FREDERICK STOCK and The Chicago Symphony, Volume 2 (1925-1929) - PASC684

This release is the second in a series devoted to longtime Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Frederick Stock, inaugurated to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth in 1872. All of Stock’s symphonic recordings will be featured in upcoming volumes (his four concerto recordings have already been well-covered on CD reissues), presented for the most part in the order in which they were recorded. Several items have not been available since the 78-rpm era (here, the Dvořák, Glinka, Glazunov and Smetana works). The Strauss waltz is making its CD/digital debut, while the 1925 recording of the Suk is being released for the first time.

We depart from our chronological presentation for our opening two selections. The Bach was recorded immediately after the Glinka; but as the only Baroque-era item on our program, it seemed to fit better as the opening number. Stock’s approach, though still using a large orchestra with modern instruments, anticipates later “HIP” trends toward swifter tempi, and diverges from the more monumental contemporaneous Bach recordings of Mengelberg in the same score (in Pristine PASC 595) and Stokowski in the Brandenburg Second (although the mad dash through the Bourées sounds as though it was at least partially dictated by side length restrictions).

Following this is a rarity: the first publication of an unissued recording by Stock and the CSO. During their December, 1925 sessions, this Intermezzo from Josef Suk’s Fairy Tale Suite was recorded on a 10-inch side with a reduced orchestra in a small venue. No coupling for it was taken down at the time, so it was not immediately released. A year to the day later, the piece was re-recorded in Symphony Hall with the full orchestra on a 12-inch side, and the earlier version was forgotten. It did not surface in time to be included in its proper place in our previous volume (but better 98 years late than never!) Hearing it next to its remake allows us to appreciate the advancement that electrical recording techniques had made in just one year.

Perhaps because of the over-reverberant acoustics of Orchestra Hall in the 1926 recordings, sessions for the following two years were moved to the smaller Goodman Theatre. The orchestra’s entire recording schedule for 1927 was devoted to a single work: the Tchaikovsky Fifth Symphony. The resulting album, though tonally full and detailed, was problematic, due to the frequent “gain-riding” of the recording engineer, which resulted in sudden volume changes throughout each side. (I have attempted to undo these manipulations in the present transfer.) Additionally, shortly after the album was released, the first side of the last movement was dubbed to avoid blasting when played using the heavy pickups of the day. An undubbed original Orthophonic pressing of this side was used here, while the rest of the sides came from quieter “Gold”-era pressings from the set’s reissue on Victor’s budget “Black Label” series (album G-4). (The Luftpause heard at 3:58 in the first movement is not a side-join error, but rather an interpretive mannerism Stock intended, as he repeats it in the middle of a side later on at 9:48.)

At a time when not all of the Beethoven and Brahms symphonies were yet represented in the Victor catalog, it was an adventurous choice to record Dohnányi’s 1909 Suite in F-sharp, a work whose wide range (from a Brahmsian set of variations to a bravura, castanet-accompanied finale) seems to fit Stock and his ensemble to a “T”. The Wagner arrangement was made by Theodore Thomas, the Chicago Symphony's founder and Stock's predecessor as principal conductor. The Schumann Symphony was the only Stock/Chicago recording here to gain an “official” CD release on RCA, although that was marred by a notably sharp transfer (A4=450). The corrected speed here allows us to appreciate the performance in a less-hectic aspect than previously presented.

Mark Obert-Thorn