Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
This Hybrid Rolls Royce works perfectly, 7 Nov 2007
I'm the last person to be attracted to bleeding chunks of opera: unlike my father, who perversely prefers purely orchestral Wagner. Add in the arrangements by another hand, and you'd imagine this would be of little interest- but you'd be wrong.
Stokowski was such a flamboyant character that his fame has outlived him by quite a margin. Mention the name today and you're likely to come up with his large and spangly version of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor (tie an `original instruments' enthusiast down and play him this at full volume....!). But he was also a great educator and expander of the repertoire. Clearly, playing full-scale Wagner operas in the concert hall was out of the question, but all that glorious music..!
What we have on this CD are fairly extensive orchestral extracts, the difference being that Stokowski has not stuck to the existing orchestral highlights but has gone into the vocal territory as well, re-casting sung lines as instrumental ones and adapting the orchestral palette to match.
The surprise is just how well this process works. Stokowski's re-voicing is generally subtle, not overblown. The results are cogent and satisfying tone poems which do not short-change Wagner in any way. Indeed, they are a stimulating listen.
The sound on this recording is extraordinary: I've never heard the Poole acoustic come across as well as this before. The playing of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra is superb- especially rich in the string and woodwind sections, and Jose Serebrier conducts the whole affair with conviction. Highly recommended.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Wagner's and Stokowski's 'Lush Life', 23 Oct 2007
I'll say this for Stokowski: he had no compunctions about gilding the lily. Wagner's orchestrations for his music dramas was (and still is) among the richest and lushest and most inventive of any in the repertoire. But for his symphonic presentations of Wagner's music Leopold Stokowski added here, subtracted there from the orchestration in order to make it, in his mind, more effective. For instance, to the skittering violins in the Magic Fire Music from 'Die Walküre' he added flutes and piccolos, making it more brilliant, for sure, but it's not exactly Wagner. Granted Stokowski came out of the era in which conductors often tampered with the orchestrations of the composers who came before them. For instance, Mahler re-orchestrated Schumann's symphonies. Still, when one comes to listen to Stokowski's 'symphonic syntheses' of Wagner's music one must to some extent put the sound of Wagner's own orchestration out of one's mind. If one does, one is greet with undoubtedly effective, even thrilling, sound. And that is what happens here in this recreation of several of Stokowski's efforts on Wagner's behalf. José Serebrier was, of course, Stokowski's assistant for a number of years and if I'm not mistaken this is his third recent CD of Stokowski arrangements; there were earlier CDs containing music of Bach, and of Russian music including Stokowski's 1939 orchestration of Mussorgsky's 'Pictures at an Exhibition.'
The big event on the present CD is Stokowski's 'symphonic synthesis' of three parts of 'Tristan und Isolde': the Prélude to Act I, the Liebesnacht, and the Liebestod. By far the longest section is the deliriously ecstatic Liebesnacht, almost twenty-one minutes long. It is a perfect lead-in to the even more ecstatic Liebestod. I cannot fault either Stokowski's arrangement -- here with tasteful assignment of vocal lines to various instruments, primarily Tristan's to the celli, Isolde's to the violins -- and certainly cannot fault the playing of the Bournemouth Symphony, who to my ears keep sounding better and better. (I did find myself wondering if Serebrier had the Bournemouth strings adopt free bowing as Stokowski did with the Philadelphia.) There is direct competition from Stokowski's own recording of the present material and all the rest of his Wagner recordings, available (with some hunting on the Internet) in a 5CD set of performances/transcriptions/arrangements, the 75-to-85-year-old sound beautifully remastered by the inimitable Ward Marston. This set is on the Andante label. Frankly, as wonderful as the Bournemouth is, they don't sound as lush as the old Philadelphia Orchestra, Stokowski's own orchestra for so many years. Still, to be honest the set is in ancient sound. (I grew up with many of these recordings, so they still sound like 'the real thing' to me, pace Maestro Serebrier.)
Still, for those who are not interested in searching out the Wagner/Stokowski recordings, or paying whatever price a 5CD set might command, or are interested only in the orchestral arrangements (as opposed to those plus sung excerpts from the operas on the Andante set), or who are put off by the idea of listening to ancient sound, refurbished though it be, this set then is the one to have. You will not be disappointed.
Scott Morrison
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