THE FIRST 100 YEARS: Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Frederick Stock, Desire Defauw, Artur Rodzinski, Rafael Kubelik, Fritz Reiner, Jean Martinon, Georg Solti, Paul Hindemith, Pierre Monteux, Leopold Stokowski, Carlo Maria Giulini, Istvan Kertesz, Erich Leinsdorf, Claudio Abbado, James Levine, etc. CSO-90/12 (12 CDs).
If the above heading looks familiar, it may be because as recently as February I devoted some attention to a similar, if much smaller, set of CDs issued in honor of the Chicago Symphony's 100th anniversary by RCA. Well, now comes the CSO's own commemorative set and the result, to these ears, is the most extraordinary project of its kind ever undertaken by an American orchestra.For contained on these 12 discs are 49 performances under 20 conductors, including all the CSO's music directors but the first, Theodore Thomas (who died in 1905), as well as such important guests as Monteux, Hindemith and Stokowski and the three directors of the Ravinia Festival, Istvan Kertesz, Seiji Ozawa and James Levine. What's more, the greater part of them have never been available before, consisting not only of commercial recordings, some of them previously unreleased, but of broadcasts going back to 1940.
Among the latter are a live "Till Eulenspiegel" under Stock (who had played viola in the orchestra when Strauss himself guest-conducted this very piece in 1904) and a Beethoven "Emperor" Con
RECORD certo with pianist Josef Hofmann that, for all its vagaries of sound (and more than a few wrong notes), stands as the only complete documentation we have of his uniquely spontaneous way with this score.
Stock and the orchestra can be heard in an even earlier state in their 1916 acoustic of the "Wedding March" from Mendelssohn's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" - the first recording by a major American orchestra under its own conductor - followed by a number of RCA and Columbia sides (including a complete Brahms Third Symphony) notable for the warmth and vibrancy of their musicmaking.
Even warmer are Desire Defauw's superheated accounts of Prokofiev's "Scythian Suite," here noisy but impassioned, and Franck's "Le Chasseur Maudit" (much better sounding than RCA's "Redemption" transfer). The prize on this disc, though, is a live "Death and Transfiguration" (also by Strauss) from 1947 that sweeps the listener along like a whirlwind before broadening majestically at the end.
By contrast Artur Rodzinski's "Ride of the Valkyries" (Wagner) from the following year seems fast and somewhat cursory, as does his Mendelssohn "Scottish" Symphony, for all the breezy precision of the sprightlier pages.
That discipline would come into its own in the Kubelik and Reiner eras, the first documented via his epochmaking Mercury recordings of Hindemith's "Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Weber" and the Mussorgsky-Ravel "Pictures at an Exhibition," still one of the most impactive-sounding "Pictures" ever (and the more impressively transferred of these two masters, at least as compared with the original LPs).
Also from Kubelik comes a live Roussel Third Symphony from 1983, in stereo, that as fine as it is doesn't make me stop wishing they had opted instead for his 1969 "Ma Vlast." Or for some of the Roussel performances I remember Munch and Martinon leading a couple of decades earlier.
On the whole, however, the broadcast material has been imaginatively chosen. I might have held out for a better representation of Giulini (whose association with this orchestra spanned a quarter of a century) than his Brahms Second Piano Concerto, with Daniel Barenboim as soloist. But I cannot quarrel with the inclusion of the Monteux and Hindemith items (the latter directing a stirring Brahms "Academic Festival"), Kertesz's incendiary "Miraculous Mandarin" (Bartok), Martinon's own "Overture for a Greek Tragedy" or Solti's "Psalmus Hungaricus" (a bawly tenor notwithstanding), Lutoslawski Third Symphony - the world premiere - and the Second Suite from Ravel's "Daphnis and Chloe," all reflecting his customary brilliance.
The highlights here, however, are arguably the Stokowski and Reiner performances. From the first we have a broodingly intense Shostakovich 10th Symphony - his only recording of that masterwork - and from the latter a similarly hard-hitting Prokofiev Fifth, complemented by a darkly hypnotic "La Valse" (Ravel) and the First and Third of Satie's "Gymopedies," in which occasionally time seems to stand still.
In all of these the legendary Reiner control is abundantly manifest, something I am afraid cannot be said of his Copland - here the "Tender Land" Suite - which also suffers from substandard sound; again, though, it was the world premiere. Better on both counts is his "Dances of Galanta" (Kodaly) from 1954, his first season, bearing out both his and the orchestra's affinity for Hungarian music.
Mahler is also a CSO tradition, represented here by Martinon's 1966 broadcast of the 10th Symphony and Levine's considerably tauter view of the "Veni, Creator Spiritus" section of the Eighth. Among more contemporary voices I would also single out John Corigliano's delightfully inventive "Tournaments" and Shalumit Ran's Concerto for Orchestra, whose lively sequence of dissonances does indeed exploit the latter's virtuosity.
As indicated, that is considerable, and goes back much further than a generation reared primarily on the Solti era may realize. There is also a lot more here than I have been able to hint at. But if this set is of interest, I think you will know by now. Obviously not designed for the casual listener, or even the "hi-fi" buff, its appeal to the serious collector cannot be overestimated. (Would that the Boston Symphony, or even Cleveland or Philadelphia, would make their archives this available.)
In this case the asking price is $175, plus another $5 for postage and handling. (Orders, payable by check or credit card, should be sent to Chicago Symphony Orchestra Fulfillment Center, 847 W. Jackson Blvd., Fifth Floor, Chicago IL 60607). And although that may seem like a lot of money, even for 12 well-filled CDs, it isn't much when what you're really talking about is the priceless.