Rodziński and the Cleveland Orchestra

In April of 2021, I wrote about the Sony Classical release of sixteen CDs covering the complete recordings of Artur Rodziński leading the New York Philharmonic for Columbia Masterworks. Rodziński was appointed Music Director of the Philharmonic in 1943 and held that position for four years. Prior to that appointment he served as Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra, beginning in 1933; and, during that tenure, he visited the Philharmonic podium on several occasions (one of which happened to be the date of the attack on Pearl Harbor).

Tomorrow Sony Classical will release the collection of recordings that Rodziński made in Cleveland (with one slight, but significant, exception). This is a box set of thirteen CDs; and, for those that cannot wait, Amazon.com has created the Web page for processing pre-orders. The parenthesis applies to the final CD in the collection, whose first three tracks do not involve Rodziński. They account for a recording of Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 36 violin concerto with Louis Krasner as soloist. However, the performance is conducted by Dmitri Mitropoulos leading the New York Philharmonic.

When this recording was released as an LP, the “flip side” was of Krasner performing the Alban Berg violin concerto; and for that recording Rodziński conducted the Cleveland. Both of those recordings are on that final CD along with Rodziński conducting Nathan Milstein in a performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 64 violin concerto in E minor. I am not going to quibble with the content of this CD, since I enjoyed many hours of listening to the Schoenberg-Berg LP during my student days!

Sadly, Amazon did not take the trouble to provide the track listing for all thirteen of the CDs. Fortunately, the Presto Classical Limited Web page does account for all of the tracks; but it does not provide the “boundaries” that define which tracks are grouped on each of the thirteen CDs! For the most part the repertoire is familiar. Of greatest interest, however, is that the collection includes two symphonies by Dmitri Shostakovich, his Opus 10 (first) symphony in F minor, composed during his student days, and the Opus 47 (fifth) symphony in D minor, which was the one that received the most attention during my student days!

I was also pleasantly struck by the inclusion of Jean Sibelius’ Opus 82 (fifth) symphony in E-flat major. The coda of this symphony’s final movement is one of the great mind-benders in music history, significant enough that the Wikipedia page accounted for the piano reduction of those critical nine measures. In that context it is worth recalling that the Philharmonic collection includes the Opus 63 (fourth) symphony in A minor, which is another mind-bender.

Rather unique is the appearance of Jerome Kern. His “Show Boat: A Scenario for Orchestra” amounts to a “tone poem” based on the themes of the more familiar songs from the original musical. It is also worth noting that Show Boat was performed by the San Francisco Opera in June of 2014 with staging by Francesca Zambello and John DeMain as conductor. Thus, while, for the most part, Columbia wanted to take a “back to basics” approach in recording Rodziński’s work with the Cleveland Orchestra, the conductor still managed to provide listeners with several less-familiar compositions in his repertoire.