Rimsky-Korsakov: Russian Easter Overture (Stokowski, 1942)

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
(portrait by Ilya Repin, 1893)

For Easter weekend, and in celebration of Leopold Stokowski's birth month (April 18, 1882), I present one of Stoki's more controversial interpretations, that of Rimsky-Korsakov's 1888 Russian Easter Overture. Controversial, because it features one of his many retouchings of orchestral scoring - and this in a work by a composer renowned for his mastery of orchestration! In this case, an anonymous male voice substitutes for a trombone in the recitative-like middle section, singing words of the Russian liturgy:

Rimsky-Korsakov: Russian Easter Overture, Op. 36
NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski
Recorded April 23, 1942
Victor Musical Masterpiece set DM-937, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 33.71 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 23.40 MB)

This brilliant piece must have been particularly dear to Stokowski, for he recorded it no less than four times - in 1929 with the Philadelphia Orchestra; the present version; in 1953 with "his symphony orchestra"; and in 1968 with the Chicago Symphony. The 1953 recording also uses the voice-for-trombone substitution; there, the singing is credited to bass Nicola Moscona. (Moscona can be heard on this recording of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony.)

A happy and blessed Easter to everyone!

Isaac Stern in Music from "Humoresque"

Cover design by Alex Steinweiss

With another Academy Awards ceremony looming (the 87th!), it seems a fitting time to share this album of music from the 1946 Warner Brothers romantic melodrama, "Humoresque." This story about an aspiring young violinist's doomed affair with a wealthy socialite, played by Joan Crawford, has long been admired by Crawford's fans as one of her finest performances on film. I can see why, but for me, the film only works because of its glorious music, played on the soundtrack by Issac Stern and Oscar Levant, who also plays the part of best friend to the on-screen violinist (played by John Garfield). My problem with the picture is that neither of the lead characters seems particularly likable; in fact Levant's character is the most sympathetic in the film, unusually for him! Nor did I care for the underlying message, which seems to be: "don't get involved with a musician; they're all crazy and will drive you to suicide if you're so unfortunate as to fall in love with one!" When I watched the movie for the first time, it felt like I was sitting through endless periods of bickering dialogue while waiting for the all-too-brief musical interludes.  I'm sure that my little review probably tells more about me than about the film, but having said that, the best part of it, for me, is right here:

"Humoresque" - Selections from the film:
Dvořák: Humoresque
Rimsky-Korsakov: Flight of the Bumblebee
Wagner: Tristan und Isolde - Fantasie (arr. Waxman)*
Sarasate: Zigeunerweisen
Bizet: Carmen - Fantasy (arr. Waxman)
Isaac Stern, violin; *Oscar Levant, piano;
Orchestra conducted by Franz Waxman
Recorded August 14, 1946 (except the Wagner)
Columbia Masterworks set MM-657, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 87.39 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 55.99 MB)

The Wagner fantasie is the only work played uninterruptedly in the picture (as its climax, in fact), so it was dubbed from the soundtrack; the other pieces were studio recordings.

The story goes that Warner Brothers originally wanted Jascha Heifetz for the job of playing the violin on the soundtrack, but he demanded more money than Jack Warner was willing to pay, So "J.L." said "we'll get a talented kid to do it," went to San Francisco to hear Stern in a recital, and hired him on the spot. It was undoubtedly a big boost to Stern's career. He was all of 25 years old, and had just begun recording for Columbia.

Encores - The First Piano Quartet

Founded in 1941 as a radio ensemble, the First Piano Quartet, consisting of four pianists - Vladimir Padwa, Frank Mittler, Adam Garner and Edward Edson - enjoyed great popularity during its first decade or so of existence. It's easy to understand why. Their arrangements, made by the players themselves, were great fun, were usually quite brilliant and were performed with a tightness of ensemble that made the four pianos sound almost like one super-piano. The music chosen, popular classics and semi-classics, made few demands on listeners' ears; the pieces never exceeded two 78-rpm record sides in length. When the "FPQ" began recording for Victor in 1946, the company initially didn't consider them Red Seal material, putting their first three single releases and their first album (a set of Lecuona favorites) in the black-label 46-0000 "Double Feature" series. By 1948 these had all been reissued with red labels, and all their subsequent releases appeared as Red Seals, including this, their third album:

First Piano Quartet Encores:
Liszt: Liebestraum No. 3
Grieg: In the Hall of the Mountain King
Rimsky-Korsakov: Flight of the Bumblebee
Mendelssohn: Scherzo in E minor
Villa-Lobos: Polichinelle
Brahms: Lullaby
Rachmaninoff: Italian Polka
Schubert: Moment Musicale No. 3
Liadov: The Music Box
Shostakovich: Polka (from "The Golden Age")
Virgil Thomson: Ragtime Bass
Recorded Dec. 22-23, 1947
RCA Victor WMO-1263, three 45-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 57.85 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 42.70 MB)

The group's last RCA release was 1952's "FPQ on the Air" (LM-1227/WDM-1624), by which time Padwa had been replaced with Glauco d'Attili - the first of numerous personnel changes to the ensemble. A few EP reissues followed, but their recordings had all but vanished from the Schwann catalog by 1959, though the group continued to exist until 1972.

Some Early Orchestral Red Seals

Leopold Stokowski, 1924

As I mentioned earlier, back in 2008 I posted a whole series of acoustical orchestral and chamber music recordings.  Most of these were of European (chiefly British) origin, simply because that's where most of this  recording activity took place.  I did offer two American-made sets, however, and here they are:

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64 - Andante and
Rimsky-Korsakov: Dance of the Tumblers (from "The Snow Maiden")
Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski
Recorded April 20 and March 19, 1923
Victor Red Seal 6430 and 6431, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 50.01 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 18.3 MB)

This recording is complete as issued; apparently, there was no thought of recording the entire symphony (which, of course, Stokowski did several times in subsequent years).  An incredible wealth of information about Stokowski's recordings can be found at Larry Huffman's amazing site, http://www.stokowski.org/.

Alfred Hertz

Wagner: Parsifal - Prelude and Good Friday Spell
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alfred Hertz
Recorded January 24, 26, 31 and February 2, 1925
Victor Red Seal 6498 through 6500, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 74.17 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 26.25 MB)

Alfred Hertz (1872-1942) was the San Francisco Symphony's second music director (the first was Henry Hadley), and this was the first appearance on records of that organization, whose concertmaster at the time was Louis Persinger, Yehudi Menuhin's (and later Ruggiero Ricci's) first violin teacher.  Hertz himself was intimately associated with Wagner's "Parsifal," having given the first performances of the opera outside of Bayreuth with the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in 1903.