Some of the music on this disc has been kicking around various pirate labels for a while, and none of it need trouble anyone but the most hard-core Stoki fans. The best item is the Mephisto Waltz, a typically entertaining, lively reading. Gabrieli’s sonata sounds much better in a stereo version on EMI with the Symphony of the Air. The Tippett, scored for antiphonal string orchestras, doesn’t really work in a mono recording (the textures tend to coagulate), and the performance sports both rhythmic insecurities in the first movement and a finale that steadily looses energy as it goes. In Nielsen’s Sixth we have a piece stranger than anything even Stokowski could do to it, and so he doesn’t bother to try, offering instead a hasty run-through bereft of a single pertinent musical insight. Sure, it was nice that he played the work at all in 1965, but frankly, why should we care now? With all the fine versions of this work currently available, my interest in historical trivia is satisfied just knowing that the performance happened. Sometimes it’s better to read about history than to listen to it.
