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Icon - Leopold Stokowski - The Maverick Conductor
Release Date: 10/20/2009
Label: EMI Classics Catalog #: 98555 Spars Code: ADD
Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach, Béla Bartók, Jacques Ibert, Frank Martin, ...
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Number of Discs: 10
Recorded in: Stereo
Works on This Recording
1. Passacaglia in C minor, BWV 582 by Johann Sebastian Bach
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Baroque
Written: circa 1708-1712; Arnstadt, Germany
2. Komm, süsser Tod, komm, sel'ge Ruh'!, BWV 478 by Johann Sebastian Bach
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Baroque
Written: by 1736; Leipzig, Germany
3. English Suite no 2 in A minor, BWV 807: Bourée I & II by Johann Sebastian Bach
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Baroque
Written: circa 1715; Weimar, Germany
4. Partita for Violin solo no 1 in B minor, BWV 1002: 5th movement, Sarabande by Johann Sebastian Bach
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Baroque
Written: circa 1720; Cöthen, Germany
5. Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248: no 10, Sinfonia in G major by Johann Sebastian Bach
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Baroque
Written: 1734-1735; Leipzig, Germany
6. Fugue in G minor, BWV 578 "Little G minor" by Johann Sebastian Bach
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Baroque
Written: by 1706; Arnstadt, Germany
7. Suite for Orchestra no 3 in D major, BWV 1068: Air by Johann Sebastian Bach
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Baroque
Written: circa 1729-1731; Leipzig, Germany
8. Mein Jesu, was für Seelenweh, BWV 487 by Johann Sebastian Bach
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Baroque
Written: by 1736; Leipzig, Germany
9. Partita for Violin solo no 3 in E major, BWV 1006: 1st movement, Prelude by Johann Sebastian Bach
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Baroque
Written: 1720; Cöthen, Germany
10. Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 by Johann Sebastian Bach
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Baroque
Written: by 1708; Germany
11. Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Sz 106 by Béla Bartók
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1936; Budapest, Hungary
12. Escales by Jacques Ibert
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1922; France
13. Petite Symphonie Concertante by Frank Martin
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1945; Switzerland
14. Evolution: Part 1 by Harold Farberman
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1954; USA
15. Divertimento for Band, Op. 42: March by Vincent Persichetti
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1950; USA
16. Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune by Claude Debussy
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1892-1894; France
17. Nocturnes (3) for Orchestra by Claude Debussy
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Romantic
Written: 1897-1899; France
18. Suite bergamasque: 3rd movement, Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1890/1905; France
19. Images for Orchestra: no 2, Ibéria by Claude Debussy
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1905-1908; France
20. Symphony no 11 in G minor, Op. 103 "Year 1905" by Dmitri Shostakovich
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1957; USSR
21. Adagio for Strings, Op. 11 by Samuel Barber
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1936; Rome, Italy
22. The Planets, Op. 32/H 125 by Gustav Holst
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1914-1916; England
23. Verklärte Nacht for String Orchestra, Op. 4 by Arnold Schoenberg
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1899/1943; Vienna, Austria
24. Symphony no 3 in B minor, Op. 42 "Il'ya Muromets" by Reinhold Gliere
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Romantic
Written: 1909-1911; Russia
25. Pétrouchka: Suite by Igor Stravinsky
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1911/1947; Switzerland
26. Firebird Suite by Igor Stravinsky
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1919/1945;
27. La péri: Fanfare by Paul Dukas
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Romantic
Written: 1911-1912; France
28. La oración del torero, Op. 34 by Joaquin Turina
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1925; Spain
29. A Pagan Poem, Op. 14 by Charles Martin Loeffler
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1906; USA
30. Miroirs: Alborada del gracioso by Maurice Ravel
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1904-1905; France
31. Rapsodie espagnole by Maurice Ravel
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1907-1908; France
32. Lemminkäinen Suite, Op. 22: no 3, Swan of Tuonela by Jean Sibelius
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Romantic
Written: 1893-1897; Finland
33. Finlandia, Op. 26 by Jean Sibelius
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Romantic
Written: Finland
34. Carmina burana by Carl Orff
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1936; Germany
35. Suite for 13 Winds in B flat major, Op. 4: Gavotte by Richard Strauss
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Romantic
Written: 1884; Germany
36. Symphony no 8 in D minor: Scherzo by Ralph Vaughan Williams
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1956; England
37. Symphony no 4 in F minor, Op. 36: 3rd movement, Scherzo by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Romantic
Written: 1877-1878; Russia
38. Pictures at an exhibition: no 15, The Hut on Fowl's Legs "Baba Yaga" by Modest Mussorgsky
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Romantic
Written: 1874; Russia
39. Pictures at an exhibition: no 16, The Great Gate of Kiev by Modest Mussorgsky
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Romantic
Written: 1874; Russia
40. Pines of Rome by Ottorino Respighi
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1923-1924; Rome, Italy
41. Symphony no 2 by Aram Khachaturian
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1943; USSR
42. Gagliarda by Girolamo Frescobaldi
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Baroque
Written: by 1627; Italy
43. Adoramus te Christe by Giovanni Palestrina
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Renaissance
Written: by 1581; Italy
44. Symphony no 1 in F minor, Op. 10 by Dmitri Shostakovich
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1924-1925; USSR
45. Preludes (24) for Piano, Op. 34: no 14 in E flat minor, Adagio by Dmitri Shostakovich
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1932-1933; USSR
46. Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district, Op. 29: Entr'acte by Dmitri Shostakovich
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1930-1932; USSR
47. Schelomo by Ernest Bloch
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1915-1916; USA
48. Tu mancavi a tormentarmi, crudelissima speranza by Pietro Antonio Cesti
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Baroque
Written: 1660; Italy
49. Sacrae symphoniae, Book 1: Sonata pian e forte alla quarta bassa by Giovanni Gabrieli
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Period: Renaissance
Written: by 1597; Venice, Italy
Notes and Editorial Reviews
One of the most flamboyant conductors of the 20th century, Leopold Stokowski was born at Marylebone in London in 1882, the son of a Polish father and Irish mother. As a young boy he started taking violin, piano and organ lessons and, at 13, became one of the youngest students to be admitted to the Royal College of Music, where his teachers included Sir Hubert Parry and Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. He later went to Queen's College, Oxford, where he gained a Bachelor of Music degree in 1903.
He paid his first visit to the United States in 1905 as organist of St. Bartholomew's Church in New York but returned to Europe to continue his studies. He made his conducting début in Paris in 1908 and his London début a year later. 1909 was also the year that Stokowski took up his first official conducting post, with the Cincinatti Symphony Orchestra. After three successful years at Cincinnatti Stokowski became music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, where he remained for the next 25 years, building for himself and the orchestra an enviable international reputation; creating what became known as the 'Philadelphia Sound'. Stokowski took up US citizenship in 1915.
Stokowski conducted a wide range of contemporary music, many of his performances being either world or American premières. The music of Schoenberg, Shostakovich, Mahler, Rachmaninov, Sibelius and Stravinsky featured prominently in his concerts and he gave the first US performances of the music of a whole host of other contemporary composers.
Stokowski made his first Hollywood appearances in 1937 in the films 'The Big Broadcast' and, with Deanna Durbin and Adolphe Menjou, 'One Hundred Men and a Girl'. His best-known film role was as the conductor in Disney's 'Fantasia'. He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He married three times, his third wife being the railroad heiress, Gloria Vanderbilt. At the end of his life he returned to live in England and died, aged 95, at his home in Nether Wallop, Hampshire. His grave can be found in the cemetery at East Finchley in north London.
His collaboration with Capitol Records resulted in a crop of some of Stokowski's most famous recordings, made using three-track stereo tape recorders. Always the great innovator, Stokowski was more than happy to cooperate with the Capitol engineers to ensure the best recorded result and these, together with those he made for United Artists with the Symphony of the Air, can be heard in this unique 10-CD Icon set.
AllMusic Review by Uncle Dave Lewis [-]
EMI, of course, is based in England, and apparently didn't pay too much attention to the 2008 American presidential election, otherwise it might have thought twice about naming this 10-CD box set Leopold Stokowski: The Maverick Conductor. Ironically, the word maverick -- in its traditional sense -- certainly fits Stokowski; he was probably the figure who more than any other established the symphony conductor as a superhuman entity, able to conquer the weakest orchestra in a single bound and get his patented string sound from it. He was a tireless advocate of modern music who gave first performances of composers such as Edgard Varèse and Charles Ives in Philadelphia in the 1920s. He was a prolific recording artist who was very active in attempting to improve the technology of recordings and a pioneer in many stereophonic sessions going back into the 1930s. His career as conductor is one of the longest on record, stretching from his 1909 debut with the Cincinnati Symphony to his last recording session, made within days of his death, with the London Symphony in 1977. Thus, Stokowski's activity as conductor encompasses nearly the entire twentieth century.
The 10 CDs included in Leopold Stokowski: The Maverick Conductor features recordings made between 1956 and 1960 and basically encompasses all of the compact discs EMI previously released either as single discs or as smaller sets. That comes as excellent news for those who missed the short-lived three-CD EMI set devoted to his United Artists' recordings of the Symphony of the Air, containing Stokowski's electrifying recordings of Respighi's The Pines of Rome and Khachaturian's Symphony No. 1, "The Bell." On the downside, it also incorporates his Capitol recording The Orchestra, which once was accompanied by a deluxe booklet illustrating the different instruments of the orchestra and necessarily consisted of excepts. So instead of a full version of Mussorgsky/Ravel's Pictures at an Exhibition you get just the last two movements; of course, he did record that elsewhere, but it's not the sort of thing that makes for the most attractive filler. The portion of Stokowski's output that EMI owns belongs to the latter stages of a long, wandering period where he was without a standing position with a major orchestra, and this did not end until he was appointed to serve as the conductor of the Houston Symphony in 1958. The group identified as the "Leopold Stokowski Symphony Orchestra" was the Symphony of the Air, the reorganized NBC Symphony after Toscanini retired; Stokowski recorded both under that name and his own. There are also some guest situations with the ORTF Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and even the Berlin Philharmonic, and the front tip of his work in Houston, the rest being captured by Belock Labs (i.e., Everest). Interestingly, there is a stray recording, from 1957, of Ravel's Rhapsodie espagnole made with the London Symphony, an organization to which Stokowski would later get appointed and with whom he made many of his final recordings.
In sum, during these years Stokowski was still a name, but was not entirely in control of his destiny as far as recording was concerned; Stokowski: The Maverick Conductor is partly a collection of curios, a grab bag of dates he was able to secure in those years. Orff's Carmina Burana shares its disc with the Scherzo from Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony. However, it's a very reasonably priced box set, and the recordings -- especially the ones made by United Artists, which were mastered on 35mm film -- still sound great overall. Those who bought these discs in their original form, as single items, might not be so pleased that this represents such a price break over having obtained them that way, but everyone else is likely to find at least three to four discs in the set that are worth their while, even if they never get around to listening to all 10.