Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 2, No. 11 (1928-08)

394 The Phonograph Monthly Review Tannhauser Overtures, etc), and second, a “sym- phony series” of major works (Brahms’ First, Beethoven’s Seventh, Franck’s D minor, the Bach Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and replayed versions of the New World and Unfinished Sym- phonies, and the Fire Bird Suite.) The influence of his works was considerable from the first; the early works (together \yith the splendid orchestral series by Prince for Co- lumbia) exerted a paramount part in the orches- tral education of the record buyers of those days. As the releases by Mengelberg and Toscanini, and the early Columbia Masterworks by Weingartner, Wood, Walter, Coates, and Harty, came to dispute his supremacy in the very limited field that was then American recorded orchestral literature, Stokowski began to issue larger works, retaining his premier position, but also becoming the cen- ter of disagreement and heated discussion he has occupied continuously since. It is pertinent to examine the reactions—rang- ing from bitter antagonism to ecstatic adoration —Stokowski’s works arouse and to discover if possible whether or not they are justified, either in whole or in part. The early releases were never the subject of unfavorable criticism: they were well recorded according to the standards of their time, the performances were thoroughly competent without being in any way sensational and the conductor’s readings were straightfor- ward and unforced, marked by many merits of curbed vitality and power, and a grace which was a trifle heavy perhaps, but exquisitely poised. It was evident that here was a first class orchestra, one of the earliest to be represented on records, and no less evident that the conductor was a mus- ician of great gifts and personality, but who was striving merely to present the music he. played, not to supersaturate it with his own individuality. There was brilliance, of course, but always the brilliance of a point in the composition forcibly driven home by the performance, never the brilli- ance of a performance for its own sake. There were several failures, notably the Tannhauser March on the odd side of the Tannhauser Over- ture records, Espana, and the Scheherazade ex- cerpts, but the ineffectiveness of the last two was probably attributable to their excessive abbrevia- tion. The successes were many, both with larger works like the overtures and symphony excerpts and with the smaller encore pieces. With the Un- finished Symphony and the Fire Bird Suite every thoughtful record buyer realized that the dawn of a new epoch in recorded music was close at hand. The new day of the electrical era was first lighted by a different sun, however. The Danse macabre and Marche slave records were not merely sensational; they were overwhelming. For the first time the average musician could listen to a phonograph and admit he actually heard the orchestra. Stokowski’s readings of these works still remain the finest available, but they contain unmistakable indication that he had “tasted blood”; he had discovered that on records as well as the concert hall it was possible to throw the full impact of his plangent personality at his August, 1928 hearers and literally to “bowl them over” at his feet. And in his next major recording, the Dvorak New World Symphony, he found full scope for his powers. I must confess that I liked and still like his performances of that symphony (I refer at pre- sent of course to the first recording, now super- seded), and while I can agree perfectly that it contains little or none of the authentic flavor of Dvorak himself, it is still a magnificent piece of orchestral playing,—daring, imperious, ruthless, if you will, but still magnificent. To me, the secret of the debate over this reading, and the reason why it has attracted the praise of many intelligent music lovers and the blame of others equally intelligent, is that this particular com- position owes its popularity and esteem not to its purely musical merits, which are slight, but to its distinctive reflection of the individuality of its composer, a naive, good humored, and friendly peasant. To the cultured, autocratic art of a Stokowski these qualities are absolutely foreign. He could never hope to recapture them in a per- formance; wisely he makes no attempt to try. His New World Symphony is" as pseudo-Dvorak as Dvorak is pseudo-New World! Dvorak might use themes in what he imagined to be the Ameri- can idiom, but his symphony remained Bohemian to the core. Stokowski may play Dvorak, but in his performance all the Dvorak evaporates, for the Philadelphian is capable only of transmitting the absolute music of the work, which after all is fluent and pleasant, but far from profound. Conse- quently, those who love Dvorak for his character- istic and essential qualities are disappointed or infuriated by Stokowski’s reading, while on the other hand those who have made no study of the Bohemian, and have no particular affinity for his qualities (who share in fact Stokowski’s more sophisticated outlook,) find his performance of what is to them nothing more than a “Symphony in E minor” quite the most stirring and effective they have ever heard. I share the opinion of the Stokowski admirers that it is wrong to take him to task on the account of his failure to capture the Dvorak “flavor.” As a performance of absolute music Stokowski’s is unimpeachable, and fortunately, for those who wish to get the rough and somewhat uncouth humor of Dvorak himself, there is the excellent recorded performance by Hamilton Harty for Columbia. It is inevitable that in every conduc- tor’s repertory there must be some works which he feels constrained to play out a sense of duty to the composer or his own public, but with which he is not in complete sympathy. All too often such works are giving slighting or careless per- formance. Stokowski deserves the respect even of the confirmed Dvorakians for the care with which he has conceived and excuted his reading. To understand this and other Stokowski “in- terpretations.” we must understand the man. Of English-Russian parentage and American domicile, he is a matchless example of the musical cosmopolite and aristocrat. (I hasten to add that I use the word “aristocrat” in no derogatory sense. Stokowski is aristocratic in his art by