Mitropoulos in Twentieth-Century Europe

To my surprise, the twentieth century provides the most generous selections of recordings in Sony Classical’s Dimitri Mitropoulos: The Complete RCA and Columbia Album Collection. Indeed, there are so many offerings in this category that I decided it would be worthwhile to separate the European selections from those composed in the United States. Furthermore, the European sector is, itself, highly extensive. However, because Columbia did not take a “historically informed” approach to sorting out the individual selections according to nationality, the categories themselves often overlap on single CDs.

Nevertheless, it would be fair to say that the most generous attention is given to the Russian composers, with the French composers taking a healthy second place. Then, as was already observed in my discussion of the Sony Classical anthology of soprano Eileen Farrell, the concert recording of Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Mitropoulos in April of 1951 is probably the earliest recording of that opera in its entirety. As I observed in my Farrell article, this may not be an “authoritative” account of the music; but it would not surprise me to learn that any problems would have been due more to the musicians than to the conductor!

This sector of the anthology also presents Mitropoulos’ only opportunity to present music of his own nationality. On an album devoted primarily to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the conductor slipped in four dances composed by his fellow countryman Nikos Skalkottas. This was an album I had purchased in my high school days for the Russian content, but the Skalkottas tracks blew my mind with both intensity and raucous energy. (A few years later it also left me with the impression that the music for Zorba the Greek was downright boring!) I therefore have to stress the fact that, in the track listing in the book that accompanies this Sony release, those four Skalkottas tracks are mislabeled. (I was able to straighten things out thanks to the Melisma Skalkottas recording project, which was launched early in 2020.) The ordering on the Sony CD (which was not the ordering on the vinyl I had purchased) is as follows:

• Hostianos
• Kleftikos
• Peloponnisiakos
• Epirotkos

This may sound like nit-picking; but, given that there seems to be an emerging interest in this composer, his legacy deserves to have his recorded tracks properly labeled!

Farrell is not the only soloist to account for Mitropoulos in an earlier release. The recording of Aram Khachaturian’s Opus 38 piano concerto in D-flat major featured Oscar Levant as the soloist. As a result, it can also be found on the Levant anthology, A Rhapsody in Blue; the extraordinary life of Oscar Levant. The fact is that, while the content of the Mitropoulos anthology is more muddled than one would have wished it to be, there are any number of surprises in the repertoire that Mitropoulos accumulated. For my own listening, the most surprising offerings were the engaging account of Ralph Vaughan Williams fourth symphony in F minor, the album that includes Alexander Scriabin’s last two symphonies, the Opus 54 “Le Poème de l’extase” (the poem of ecstasy) and the Opus 60 “Prométhée, Le Poème du feu” (Prometheus, the poem of fire), and the recording of Francis Poulenc’s D minor concerto for two pianos and orchestra.

At this point I feel that, if I go on much longer, I shall lost the attention of most of my readers! What is most important is the diversity of the repertoire that Mitropoulos cultivated, first in Minnesota and then in New York. My guess is that anyone that decides to browse his anthology will find more surprises than (s)he/they anticipated.