BBC Legends 3: Leopold Stokowski in London

The sixth CD in the third installment of the BBC Legends series is devoted to the conductor Leopold Stokowski. To say that Stokowski was a controversial figure during the twentieth century recalls the old joke about Lizzie Borden being a girl that was not kind to her parents. I have tended to shy away from his recordings (as well as the more controversial aspects of his biography); but, in February of last year, I felt it appropriate to write about the album of performances by the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Leopold Stokowski entitled Philadelphia Rarities. One might say that, over the course of his lifetime, Stokowski lived by the Star Trek motto (which was coined about a decade before his death). He committed himself “To boldly go where no man has gone before!”

Some of his efforts were definitely admirable. In my February article I stressed a particular high point:

In 1965, at the age of 83 he was still going strong, working with two assistant conductors to direct the first performance of Charles Ives’ fourth symphony with the American Symphony Orchestra; and that performance led to a recording released by Columbia.

On the other hand, I have to wonder if he was more interested in shaking hands with Mickey Mouse in the Fantasia film than he was in leading the Philadelphia Orchestra. Indeed, he probably had a willing hand in rearranging some of the scores for that film to suit the needs of the cartoon interpretations.

The three selections on the BBC Legends CD were recorded on three different occasions. The album begins with Jean Sibelius’ Opus 43 (second) symphony in D major, a recording of the BBC Symphony Orchestra performing at the Royal Albert Hall on September 15, 1964. This is followed by a “suite” of extracts from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 66 music composed for the ballet The Sleeping Beauty. Stokowski again is performing at the Royal Albert Hall, this time with the New Philharmonia Orchestra on September 10, 1965. The final track is a BBC studio recording of the overture from Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 84 incidental music for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s play Egmont.

None of these are particularly compelling performances. Indeed, I would be bold enough to suggest that where the Opus 84 is concerned, the BBC Symphony Orchestra could probably manage on “automatic pilot.” The same might also apply to the Sibelius symphony, which would also be familiar to the ensemble and, in the context of that familiarity, could probably be managed almost entirely from the Concertmaster’s chair. Where the Tchaikovsky selection is concerned, the numbers and labels follow the original scenario by Marius Petipa, at least one of which is mistakenly labeled “Adagio,” even though the tempo is livelier for the “Entrée” label in the score. (Out of fairness to the ballet lovers, this music is better known in its revised version as the “Pas de deux de l’Oiseau bleu et la Princesse Florine,” more familiar in English as the “Bluebird pas de deux.”)

Personally, I would probably have preferred to trade off Stokowski for another CD of Barbirolli performances!