Frederick Stock (conductor)
Chicago Symphony Volume 6
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Prelude and Fugue in E flat, BWV 552 ‘St Anne’ (orch. Frederick Stock)
Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
Siegfried – Forest Murmurs (1871)
Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)
In Nature’s Realm, overture, Op.91 (1891)
Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Aus Italien – On the Shores of Sorrento, Op.16 (1886)
Ernest Chausson (1855-1899)
Symphony in B flat, Op.20 (1890) 
rec. 22-23 December 1941, Orchestra Hall, Chicago, USA
Pristine Audio PASC771 [75]

This is the final release in a six-volume series that has charted Frederick Stock’s Chicago recordings up to the end of 1941 (Volume 1 ~ Volume 2 ~ Volume 3 ~ Volume 4). The two Beethoven concerto sets he made in July 1942 with Artur Schnabel have not been included and can easily be found elsewhere. Stock died just three months later, in October 1942, after a 37-year tenure of the orchestra, and the series has done much to bring back his name to wider appeal, if only to the more specialised collector.

All the recordings in volume 6 were made over two days – 22 and 23 December 1941. His own orchestration of Bach’s ‘St Anne’ Prelude and Fugue in E flat, BWV 552 rivals to some extent Stokowski’s transcriptions in its sonorous, indeed grandiose splendour – the climax of the Fugue is not only effective but also thrilling. Wagner’s Forest Murmurs from Siegfried wasn’t issued contemporaneously on 78 and comes from a vinyl pressing. Mark Obert-Thorn tells us that it was intended by Victor to replace Mengelberg’s New York recording of 1928.

Stock was a good conductor of the music of Dvořák if surviving evidence is any indication, though he was restricted to two movements from the ‘Nature, Life and Love’ triptych – the Carnaval overture can be heard in volume 1 – and a few Slavonic Dances. Here he performs In Nature’s Realm (he never recorded the final part, Othello) with fine lyric impulse. He recorded On the Shores of Sorrento, the third part of Strauss’ Aus Italien, a work that was not to be recorded in full until Clemens Krauss recorded it in Vienna in 1954. He makes an evocative job of it.

The major work in these sessions is Chausson’s Symphony in B flat. I wrote about this when Forgotten Records transferred it on FR1545 so will reprise, with a few amendments, what I wrote there. ‘At the time it would have been heard as sonically superior to the earlier 78rpm set made by Piero Coppola, though not invariably interpretatively. The recording quality in Orchestra Hall, Chicago was, nevertheless, fine. Forgotten Records’ transfer came not from 78s but from a subsequent LP transfer.

Stock’s opening movement is strongly hewn and shows the Chicago’s German bass-up sonority to maximum advantage. Rugged and passionate there is a convincing sweep to this reading as there is in the funereal ardour and expressive lyricism of the central panel. His finale is genuinely animated and progresses splendidly. There is, however, a real textual oddity because in the Franckian chorale-like section in this movement Stock substitutes an organ for the brass, which should play this passage. And there we were thinking Stock was a stickler for the letter of the law. It makes a change, anyway. Whatever the merits of this performance – and there are many – it was comprehensively blown out of the water when Paray’s Mercury reading from Detroit burst on the musical world in 1956.’

This series has certainly vindicated Stock’s reputation as a fine orchestral conductor and recording artist.

Jonathan Woolf