst coming after the interval. This time, as was often the case in those days, the critical reactions to a "live" Stokowski performance could be quite different to the reviews of one of his LPs. For example, one commentator wrote of his LSO performance of The Planets that "Stokowski evoked, with scarcely a vehement gesture, gusts and storms, winged chatter, whimsical heartiness and the mystery of voices dying in space," while another described him as "a marvellous conductor; individual certainly, eccentric even on occasion; but capable of achieving unique, exciting and vastly stimulating results."

But to return to the war-time NBC seasons and A Shropshire Lad by George Butterworth. Doubtless Stokowski had heard Sir Adrian Boult's performance in an all-British NBC broadcast in 1938 and decided to revive it himself. Butterworth's idyllic orchestral rhapsody was to prove highly influential on several British composers but as with the seven performances on Pristine's "Wartime NBC Premieres" release (PASC 536) this was the only occasion on which Stokowski conducted the work.

So to Vaughan Williams. Stokowski was - as with so many living composers at the time - something of an RVW champion as far as American audiences were concerned. He introduced A Pastoral Symphony (RVW's 3rd) to his fellow Philadelphians in 1924 and followed that with the Tallis Fantasia two years later. He gave a blazing performance of the 4th Symphony with the NBCSO in 1943 and made the first recording of the 6th with the New York Philharmonic in 1949. He performed the Sinfonia Antartica in Houston in 1954 and played No. 8 in London's Royal Festival Hall in 1957 in the delighted composer's presence. The following year, on hearing of Vaughan Williams's death, he paid tribute by conducting the US Premiere of RVW's last Symphony, his Ninth.

This leads us to the final work in this NBC selection and something of a rarity it is too! The original score of the Fantasia on Christmas Carols requires a baritone soloist, a choir and an accompanying orchestra. However, it was also published in other formats, including a version with a string orchestra and organ supplying the accompaniment, or just an organ or a piano on its own.

Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music had also been published in several formats, the original being for 16 voices and orchestra, though the work can also be performed by orchestra alone. We can only speculate on Stokowski's decision in the run-up to his Christmas 1943 concert but it seems likely that he took his cue from RVW's own orchestral version of theSerenade to Music and adopted the same procedure with the Carols Fantasia. It therefore seems probable that he asked an NBC 'house copyist' to cue the vocal parts into the orchestral ones. Thus, for example, the baritone solo at the start is played by a bassoon, while the first choral entry is taken over by the strings. This orchestral version proves an effective alternative to the choral original and one wonders why Stokowski's idea hasn't been adopted and published, so that other orchestras can play it in their own Christmas concerts!

To conclude, when it came to English music, Stokowski probably performed more of it than any of his equally illustrious States-side podium colleagues. In addition to those mentioned above, he played compositions by Richard Arnell, Malcolm Arnold, Arnold Bax, Arthur Bliss, Havergal Brian, Benjamin Britten, Henry Walford Davies, George Dyson, Edward German, Kenneth Leighton, Ermest Moeran, Roger Quilter, Alan Rawsthorne, Edmund Rubbra, Cyril Scott, Arthur Sullivan, Michael Tippett, William Walton and David Wooldridge. Happily, broadcasts such as the ones presented here have survived, thus giving us an opportunity to hear Stokowski's "remarkable qualities" for ourselves!

Edward Johnson

When Stokowski visited London in 1957 to make his annual appearances in the capital, he was invited onto 'Desert Island Discs.' This is the BBC's long-running radio programme in which well-known persons are asked to choose 8 recordings to take with them, should they be marooned on a desert island. Among Stokowski's choices was "Sirènes" from Debussy's Three Nocturnes. "I am a great lover of Debussy," he told the presenter, "and when I was a student in Paris a long time ago I heard him play the piano and I also heard him conduct. I think he was a great genius."

Stokowski's devotion to Debussy's music was exemplified in his orchestral arrangements of "The Engulfed Cathedral" and "Night in Granada," both presented here. He also transcribed "Clair de lune," his 1937 Philadelphia Orchestra 78rpm disc becoming a huge best-seller in its day.

However, the one Debussy piece that Stokowski conducted the most, both on record and in the concert-hall, was "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun." He performed it for the first time in Cincinnati in 1912, made the first American recording acoustically in 1924 (PASC 441) and played it for the last time in 1972 at the age of 90. In his notes to a 1958 Capitol LP featuring the work, he wrote: "This music is a miracle of delicate, erotic beauty, suggesting a dream world of pagan loveliness, utterly original, in every way perfect."

One of the many interesting aspects of Stokowski's three-season tenure with the NBC Symphony was the extraordinary amount of new music he programmed. Perhaps even more remarkable was that he played many such works just once for a single radio broadcast but never returned to them. The selected 'Symphonic Fragments' from Debussy's "Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien" are a case in point, as is Darius Milhaud's 1st Symphony in what was its New York premiere.

The Milhaud family had fled to the USA in early 1940, following the Nazi invasion of France. The Symphony No. 1 had just been completed, having been commissioned by the Chicago Symphony as one of the works marking its 50th Anniversary celebrations that year, and it was conducted by Milhaud himself on 17 October 1940. Commentators have said that this is one of his finest works, with Stokowski's performance having been called "highly idiomatic" and the composer himself declaring it "very powerful."

Our final selection, the 2nd Suite from Ravel's "Daphnis and Chloe," was also the concluding work on that particular day's programme. Listening to it, one wonders if the great maestro had glanced at the studio clock and wanted to make sure the broadcast didn't over-run. At any rate, in the final dance he pushed the NBC players to their utmost limits and duly brought the house down. One thing can safely be said of Stokowski: he was seldom if ever dull!

Edward Johnson

When the 88-year-old Leopold Stokowski conducted a work by Charles Ives with the London Symphony Orchestra in 1970, one critic referred to the maestro as "the man who has done more for contemporary music in America than all the rest of his generation put together." Indeed, The New York Times once estimated that Stokowski had given around 2,000 "first performances" (World Premieres, US Premieres, first broadcasts and so on) and we begin with one of them.

Alan Hovhaness, American-born of Armenian-Scottish descent, was a highly prolific composer who found in Stokowski his foremost presenter of several World Premieres. These included "Mysterious Mountain," especially written - in the composer's own words - for "a very great and wonderful man." For his part, in his 1957 appearance on the BBC Radio show "Desert Island Discs" (you'll find the programme on YouTube!) Stokowski singled Hovhaness out as a considerable talent among the younger composers of the time.

The "Exile" Symphony was premiered in England in 1939 by the BBC Symphony under Leslie Heward and was introduced to America by Stokowski in 1942. The music evokes the terrible sufferings of the Armenian people during the First World War. Years later, Hovhaness was to replace the middle movement, here entitled "Conflict," with a completely new one called "Grazioso." Stokowski's NBC premiere broadcast remains the only complete extant recording of the "Exile" Symphony as first conceived.

Although Stokowski was renowned for conducting numerous premieres, he was equally keen to perform new works introduced by others. He was already a staunch advocate of Stravinsky's music, having presented to America several of the composer's major works. These included "The Rite of Spring" in its concert and ballet presentations, as well as its first US recording. He also featured it, somewhat abridged and rearranged, in Walt Disney's "Fantasia," thus ensuring its continuing popularity in concerts and on records.

The Symphony in C was premiered in Chicago in 1940 by Stravinsky himself. He was to conduct it several times with other American orchestras before it was taken up by Stokowski, who said of the work: "It is remarkable for its simplicity and flowing cadence and has a certain 18th century flavour, with a wonderful expression of rhythm and counter-rhythm." The NBC radio premiere heard here was praised by Virgil Thomson for its "detailed clarity and overall comprehension."

Like so many other German musicians in the 1930s, Paul Hindemith fell foul of the Nazis and in 1940 had to settle in America. The Symphony in E flat was the first of his major works to be composed in the USA and was introduced by Mitropoulos and the Minneapolis Symphony in November the following year. The work consists of a vigorous first movement, a dirge-like second, a 'danse macabre' scherzo and a martial finale. Stokowski was sufficiently taken with the work to play it again with the Hollywood Bowl Symphony and the New York Philharmonic, doubtless revelling in its triumphant closing pages.

Edward Johnson

Technical note

Despite their age, these wonderfully preserved acetate disc recordings reveal an astonishing level of detail and sound quality and a full frequency response. It's easy to forget, when hearing them, just how old they are - at the time of writing nearly 80 years has passed since these performances took place. Not all of their imperfections have been eradicable, but these minor surface noises pale into insignificance against the majesty of Stokowski's 1942/3 NBC orchestra and the sound quality captured here. Indeed these are some of the very finest quality recordings I've ever heard from this era. I would have liked to preserve the announcements from each of the performances, but to do so would have taken more space than is available on a single disc. In this instance therefore they have been cut and instead a short amount of applause left at the end of each work.

Andrew Rose

Although Stokowski never recorded a complete Beethoven cycle, several of the nine symphonies remained firmly in his repertoire during his long conducting career. He played a Beethoven work for the first time in 1909 when, at the age of 27, he conducted the Cincinnati Orchestra in the 5th Symphony. Sixty-five years later, aged 91, he performed Beethoven's music for the last time when he gave an LSO concert that included the 8th Symphony and the "Eroica," both hailed by one critic for their "striking and imaginative performances."

Stokowski was among the first conductors to record many works that were - and are - part of the regular concert repertoire. His first Beethoven disc, recorded acoustically in 1920, was of the 8th Symphony's "Allegretto Scherzando" (PASC192). With the advent of electrical recording, he and his Philadelphians made the first American 78s of the 7th Symphony, an exhilarating performance described by Mark Obert-Thorn as "a reading of immense vitality and rhythmic propulsion" (PASC483).

Next came the Beethoven 5th in another American "first" - a specially recorded performance designed to introduce RCA's "Program Transcription" LPs in 1931. They couldn't have been worse timed and as a result of the great depression soon died a death. Then in 1934, Stokowski made the first American recording of the "Choral" Symphony. Seven years later, in 1941, he was given a three-season contract to take over the NBC Symphony during Toscanini's temporary withdrawal and it was Beethoven's 9th Symphony which featured in his second NBC concert (PASC541).

The NBC Symphony's players were of course used to performing Beethoven under Toscanini's direction and after his year's absence, the great Italian maestro returned as Stokowski's co-conductor. This arrangement prompted critic David Hall to comment that "the most spectacular combination of performances and programming were the two Toscanini-Stokowski seasons."

"Spectacular" is a word that can readily be applied to the performances heard here, particularly the Beethoven 5th. The "Pastoral" Symphony in this 1942 broadcast is now the earliest complete Stokowski performance on record, the "Fantasia" soundtrack version having been much abridged. As to the 7th Symphony, Stokowski felt that something stated strongly just once could be weakened by repetition, so he followed the precedents set in other Beethoven symphonies by omitting the second appearance of the Trio in the third movement.

Finally to Wagner, whose "Prelude and Liebestod" followed the Beethoven 7th in the 1942 broadcast heard here. A one-time church organist, Stokowski clearly enjoyed pulling out all the stops! 'Parsifal' was the only Wagner opera that he conducted complete, with a Philadelphia concert presentation in 1933. He also began making "Symphonic Syntheses" of Wagner's music dramas and the "Good Friday Spell" is followed by one of these arrangements. It is music from Act 3 evoking the world of the Knights of the Holy Grail and in this 'live' broadcast, Stokowski brings in a chorus from the opera's final pages. It is a wonderful effect not realised in his three orchestral recordings of the 'Parsifal' "Synthesis" and thus makes this performance unique in his immense discography.

Edward Johnson

"I'm very fond of Russian music" Stokowski would often say in interviews and, as with so many contemporary composers during his long career, he was a foremost champion of the Russians, frequently performing works by Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Scriabin and many others. He was also an advocate of Stravinsky's music, withThe Rite of Spring, Les Noces, Oedipus Rex,The Song of the Nightingale and the Symphonies of Wind Instruments all receiving their US premieres under his direction.

On Philadelphia Orchestra 78s too, he made the first US recordings of The Rite of Spring and Petrushka, from which he devised the colourful Suite heard here. However, it was The Firebird Suite which appealed to Stokowski the most. He recorded this work no fewer than eight times, starting with an acoustic set in 1924 (PASC192, also featuring Fireworks). Incidentally, he occasionally added the effective clang of a tubular bell at the start of the "Infernal Dance," as in the brilliantly played NBC performance on this CD.

Tchaikovky's 4th Symphony also featured in Stokowski's list of numerous disc premieres, its first American recording having been made with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1928. He was to re-record it for Victor two days after the broadcast heard here in a 78rpm set that has been described as "fiery and impetuous" and even "w