Listening to these pieces I am constantly sitting-up-and-paying-notice. Knussen brings the Stokowski flair and the deep, rich bass line that is an essential part of The Sound. Of the rest of the fare about the same can be said. There is a feel of perspective from a fourth dimension… it is like feeling you are literally walking down the halls and looking at the Pictures as at the same time you are listening to the music in the warmth of your study… unstuck in time. This is what Knu brings to the music as well. That sense of perspective necessary to make a black-and-white film that is from a whole different planet than the same thing created in color. That sense of perspective where the shadows lie. Then there is the "relief" as Stokowski put it in an interview. At the close of the Pictures I wanted to jump up and scream, "Yes!!! Damn!!!" Even more than timings or details, however, Knu maintains a tension in the playing that keeps me on the edge of my seat. The slower speed simply guts the Stokowski transcription. Stokowski portrays the Ox as a strong, heady beast I wouldn't want to tangle with… or even get in its way. This is a very important factor because if you use a much slower tempo it is not in tune (ar.ar) with the spirit in Stokowski's transcription. Knu's Ox times in at exactly the same timing as Stokowski in his stereo recording for Decca (1:57). It must be mentioned, however, that Bamert takes the Ox bit as slow as Giulini in the Ravel transcription (2:40). As I listened to Knu it dawned on me that he imbues the music with a spirit no one else has recreated. I also listened to Bamert's recordings on Chandos. As that sank in I began to think, again, about how it was that Stokowski did create that sound? I listened to his recordings of this piece as part of this learning process. It occurred to me that he has done this without free bowing (one of the 'things' Stokowski was known for when thinking about HIS Sound… thanks to Ed for providing this information from the composer/conductor). Still, Knu brings out the deep, rich bass line and the timpani are mind-blowing. In the opening of "Pictures" Stokowski emphasizes the violas and cellos, giving matters a darker hue, whereas Knussen brings the violins to the fore. Listening to this, I realize that Knu (sorry if I offend… okay, I'm not really) has created, or re-created, the Stokowski "Sound" better than anyone has so far. (From the notes by Colin Matthews in the Knussen release.) Stokowski felt strongly that no one had adequately captured the Russian-ness of Mussorgsky's piano original… Stokowski's orchestration has much bolder contrasts than Ravel's: it is both more subtle and more grandiose and his concept of the orchestration is kaleidoscopic – the opening, which Ravel gives to the brass has, in Stokowski's version, extraordinary shifts of color, with low woodwinds (four flutes in unison!) prominent. I am not alone in this opinion several other writers have put it thus. Ravel made the first and best-known transcription of Mussorgsky's work but, frankly, Stokowski's is better. Of course he wrote many other transcriptions and this disc contains some of his finest. Perhaps it is because his personality bothered them and this way they could attack him without seeming to. Why Stokowski was singled out for criticism is a mystery. Stokowski was not the only person who wrote Bach transcriptions, Elgar and Mahler are two names that come to mind at once. His recordings of those works bothered some critics. Another was by writing orchestral transcriptions. Leopold Stokowski was a musician first and used conducting as a means of reaching that goal. In a sense, then, this music is 'contemporary' for him. For what it's worth, which may be little, Stokowski was born the year after Mussorgsky died.
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