Brahms: Tragic Overture (Frederick Stock)

Frederick Stock

In his 37 years as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Frederick Stock (1872-1942) molded the organization into one of America's top orchestras. Originally hired by the orchestra's founder, Theodore Thomas, as a violist, Stock ended up succeeding Thomas as chief conductor after the older man's death in 1905. In 1916, Stock's Chicago Symphony became the first major American orchestra to make recordings, preceding Stokowski's Philadelphia Orchestra and Karl Muck's Boston Symphony by over a year. Stock's recorded legacy is sizable - some 200 issued 78-rpm sides - but not as extensive as someone of his stature would warrant. It fell into four distinct periods: a handful of acoustics for Columbia in 1916-17; a group of early electric Victors in 1925-30; another batch for Columbia in 1939-41 (which included concerto recordings with Nathan Milstein and Gregor Piatigorsky), and a final group for Victor in 1941-42 (including two Beethoven concertos with Artur Schnabel). From his last Columbia session in 1941 (the same session that also produced this recording of Toch's Pinocchio Overture) came this crackling, dynamic account of Brahms' Tragic Overture:

Brahms: Tragic Overture, Op. 81 and
Brahms: Minuet (from Serenade No. 1 in D Major, Op. 11)
Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Frederick Stock
Recorded April 26, 1941
Columbia Masterworks set MX-214, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 42.50 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 27.72 MB)

Bloch and Gould on Mercury Wing

This one's in response to a request.  One of my correspondents had expressed a desire to hear again Antal Dorati's performance, with the Minneapolis Symphony, of Morton Gould's "Spirituals for Orchestra," saying that this recording is superior not only to Walter Susskind's 1958 Everest recording (with the London Symphony, which can be heard on Youtube here and here) but even to Gould's own (with the Chicago Symphony)!  I don't know about the latter claim, since I don't know that recording, but it does seem to me that Dorati gets it right (and I would also add that he beats Rodzinski, who was one of the first to conduct the piece, and whose Columbia 78 set with the New York Philharmonic I used to have):

Morton Gould: Spirituals for Orchestra (1941)
Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Antal Dorati
Recorded February 5-7, 1953
Side 2 of Mercury Wing MGW-14034, one LP record
Link (FLAC files, 51.65 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 29.61 MB)

This LP, which I found in my father's record collection, is a reissue, and the coupling is, it seems to me, a bit incongruous.  But it is the finest, most dynamic performance I think I have ever heard of Bloch's First (and, at the time this recording was made, only) Concerto Grosso:

Bloch: Concerto Grosso No. 1, for string orchestra with piano obbligato (1925)
Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rafael Kubelik
with George Schick (piano)
Recorded April 23-24, 1951
Side 1 of Mercury Wing MGW-14034, one LP record
Link (FLAC files, 69.33 MB)
Link (FLAC files, 32.21 MB)

Toch: Piano Quintet

Ernst Toch

Last fall, when I was doing my "reissue" series, one of my posts was "The Composer as Accompanist" in which I offered chamber music by John Ireland and Walter Piston with the composers presiding at the piano.  In the same vein, here is a recording of the 1938 Piano Quintet of the Vienna-born Ernst Toch (1887-1964), with the composer at the piano, and accompanied by a quartet consisting of Louis Kaufman and Grisha Monasevitch, violins; Ray Menhennik, viola; and Julian Kahn, cello:

Toch: Quintet for Piano and Strings, Op. 64
Ernst Toch, piano, with the Kaufman Quartet
Recorded February 20, 1941
Columbia Masterworks set MM-460, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 68.09 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 36.69 MB)

The work is unusual in that, instead of the usual tempo marks for movement headings, Toch calls his movements "The Lyrical Part," "The Whimsical Part," and so on.  Otherwise the piece is conventional in form, and the harmonic language reminds me of Hindemith.  However, while Hindemith often sounds as if he is channeling Bach, Toch here could be channeling Schumann, for the gestures and intent surely stem from the 19th century rather than the 18th.

Columbia had, in the early 1940s, exactly two works by the expatriate, Jewish Toch (he settled in California in the mid-1930s) on its catalogue, both of which were deleted by the end of the Second World War.  Here is the other one:

Toch: Pinocchio - A Merry Overture (1935)
Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Frederick Stock
Recorded April 26, 1941
Columbia Masterworks 11665-D, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC file, 15.77 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 7.59 MB)

After the war it fell to independent West Coast labels, such as Alco, to further Toch's cause.  (In fact, Toch recorded the Piano Quintet again for Alco, on an early LP.)  An excellent Toch discography can be found here.  Its compiler, Claude Torres, has an impressive site devoted to music of Jewish composers impacted by the Holocaust.