Leopold Stokowski.(Sound Recording Review)

[] Mussorgsky: Eleven scenes from Boris Godunov; Wagner: "Good Friday Spell," "symphonic synthesis" from Parsifal. With Rossi-Lemeni, Mason, Cauwet; San Francisco Symphony, Stokowski Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Opera Chorus, Stokowski. Notes, texts, translations. Cala CACD0535 (www.calarecords.com)

Leopold Stokowski's wide-ranging admirers used to call him "Stokey." His detractors pointed out that it rhymed with "hokey." The flamboyant conductor, who died in 1977 at age ninety-five, probably deserved both his adulation and his ridicule. This CD, predicated on RCA recordings of 1952, shows why.

Stokowski was both pioneer and poseur, a fearless champion of musical adventure and a master manipulator of cultural images--most notably his own. Mass audiences remember him is the guy on the podium who shook Mickey Mouse's hand in Fantasia. Operagoers of a certain age remember him as the eccentric and egocentric leader of a dozen Turandots at the Met in 1961.

Born in London of Polish and Irish parentage (he stressed the Polish part), Stokowski cultivated his own exotic image, sometimes at the expense of the challenge at hand. He favored ...