COMPOSERS: Bach,Brahms,Strauss
LABELS: Music & Arts
WORKS: Symphony No. 4; Tod und Verklärung; Midsummer Night’s Dream Scherzo; Andante sostenuto
CATALOGUE NO: CD-845 ADD mono
The playing has immense character and most of the remaining programme follows suit. It’s much the sort of thing you’d have expected from Leopold Stokowski, except that even he could occasionally turn the tables and dish up food without dressing – as indeed he does for much of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, the Scherzo especially.
Stokowski’s All-American Youth Orchestra makes most professional bands sound glum, and to hear them sweep through Brahms, ignite Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung or fondle Bach-Stokowski is to confront youthful zeal head-on.