Leopold Stokowski, credit Wikipedia
Endnotes, July-August, 2025
In this edition: vintage recordings – de Falla, Bliss – from the SOMM label; a tribute to conductor, Ronald Corp OBE, by Stuart Millson
Siva Oke’s SOMM label continues to enlarge its archive of classic, or more correctly, vintage, recordings taken from the vaults of European and US radio stations. The Bruckner series last year set the gold standard in sound re-engineering, thanks to the employment by SOMM of the audio and recordings specialist, Lani Spahr, who returns with dazzling restorations of live music from the 1960s, of Bliss and Elgar (‘Boult’s Elgar’, to be reviewed by us next time). And accompanying the discs devoted to those two great British composers is an edition of music by the Spanish musical nationalist and folklorist, Manuel de Falla, with some additional French ultra-romanticism from Berlioz conducted by that master of drama and orchestral ‘Technicolor’, the legendary Leopold Stokowski. On the latter disc it is Paul Baily who has supervised the ‘French polishing’ of the sound-textures, delivering astonishing clarity from a 1952 recording from the San Francisco Opera House.
The de Falla disc has as its main work, the ballet El amor Brujo – a score brimming, as the title suggests, with romance, passion and magic. Containing sections entitled, Song of suffering love – The magic circle – The apparition, not to mention the famous, feverish Ritual fire dance – the score is a showpiece for orchestra, although now not often played; de Falla having been displaced in concert-halls by his contemporary, Stravinsky. The performance, given in the last week of the 1964 Proms, was originally captured by the BBC Third Programme (the Radio 3 of the near-past) and is suffused with the atmosphere that only comes when a large and enthusiastic audience is present. Stokowski loved such concerts, revelling in the adulation of the Prommers. He once noted in a television interview his astonishment at “the hunger for music” that existed (and still does) among that Royal Albert Hall summer audience. And thanks to Somm, we can hear on the CD (track 16) some more classic radio: a ‘Frankly Speaking’ interview with Stokowski, in which questioners John Bowen, Reginald Jacques and George Scott, tease out from the maestro his philosophy of life and music. Well worth hearing, and a tribute to the Producer of the disc, a name perhaps familiar to the more vintage Radio 3 listener, music and recordings expert, Jon Tolansky.
Track 14 of the disc is a valuable archive piece: 13 minutes of rehearsal time for El amor brujo – a super sound-sketch from the sidelines of musicians at work, sculpting their interpretation. Stokowski radiates authority, but also good humour, and his admiration for the byways of Spain – the countryside, far from municipal Madrid – reveals a musician trying to convey a spirit-of-place to orchestral players, probably weary from a long concert season!
Next in the line-up, a recording entitled ‘Bliss – the Composer Conducts – a 50th Anniversary Tribute.’ Arthur Bliss, in his early days, post-Great War, was often viewed as a member of the avant-garde. Stravinsky and Ravel infuse his music, but so, too, the inescapable influence – grand, noble lines of sound – of Elgar. Sir Arthur Bliss, who died in 1975, eventually became Master of the Queen’s Musick, the promise of the enfant terrible long gone in the eyes of many – and immediately after his death – became consigned as a conservative figure, supposedly overshadowed at home by Benjamin Britten and (abroad) by modernists, atonalists and minimalists. Thanks to SOMM’s two-disc Bliss set, we can now reappraise him: A Colour Symphony, premiered at Gloucester Cathedral in 1922, the opening work on the first CD, in a magnificent, magisterial performance under the composer’s baton from the 1961 Proms. The London Symphony Orchestra gives its all to the music, in what is a well-paced performance, and somewhat slower than modern, digital versions by Vernon Handley on Chandos and Barry Wordsworth on Nimbus. Lani Spahr’s work on the 1961 sound-quality greatly helps us with our understanding and hearing of all that the composer intended, especially the detailed timpani sound (which I missed in Handley and Wordsworth) in the thrilling second movement, depicting the feelings evoked by the colour, Red. Green, for Bliss, was the colour of rebirth and victory and is the title of the final movement, the powerful finale (similar in tone to the conclusion of his ballet, Checkmate) inspiring a tidal wave of applause from the Proms audience.
The Piano Concerto – originally written just before the Second World War for New York is also here, with that titanic and tragic figure of 20th-century music, John Ogdon, as soloist; and the much shorter Concerto for 2 Pianos (soloists Cyril Smith and Phyllis Sellick) is included on the second disc – a ‘filler’ behind the monumental war requiem (perhaps, more authentic than Britten’s?) entitled, Morning Heroes. Bliss served in the First World War and ‘the sorrow of war’ can clearly be heard in the opening section, Hector’s Farewell to Andromache – the universal farewell to hearth and home of the warrior. Yet in the conclusion to this huge choral work, the rising mists on the Somme battlefield carry with them the souls of the men who died for their country: the composer creating, in music, a mystical monument to his comrades-in-arms. All the performances – save for the March, The Phoenix (Homage to France, 1944) and the Melee Fantasque were recorded at the Proms during the 1960s – and well done to SOMM for allowing the tape to play on, thus capturing the wonderfully patrician voices of the Third Programme announcers of the day; a presentational style that has long since disappeared from the airwaves.
Finally, The Quarterly Review would like to pay tribute to conductor, Ronald Corp OBE, who died earlier this summer at the age of 74 and is fondly remembered by audiences and his devoted singers and musicians, alike. ‘Ron’ – as so many people in music called him – combined an approachable style (he was a great communicator and inspirer for young singers) with a platform formality, white-tie-and-tails or dinner jacket for his many concerts with the New London Orchestra and London Chorus. The QR, some years ago now, interviewed this passionate advocate for English music and we well remember his amusing observation on why so many of our native composers were forgotten – Ron observing that many folk songs are about ‘maidens and washer-women’ and thus fall below modern politically-correct standards. A huge discography was, nevertheless, set down by the conductor: Rutland Boughton, Hubert Clifford, Eric Coates, Herbert Howells, to name but a few; with many of his own sensitive compositions (on themes such as war, loss – even the loneliness and isolation of dementia) achieving a place on record.
CD details: Frankly Speaking, with Leopold Stokowski (SOMM Ariadne 5035); Bliss, the Composer Conducts (SOMM Ariadne 5039-2).
Stuart Millson is the Classical Music Editor of The Quarterly Review
