Rhapsodies: Music of Liszt, Enesco, and Smetana.(Sound Recording Review)

Rhapsodies: Music of Liszt, Enesco, and Smetana. Leopold Stokowski, RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra. JVC JM-XR24019.

Many years ago I fell in love with Stokowski's vinyl recording of Smetana's "The Moldau" from Ma Vlast. It was recorded in 1960, and although I didn't get to know it until the late sixties, I had forgotten it even existed until it showed up in RCA's "Living Stereo" line of CDs some thirty years later. In fact, I probably walked by the disc a half dozen times in my neighborhood record store before picking it up and noticing that "The Moldau" was even on it. What a revelation it was at the time! Not only is it still the finest "Moldau" I've ever heard, but Smetana's Bartered Bride overture and the Hungarian and Roumanian Rhapsodies by Liszt and Enesco that accompany it are red-blooded, exciting, romantic, and heart-wrenchingly beautiful by turns.

Of course, one has to understand that Stokowski took his usual liberties with the scores, pulling and shaping them to his own eccentric tastes. A purist might take one listen to the various pauses and tempo changes and dynamic contrasts and begin pulling his hair out. But this was Stokowski; he was his own man to a fault. Yet none of the music on this disc sounds in any way distorted or wrong. Indeed, to my ears, having heard it so long ago and then living with it again on the RCA CD reissue, it sounds entirely "right." The "Moldau," for instance, is taken at a much more leisurely pace than usual, and while it may not perfectly capture the ebb and flow of the river waters it describes, it does communicate first a peaceful ease and then a rapture that transport the listener to an altogether ...