As impossible as it seems, orchestral wizard Leopold Stokowski neglected Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique throughout most of his long career. This 1968 live recording with the New Philharmonia Orchestra was Stokowski’s first performance of the work since 1914. He takes to it here as if to the manner born. Though there are moments characteristic of his later recordings when the different sections of the orchestra aren’t in sync, this is close to being vintage Stokowski, and a gratifyingly fresh account of a symphony in which the conductor’s characteristic coloristic flourishes couldn’t be more welcome. Indeed, there are wind instrument sounds not heard with such clarity until the so-called authentic performance recordings of Roger Norrington and John Eliot Gardiner. That’s particularly remarkable considering that this reasonably well-engineered recording unduly favors the strings. The music also takes well to Stokowski’s tempo flexibility; after all, the symphony tells a story and Stokowski knows just where the commas and paragraphs are. An even more richly colored account of Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy is hardly mere filler. And there’s also a nine-minute interview with the maestro himself in which he talks about his lack of intellect, his bafflement with Nielsen’s Symphony No. 6 (which, apparently, he was about to perform), plus a wacky, rambling discourse on Napoleon. No Stoky admirer should resist this.
