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and Marche Slave
London Symphony Orchestra
Conducted By: Leopold Stokowski
Cala Records, in association with the Leopold Stokowski Society is pleased to issue Stokowski's very first “Phase-4 Stereo” recording by special arrangement with Decca. Reviewing the original LP of Scheherazade, the American Record Guide wrote: “We confront Stokowski's fourth recording of this ever beguiling work … In its genre, moreover, it is the best … These are the damndest, lushest, BIGGEST, sonics in my experience.”
The Marche Slave from Stokowski at 90 is considered by many to be his finest recorded performance of the work but it has never before been released on CD. To conclude, we hear him rehearsing the LSO in the Rimsky-Korsakov work, at once both humorous and forbidding.
The Leopold Stokowski Society and Cala have delved into the Decca “Phase 4” Stereo archives to retrieve the 1964 Scheherazade by the Old Master, perhaps his ultimate, sonic excursion into this much-traversed score ….Along with a really visceral Tchaikovsky Marche we do have some 21-plus minutes of Stokowski's rehearsal methods, where he worries about everything from microphone placement for the clarinet to string entries. To hear the ninety-year-old Maestro shed the signs of age and admonish his young players to show more energy is an aesthetic irony not to be missed. An audiophile's “test pressing.”
Gary Lemco, Audiophile Audition, November 2003
