Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Jos� Serebrier Plays Leopold's Greatest Hits

Jos� Serebrier was a 17-year-old student at the Curtis Institute of Music and a newcomer to the United States in 1957 when Leopold Stokowski chose his Symphony No. 1 as a last minute program replacement for Charles Ives Fourth, which had proved too difficult for the Houston Symphony. Five years later, Stokowski named Serebrier Associate Conductor of the newly formed American Symphony Orchestra in New York and three years after that the "unplayable" Ives Fourth Symphony finally had its premiere with Stokowski conducting the American Symphony at Carnegie Hall with Serebrier�by now an established young star in his own right�alongside as one of the three conductors necessary for the rhythmic complexities of the work. Some years later, Serebrier became the first conductor to record the difficult Ives work, with the London Philharmonic, and he handled the whole sprawling piece himself.

During his apprenticeship with Stokowski, Serebrier had an opportunity to get to know many of the more than 200 symphonic transcriptions the old maestro had made of works that had begun life in a different form. The most famous of these orchestrations is almost certainly Mussorgsky�s Night on Bare Mountain. Wilder and �more Russian� than Rimsky-Korsakov�s westernized version, Stokowski�s �Night� was the musical highlight of Walt Disney�s classic Fantasia and for many kids of that generation�me included�a thrilling introduction to the world of �classical� music. Stokowski�s versions of The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Toccata and Fugue in D Minor were also magical parts of that film.

I relived those goosebumps again last week when I put on the new recording of Stokowski�s versions of A Night on Bare Mountain, Pictures at an Exhibition and several other orchestral transcriptions which Naxos is releasing next week with his one-time protege Serebrier at the helm of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. Nobody conducting today holds a tighter grip on the musical reins and under his hands these tired old war horses come storming out of the barn like frisky young colts. You may prefer Ravel's orchestration of "Pictures" but you won't find much fault with Stokowski's more muscular approach. It would take a real cynic to dislike a big wet horsey kiss like this one.

As they have done for Marin Alsop in previous Naxos recordings, the Bournemouth musicians show they can play in the first division beside their big city cousins. The recording quality is vivid and consistently excellent. Pay particular attention to the drop-dead gorgeous strings in the Entre�acte of Khovanschina.

The idea for this new Naxos disc originated from the Leopold Stokowski Society, which approached Serebrier in 2003 to bring the transcriptions into his repertoire and record them. We are lucky he agreed to repay the favor that Stokowski had bestowed upon him many years ago.

posted by Jerry Bowles 6/13/2005