Review: Stokowski's Phase-4 Extravaganza! 

Great video, Dave. There's this fun quote from Bernard Hermann that you reminded me of when you said Stokowski got very similar results no matter the orchestra: “I remember the first time he conducted the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. At the first rehearsal he said 'Good morning , we will play Brahms, gentlemen.' They started to play the First Symphony, and I would say the first movement was rather mediocre playing on the part of the New York Philharmonic, the second was much better, and by the third movement, it was really the New York Philharmonic at its very best. But in the fourth movement right from the beginning it stopped being the New York Philharmonic and became the Philadelphia Orchestra. And he never said one word to them."

Hi Dave, Just re-visited your video here. Maybe for Stokowski's performance of Beethoven's 9th you could get one of those bow ties that spin on an battery powered motor. It would be different.

"as if it's the greatest music in the world..." Playing music any other way is badly paid drudgework. You absolutely have to sell yourself and everybody else the conviction that what you're doing MATTERS. That's what makes being a musician worth it. And nobody sold that feeling on record better than Stokowski, even if he took shortcuts.

I love Stokowski for all the reasons everyone mentioned here: it's gloriously vulgar, decadent, tasteless in the absolute best way. You get the same "I can't believe he got away with that" feeling that you do watching a Marx Brothers movie. But Stokowski really forces you to examine a question that I don't think enough conductors and performers have asked in recent times: what does it really mean to be "true" to a score? Is it playing exactly what the composer wrote, no matter what? I think most professionals today would agree with that sentiment. But, of course, there are exceptions. Everyone "just knows" that you don't follow Beethoven's metronome markings. And we know that certain Baroque scores aren't meant to be played as is, but are sketches meant to act as a framework that the performer then interprets and improvises with. For that music, you can ONLY be true to the score by NOT playing it as written. So Stokowski futzes with the scores, and uses all these completely unnatural recording techniques that would horrify modern conductors. And I don't think anyone would argue that his interventions are ALWAYS for the better -- there's a whole class of his recordings that just make you shake your head. But take the Wagner recordings. You said in your review of orchestra samplings that Stokowski "sounds like he's using 150 harps." Well, it's hard for me to imagine that Wagner *wouldn't* use 150 harps if he thought he could have gotten away with it! Is it being faithful to something like "Scheherazade" to create a transparent, natural recording, or is it more true to what the composer intended to make it sound like the most lush, sensual, hedonistic fantasy you've ever heard in your life? And maybe this is the early influence that "Fantasia" had, but every other conductor doing "A Night on Bald Mountain" just sounds anemic to me. Stokowski and all his tweaking is the one that really seems to make you think you're actually witnessing Walpurgis Night.

That Gloria Vanderbilt story: I haven't laughed so hard in a long long time! There's something refreshingly insane, even liberating, about Stokowski.

It's fascinating - hearing of Stokowski's own resurrection as a supreme musician and conductor. Perhaps we've now got to the stage after all the "informed performance" and the seriousness of classical music interpretation, that we can return to this truly miraculous art, the Western classical tradition, with a sense of rapture and unabashed fun. Well done Stokowski, if you're not in heaven, you should be, and I hope you're appreciating our appreciation of your legacy, but no doubt if you have found yourself somewhere more infernal, you'll have organised the demonic choirs down there in your own inimitable way.

This box is glitzy, vile, vulgar, tasteless and much of the music bears little resemblance to what the composers intended. Bottom line: I just love it. There isn't a dull moment. Get it just to hear a great conductor doing his thing. I don't mind the multi-mic artificial sound but there are quite a few passages of overload and distortion. I can live with it. Personally I still enjoy the Stokey EMI Icon box set more than this one. There is also a rather good RCA collection and a Columbia box set too. My advice? Get them all!! This is real music making.

I’m an unabashed lover of Stoki’s embellishments, liberties, vulgarities, and outrages, so this box is right up my street. So much wonderful stuff here, including the Bach and Wagner transcriptions. I can’t wait to check out the brightly-scarved Beethoven 9. Luckily for me, this box is on Qobuz in all its glory. This will be today’s morning listening as soon as the needy mini-schnauzer stops demanding pets.

Your most outrageously funny video to date. Several laugh-out-loud moments, including the big reveal of your guest star, cleverly concealed behind you. A personal STOKIE story: IN fall, 1965, my piano teacher (in Hammond, Indiana) lent me the first orchestral score I had ever seen, the Shostakovich Tenth Symphony (!?) and the old Mravinsky recording, and said "See what you think of this." Well...I became obsessed with it. SIX MOTNHS later...on March 24, 1966, WHO DO YOU SUPPOSE guest conducted the Shost. 10th with the Chicago Symphony? Yep...the "old wizard" himself. So my teacher bought us tickets and we sat WAY up in the top balcony. Lord, it was thrilling (my 1st time in the hall). Years later, when the CSO assembled its first big in-house set of 'legendary" performances on CD, Henry Fogel told me that, in the voting process, EVERY SINGLE member of the panel chose the Stokie/Shosta 10th as ESSENTIAL to the set..the panel's only Unanimous choice. One inexplicable problem, though: during the applause at that historic concert, the brass, tympani and percussion blew a brief "Tusch" (fanfare) for Stokowski; he turned to the audience and said "I guess that means they liked it"..or something like that. But the 1990 CSO committee decided to OMIT the fanfare from the official release. But, thanks to a CSO completist and friend of mine, I have the original broadcast, complete with "Tusch". Stokie also man-handled the Beethoven 8th on that concert..just awful. I recently asked one of the older players: "how did you guys handle it?" "It didn't matter", he said; "everybody just LOVED Stokowski. LR

Terrific guide through Stokowski's Phase 4 wonderland, thanks David. Your enthusiasm reminds me of my own solitary excitement being at the concert in 1970. I was 23, Stokowski was 88 and playing the Messiaen and Charles Ives in the first half, (music I had never heard before), and La Mer and Daphnis in the second. I had a seat right by the orchestra with a great view of the man. That added choral bar at the end of the Ravel still rings in my ears. It was the only time I saw him conduct and it was an unforgettable evening. Just had to share that.

Another hilariously good review! I got this album more than a year ago simply because I wanted that late 19th Century, Hollywood-ish, romantic schtick that Stokowski just embodies. Especially enjoyed your description of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" and how we should impose this on our Baroque, purist friends.

Thank-you so much for such a wonderful review. I bought this boxed set soon after it was released in 2017, and I enjoy dipping into it every few months or so and listening to 4 or 5 of the CDs at a time. One of my favorites is his performance of Scheherazade with the LSO.

This video was the equivalent of dangling a prime rib in front of a starving man. I ordered this without further delay, thanks for the info...

Regarding Amazon: I have noticed that whenever you recommend a recording, the prices goes to the roof and become difficult for a normal person to buy. In fact, some of the prices now on Amazon are ridiculously high. Maybe you should get a commission!

Love, love, love. Stokowski, for this listener, is in the sublime realms of, say, Fats Waller. Someone who both tears apart, gussies up, reframes a composition, and at the same time creates a version, with kookie abandon, that often rescues a piece from respectful neglect. Thank you for this sublime wallow.

Every once in a while, you need an extravagant dessert. Stokowski is the musical equivalent of "Death by Chocolate".

I am wondering if you ever posted comments about the two earlier Decca (small) Stokowski boxes - the Original Masters. After revisiting all four of your talks on the 4 bigger boxes, I pulled the Original Masters from my shelf and realized that all the material in those two releases are actually Phase 4 recordings. Not everything in the later Phase 4 box is there, but most is. Not Original Jackets, so the couplings are different. Both the Original Masters boxes are still available, and might be an alternative to the Phase 4 box, except for completists. I can't find much information about remastering for the Phase 4 box. Perhaps someone else knows about that.

At last! I bought this box set last year as a result of quarantine blues, but boy, did it assuage those sentiments quickly! As many others have expressed, I love the extra bells and whistles that Stokowski wrote into the music and sound mixing. I'm a classical singer, so I had quite the chuckle listening to the tempos that Stokowski imposed on the soloists for the Messiah arias, particularly "Ev'ry valley shall be exalted." Now THAT'S breath control.

My high school gave out freebie, nosebleed-section tickets to Philly Orchestra Friday afternoon concerts. That's how I found myself in the audience for Stoky's 1960 return after a 20-year absence. Even though most of the crowd was blue-haired Main Line ladies, the place was charged with electricity from the moment he walked out from the wings of the Academy of Music, and from the first note on, I was hooked as a Stoky fan. He did a blazing El Amor Brujo (which I had never heard before) with Shirley Verrett (Carter) singing magnificently, a bring-the-house-down Pines of Rome, and a gripping Shostakovich 5 (one of my favorite symphonies back then). But he saved one of the best moments for after the performance. When the applause finally died down, he faced the audience and said, "As I was saying, about 19 years ago..." What a showman! You can get the whole broadcast-including his comment-as a Pristine Classical CD or download (PASC264). After that, I made it a point to catch as many Stoky concerts as I could. I missed a couple of years when I was in the service from 67-69, but saw to it that I got tickets to the Mahler Resurrection he did with the American Symphony in NYC in 1971, and the Beethoven 9 the following year-which he conducted right around his 90th birthday. I know Dave hasn't much truck with vintage recordings, but Pristine has a TON of his stuff-some of it in pretty old sound, but much of it (like a wartime Shostakovich 7 with the NBC SO) restored with very acceptable and sometimes surprisingly good sonics. Would he consider doing a review of the best of these?

I love stokowski the same way i love toscanini. Both have a way to drive music to give you new emotions everytime

For me, Stokowski was the greatest of them all, and this was your most fun review yet! Thank you!

The sound on many of the records is scrappy, especially where the music is loud. It seems the analogue tape recorders were saturated in those parts. The more quiet parts are fine.

Great video! Loved the Gloria Vanderbilt story. Couldn't stop laughing. When you spoke of his effect on musicians, it made me think of Bugs Bunny's imitation. "It's Leopold!"

I've just spent 3 weeks listening again to this amazing set. Just wonderful.

Great vertical presentation. Dave. At first, I was concerned that you might suffer a condition of your back which makes sitting difficult and painful, but it evaporated almost immediately. I remember Stokowski's Anniversary Concert very well: I wat a high school student in Holland back in 1972, and had gotten quite fond of listening to BBC 3. So it was that I sat glued to my little radio, listeing to the live transmission from London, enthralled by the music of Wagner, Debussy, Glazunov and Brahms, with Stokowski marking the 60th anniversary of his debut with the London Symphony. After Brahms 1, a rapturous ovation. Then Stokowski, obviously having motioned for silence: "that was a perfect diminuendo." Whereupon he spoke to the audience - "especially to the many of you who were not yet here and, you know, still waiting in the heavens to be born and attend tonights concert" ot something to that effect. He closed his little speech by announcing the appropriate music "for your walk on the way back home" - Tchaikovsky's March Slave. This memory of me glued to my radio, absorbed in the Stokowski Magic coming via AM broadcast signals, is one I keep treasuring to this day.

David, you could make a blank CD interesting to talk about. Thanks for the laughs.

When you mention that Tchaikovsky was ripe for monkeying, it makes me think of George Szell's recording of the 5th Symphony, where he added a cymbal crash in the finale.

Absolutely Fabulous Dave :) And nice to see more of you than normally ;)

I was never a Bach fan. However, Stokowski's performance of the Bach Chaconne was one of the most beautiful things I ever heard. Get the Kleenex out for that one.

David, you are the Ron Popeil of CD Boxed Set promotion. "Irresistible." I always (as with Ron) want to reach for my credit card.

I just listened to the Enigma Variations. The winds of Prague are a sound to behold. The spotlit recording is very weird but lots of fun--and the dynamic range is mind-blowing (or should I say ear-blowing?). I wouldn't want this version as the only one I had, but it is refreshing and joyful.

Thanks for sharing this review david . I remember buying stokowski back in the 90s as I read the chasins biography on him at the time . The phase 4 recordings are remarkable as I had bought the first two volumes. Later the rca box set covers some similar and different repertoire. I think the sound in the phase 4 are remarkable and perhaps only exceeded in audio quality by the fantasia sound track .The spacing of the sound is fabulous and whole not all the interpretations are everyone's taste, they are uniquely stokowski, a mix fantasy in the how the music comes through , overcooked at times in the colouring but never boring .

Speaking for myself as a fellow Stokowski lover and a Currentzis hater, it would be fun to hear your thoughts on why one form of musical vulgarity is better or more "legit" than another.

YES!! I've had a few of those since they came out on lp. The Russian one (Night O Bald Mountain, Marhe Slav, etc,) is a hoot!!! Love it.

What a great video. Enjoyed every moment. My Father loved Scheherazade. Rest his soul. We wore the grooves out on many of these LPs!!!

I've had this set for some time, and have enjoyed it immensely, even if I sometimes feel guilty in the morning!

The inclusion of the "Inspiration" CD with the Norman Luboff Choir and New Symphony Orchestra was an unaccountable and perplexing error. It had nothing to do with Decca Phase 4 Stereo at all! ... It was in fact recorded for RCA in London's Walthamstow Town Hall in July 1961, three years before Stokowski signed up with Decca, and was produced by Charles Gerhardt. It can be found in its correct place in the 14-CD "Stokowski Stereo Collection" box issued by RCA/BMG in 1997. The actual first Stokowski Phase 4 Stereo recording was made in Kingsway Hall on 22 September 1964 with the LSO playing Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade." In addition to it being in the Decca 23-CD boxed set, it also came out on Cala Records. The recording was produced by Tony D'Amato who kept the tape running all through the sessions and edited together Stokowski's comments to the orchestra. Cala added a selection of these to their "Scheherezade" release. At one point he says to the LSO: "It's so hard to excite you. I wonder what your wives do about it." Someone in the string section muttered something inaudible to which Stokowski replied: "Who said that? Tell us about it!" to much laughter. Anyway, Cala's CD is CACD0536 if anyone wants to hear Stokey being both amusing and forbidding in the same session. As to "Inspiration," I can only assume the "Living Stereo" logo fooled the Decca people into thinking it was Phase 4.

Please indulge me one more anecdote. When the Stokie Beethoven 9th was released (early'72?) a friend of mine (a fine pianist and radio host named Don Manildi) excitedly told me how a recent record reviewer..maybe in Gramophone...had cited what sounded like "an upward CHROMATIC SCALE on the trumpet" at the very end! (it's not; as Dave points out, Stokie uses the brass to double the ascending woodwinds' D Major triplets). But Don and I couldn't resist; he and I did a Piano 4-Hands "routine" at the time, so in May, '72 we went into a recording studio in Cleveland and actually "re-imagined" Stokie's B9th ending on the piano..complete with grotesque chromatic scales..ascending AND descending...as fast and loud as we could possibly play it. Rather demented, but..what the hey? It was our personal tribute to the "Old Wizard" himself (I still have the tape). How many conductors inspired such madness?? LR

Hi just wanted to say keep up the good work 👍

I used to have the London Phase 4 Stereo LP of Stokowski's Dvorak New World Symphony. I wonder why they left it out of this set. (At least you didn't mention it.) It was the only recording I've ever heard of the New World that ended with the last chord being loud instead of diminishing the way Dvorak wrote it.

An enjoyable talk about a gloriously over-the-top set. I picked it up a couple years ago and have returned to it more than most box sets. The one thing they didn't nail--and since they bothered with the original cover images, it's a valid thing to bitch about--is that they made the mini sleeves matte finish instead of luridly glossed, the way the LPs originally were. Otherwise, though, it's a delight.

If you are still trying to locate this fantastic set, it is available via Amazon Australia as at Feb 15, 2022

Too bad they didn't remaster these somehow on Blu Ray - the Phase 4 sound would work better in Surround Sound. Some of these recordings are really hard to listen to on headphones, just like the LPs were.

It's difficult to argue with David's appraisal of the best recordings in this box - the gorgeous Czech Phil recordings, the great Brahms 1., the lush, sensuous Sheherazade and so forth. Allow me, though, to draw the attention to an alltime favourite of mine, that was just mentioned in the passing: the Tchaikovsky Marche Slave. I know it's just a small nugget - and probably wouldn't count much from an austro-german perspective on high art, where music is evaluated according to its metaphysical, transcendental qualities. But, boy, oh boy, does Stokowski nail that piece, by whipping it into an unparalleled frenzy. After the first time round with the culminating theme, you don't think it possible to top that climax, but, lo and behold, when the material reappears finally, Stokie goes beserk and the orchestra plays as men possesed. I don't know, if my memory plays a trick on me, or of it is actually the Marche Slave, that Hitchcock used to mask a gunshot assasination in one of his movies - but as played by Stokowski, I'm sure the battlefield will be found strewn with casualties in form of both wounded and corpses, when you get to the end of the piece! PS. Seeing the scarf of shame being wielded for the Stokie Beethoven 9th (and rightfully so, I think), made me wonder, why in the video-review of Norrington's horrible London Symphonies (judging from the sound clip on Classicstoday.com) David didn't cover his head and face with the Shawl of Grievance throughout the entire review?

I love the new video style.

The Beethoven 9th, which I owned as a lad, also has one of the worst edits in the history of sound editing. It's when the chorus reenters after the fugato in the finale. Ouch!

Love your shirt!

Yes, I always bought the Stokowski Phase 4 for my quad system. Great.

Stokowski may have conducted everything as if it was in a Disney movie. But, people like Disney. People also like Thomas Kinkade paintings, and they like Mac and cheese.