Beecham in Seattle =  WAGNER: Prelude, Act III Die Meistersinger; Prelude Act I; Overture to The Flying Dutchman; ELGAR: Enigma Variations, Op. 36; Serenade in E Minor for Strings, Op. 20: Largo; DELIUS: On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring - Seattle Symphony Orchestra/Sir Thomas Beecham

Pristine Audio PASC212, 67:00 [avail. in various formats from www.pristineclassical.com] ****:

"I was informed there was an emergency, so I emerged..." With his typical relish for the bon mot, Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961) assumed his post with the Seattle Symphony with the same panache as marked his tenures in London, the music performed in a most cosmopolitan, idiomatic manner. Sir Thomas Beecham was the music director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra for the 1941-42, 1942-43, and part of the 1943-44 seasons. His final concert was on Monday, November 1, 1943.  Given conditions of the contract, any recordings made could be broadcast on the The Standard Hour provided they were destroyed in a timely manner. So, that Andrew Rose could remaster any music at all owes a debt to the existence of a cassette tape of materials randomly preserved from concerts between 26 September 1943 and 17-18 October 1943. The sound quality varies from fair and scratchy to incandescent, as in the marvelous Die Meistersinger Prelude, Act I and Elgar Serenade excerpt (10 October 1943).

Wagner’s Die Meistersinger Prelude to Act III (18 October 1943) bespeaks Beecham’s great fondness for the composer, the lines heavy but fluid, a somberness wrought of great musical matters about to be contested in the story-line of the opera. The Seattle cello and bass line, as well as the horn section, proves especially strong. The Elgar Enigma Variations (11 October 1943) receives a brilliant energized performance, giving the lie to the canard that Beecham ignored or disrespected Elgar’s music. The one CBS all-Elgar recording (ML 5031) testifies to a thorough commitment to the composer’s sound world. Unfortunately, while the first half of the Variations proceeds in relative acoustic quiet, the Nimrod Variation introduces a decayed sound that never quite recovers from the ravages of age. The touching Largo (10 October 1943) from the String Serenade (1892) melts our hearts, the melody in 2/4 often surging and retreating in layered harmony in good sound.

The music of Delius reigned as an obsession in Beecham’s sensibility, and his On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring (26 September 1943) captures the surface intensity that defines much of this composer’s nature music. Based on a Norwegian tune. “In Ola Valley,” that Delius got from Grainger, the piece manages a lullaby effect, rocking and shimmering its pantheistic ways through the winds and strings. Beecham keeps the Seattle Symphony lightly transparent, the oboe and strings in lulling harmony.  Finally, more Wagner in the form of the D Minor Flying Dutchman Overture (11 October 1943), another reminder that Beecham and Albert Coates dominated Wagner conducting in Britain. Both recorded sound and Seattle brass execution prove a bit shaky, but the Senta motif and the ferocity of the waves quite captures our collective fancy. The “curse” motif has the Seattle trombones, trumpets, and tympani in fine fettle, and the various chorus riffs mix with the wind and raging surf to provide a sea journey both dangerous and exhilarating.

-- Gary Lemco

THOMSON: The Mother of US ALL--Suite; BRAHMS: Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73; CHABRIER: Joyeuse Marche - New York Philharmonic/Leopold Stokowski

Pristine Audio PASC215, 57:29 [avail. as different download formats at www.pristine classical.com] ****:

Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977) leads a radio broadcast of the New York Philharmonic (2 April 1950), a Sunday concert that includes the debut of Virgil Thomson’s three-movement suite from his opera The Mother of Us All, after a libretto by Gertrude Stein. Thomson’s opera (1947) pays homage to Susan B. Anthony, and the opening Prelude rings with fanfares and celebratory riffs in a blazing American style we know from The Plow That Broke the Plains. A kind of “prairie” doxology infuses the progression of home-spun musical wisdom. Typical of Stokowski, the orchestration allows him the kind of color effect in which he basks, more than once glistening in anticipation of the scores of Alan Hovhaness. Tremolo strings and harp introduce Cold Weather, an interlude that features woodwind, strings, and glazed percussion, Hollywood’s version of winter drifts. A contrabassoon has the last word, along with cymbals. The Political Meeting provides a key highlight in the opera, in which Anthony debates Daniel Webster. Clarion horns and bells announce the town meeting, the snares and trumpets adding a decided militant tang to the confrontation. A sonic eruption at the coda heralds the audience applause for this lively score.

The sunny D Major Symphony of Brahms receives a brisk realization under Stokowski, the flutes and strings rather bright in the foreground, the horns and tympani casting only a hint of shadow across this bucolic landscape. The F-sharp Minor theme flows unsentimentally, given the hurried flamboyance of execution. The flute solo moves perhaps too quickly to be savored, but the general aura is one of pantheistic rapture. Despite the ¾ signature, the martial and even threatening aspects of the writing come across, perhaps all the more in tamed contrast when the cellos break out in song, even in the face of the rolling tympani part. Good French horn--likely James Chambers--work in the late recapitulation for the transition into the coda. The Adagio is rife with harmonic ambiguity, restlessly moving from B Major to D-sharp Minor, and Stokowski relishes the tonal and metric adjustments (hemiola), that urge this often dark music forward.  The agitation becomes palpably feverish under Stokowski; no Bruno Walter Vienna charm here; the influence rather tells of Dimitri Mitropoulos. The counterpoint itself becomes inflamed, especially in the heaving punctuations from cellos and upper strings. The last bars are quite literally a dirge.  

The recorded sound for the Allegretto grazioso improves considerably, the oboe resonant and the brisk rhythms--waltz and gigue--pungently and lushly articulated. Stokowski scampers through the movement, not particularly interested in milking its romance. The cross between baroque suite and classical serenade seems more to the point. The music remains idyllic but no less nervously manic. Bright splashy colors mark Stokowski’s realization of the last movement, whose tensions between D Major and A Major clash in whirlwind figures in strings and winds. The grip of Stokowski’s momentum proves quite mesmeric, and even the relatively calm episodes seem fraught with explosive power. Some shatter in the upper registers occurs, but the waves of sound quite overwhelm any misgivings we have about the recorded sound in favor of the intense conviction and bravura Stokowski elicits from his virtuoso ensemble. The audience, appropriately, goes mad.

Chabrier’s Joyous March ends this concert somewhat incongruously, but we take what Stokowski rarities as we can get. Chabrier’s boulevardier sensibility finds a sympathetic, albeit inflamed, spirit in Stokowski, and the raucous elements in this acrobat’s march receive their due irreverence.

--Gary Lemco