All taste abandon, you who listen here. The combination of some of the most banal music ever composed performed by one of the most vulgar men who ever conducted captured in some of the most vulgar sound ever recorded is enough to drive listeners with refined sensibilities to despair. But for less discriminating listeners, the disc called Rhapsodies by
Leopold Stokowski on RCA Living Stereo will be just the thing to clear the air after too much
Mozart and
Schubert.
Stokowski, whose grasp of the distinctions between good and bad music has always been dubious, tears into
Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody with unrestrained gusto, rips into
Enescu's First Romanian Rhapsody with unreserved panache, jumps into
Smetana's Moldau with both feet, and grabs hold of the Venusberg music following
Wagner's Tannhäuser Overture with undisguised passion. The
Symphony of the Air, RCA's studio orchestra of the late '50s and early '60s, plays with more power than polish and more color than control, but, since that was probably what
Stokowski was looking for, it only enhances the performance. RCA's Living Stereo sound was stunning in its day and staggering in our day. While certainly not for late-night listening, this disc will surely get you up in the morning.