Fritz Kreisler's 'Tambourin Chinois' for Violin and Piano was given superb
orchestral colouring by the Australian composer / conductor / arranger Douglas Gamley. It is heard on a 1958 'Sinfonia of London' LP entitled "Philharmonic Pops" in which he shared the conducting honours with Robert Irving. Apologies incidentally for the clicks but this LP seems not yet to have been transferred to CD!
This Stokowski transcription is of the 'Adagio' from Bach's Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C major (BWV 564). It is played by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under Robert Pikler and comes from a 1982 Chandos Records CD.
In Gluck's opera "Armide," the sorceress of the title is in love with a knight of the First Crusade who, in Armide's enchanted castle, is serenaded by this pastoral 'Sicilienne.' In the opera, this music is played by a solo flute and pizzicatio strings. In Stokowski's 1957 recording heard here, it is arranged for strings only, playing arco not pizzicato.
"June" from Tchaikovsky's piano suite 'The Seasons' (also known as 'The Months') is sub-titled 'Barcarolle'
and is played here in Alexander Gauk's orchestration by the Detroit Symphony under Neeme Jarvi.
The 'character pieces' in Tchaikovsky's set are accompanied by 'poetic epigraphs,' of which the following is the one for 'June':
"Let us go to the shore; there the waves will kiss our feet.
With mysterious sadness the stars will shine down on us."
Johann Mattheson (1681-1764) was an exact contemporary of J. S. Bach though he is less well-known today. Jose Serebrier, Stokowski's one-time Associate Conductor, recorded two CDs of Stokowski's Bach Transcriptions and also included several of the Maestro's arrangements of other baroque composers. From the second CD we hear a sublime 'Air' from Mattheson's Harpsichord Suite No. 5, beautifully arranged and played by the Bournemouth Symphony under Serebrier's sensitive direction.
From the 1958 LP 'Philharmonic Pops' we hear a brief burst of can-can music from the Leonide Massine ballet "Gaitie Parisienne."
It is in Manuel Rosenthal's orchestration of music from Offenbach's operetta "La Vie Parisienne." Robert Irving conducts the Sinfonia of London.
Albeniz's 'El Corpus en Sevilla' comes from his solo piano suite "Iberia" and also has the alternative title 'Fête-dieu à Seville.' It was orchestrated by Enrique Arbos and also by Leopold Stokowski, who recorded his own version on a 78rpm disc in 1928 with the Philadelphia Orchestra. At that time, Artur Rodzinski was Stokowski's assistant conductor and when he came to record this same piece himself in 1958 with the Royal Philharmonic, he opted for Stokowski's transcription. Unaccountably, the original LP and the EMI CD reissue (heard here) credited Arbos with the arrangement, not Stokowski, so this upload duly puts the record straight!
Vaughan Williams from the USA in this lively 'Phase 4 Stereo' recording from 1978 by the Boston 'Pops' Orchestra under its long-time conductor Arthur Fiedler. The three short movements are 'Seventeen Come Sunday,' My Bonny Boy' and 'Folk Songs from Somerset.' Originally composed for military band,
it was arranged for symphony orchestra in 1924 by Gordon Jacob, one of Vaughan Williams's pupils.
This is the Chorale 'Jesus Christus, Gottes Sohn' from Bach's "Easter Cantata" as transcribed by Leopold Stokowski and played by the BBC Philharmonic under his one-time Assistant Conductor, Matthias Bamert. It comes from a 'Bach Transcriptions' Chandos CD.
From a 'Full Dimension Stereo Sound' recording entitled "La Belle France," made in 1957 but still sounding pretty spectacular even today, we hear Jose Padillo's "Paree!"
played by the Capitol Symphony Orchestra under arranger / conductor Carmen Dragon. It comes from a CD reissue on the Pristine Audio label that also includes another sonically splendid Carmen Dragon LP entitled "L'Italia."
In 1972, Leopold Stokowski visited Prague to conduct two concerts with the Czech Philharmonic. By now a very frail 90-year-old, the Maestro's taxing programme (played on two successive evenings) consisted of six of his Bach Transcriptions, followed after the interval by Elgar's "Enigma Variations" and Scriabin's "Poem of Ecstasy," plus a couple of encores. It was recorded 'live' in 'Phase 4 Stereo' and for the first concert the TV cameras were on hand to capture Stokowski for almost the last time in his long career.
The programme opened with his own transcription of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, a work he had first performed and recorded in the 1920s. He had played it many times over the years but this is the last film to show him conducting his most famous Bach arrangement in public.
Stokowski soon gave up concerts altogether, due to his clearly evident frailty, but continued to make records until he was 95. His final studio recording of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor was made with the London Symphony Orchestra in 1974 for RCA / BMG.
For a Proms concert in London's Royal Albert Hall in 1991, Leonard Slatkin introduced his own edition of Mussorgsky's 'Pictures at an Exhibition.' It featured the various 'Promenades' and 'Pictures' in different arrangements by an assortment of orchestrators. Ravel's version is the best known
but other arrangers of Mussorgsky's piano work were Leopold Stokowski, Sir Henry Wood, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Mikhail Tushmalov, Lawrence Leonard, Lucien Cailliet, Sergei Gorchakov and Leonidas Leonardi (Leonidas yay!!) , all of whom were featured in Slatkin's performance. As an encore, he brought the house down with Sir Henry Wood's version of 'The Great Gate of Kiev.'
The television relay of the concert was preceded by a short documentary which featured Slatkin discussing the work with pianist Joanna MacGregor, as well as contributions from Vladimir Ashkenazy and Lawrence Leonard, two of the arrangers featured in his compendium.
Sir Henry Wood's "Suite No. 6" was devised as a kind of successor to J. S. Bach's own Orchestral Suites. Its six movements come from a variety of sources and the first of them is the Prelude in C sharp minor from Book 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Wood's scoring is fleet and gossamer and rather suggestive of Mendelssohn. This track comes from Leonard Slatkin's Chandos CD of Bach arrangements made by assorted conductors.
In this delightful recording of the 'Italian Concerto,' Bach has been taken at his word. Conductor Yoav Talmi has retained the harpsichord orginal and added scintillating orchestral colouring around it. As a 'sampler,' here is the final movement "Presto" in the recording made on the 'Atma Classique' label in which Alexander Weimann is the keyboard soloist and the Orchestre Symphonique de Quebec is conducted by the arranger.