While conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos was certainly a known quantity during his lifetime, he remains a bit of a cipher to posterity; loved by expert fanciers of "the great conductors," his work isn't well known in general, at least in comparison to certain maestros reasonably contemporary to him, such as Klemperer, Furtwängler, Karajan. The vast majority of his studio recordings have never made it to compact disc, and a vaster number of airchecks of his New York Philharmonic concerts were discarded during a housecleaning at a repository for such material just a few years after he died. There has been a concerted effort among smaller labels to make available what's left; the tiny Nickson concern specialized in Mitropoulos alone in the 1990s, and Music and Arts The Art of Dmitri Mitropoulos, Vol. 2, represents a continuation of such efforts in both a higher profile and at attempting some measure of improved sound quality.
This particular volume concentrates on material that was very close to Mitropoulos; Mahler, Schoenberg, Vaughan Williams' tough and uncharacteristically thorny Fourth Symphony, and two piano concertos of Prokofiev, one featuring the conductor as soloist. The story is widely circulated that when Mitropoulos deigned to use another soloist in Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 it was an event, as he was famous for performing the work himself and conducting from the piano. However, the recorded evidence of what Mitropoulos sounded like in this work has proven elusive; an NBC Symphony performance from December 1945, featuring Mitropoulos at the keys, provides an audible answer to this question. It's an intense, percussive thrill ride of a performance, with Toscanini's orchestra barely able to keep pace with the soloist/conductor's boundless energy and drive. Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto is included as well, albeit in a performance that's considerably less compelling, though one featuring seldom-recorded Italian virtuoso Pietro Scarpini. Also of considerable historic interest is Bach's Fifth Brandenburg Concerto with flute soloist (and Francis' dad) Carmine Coppola from an undated concert. While the approach and instrumentation are indeed "dated" in respect to Bach, it remains a highly musical performance.
A powerful, though dimly recorded Mahler Symphony No. 6, "Tragic," from a New York Philharmonic concert of 1955 takes pride of place along with a volcanic, and somewhat better recorded, Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 4 with the same body in 1953. Perhaps the most startling performance included is that of Schoenberg's Second Quartet, Op. 10, in its seldom-performed arrangement, by the composer, for soprano and string orchestra; the difficult solo part is handled admirably by Astrid Varnay. This is from another 1945 vintage NBC Symphony broadcast, and one wonders how Mitropoulos was able to pitch such a tough work to a mass audience in that remote time; the answer was clout, and Mitropoulos had it. Schoenberg's Erwartung, Op. 17, recorded in 1951 with soprano Dorothy Dow, is also included, though the sound is badly distorted in the source.
The four CDs in Music & Arts set The Art of Dmitri Mitropoulos demonstrates that Mitropoulos' "art" was not only that of an excellent and authoritative musician, but also in negotiating the tricky political waters in the service of the contemporary music of his day, within the forum of advertising supported mass media. Transfer engineer Maggi Payne has done her level best in terms of trying to resurrect these vintage radio recordings from dull and noisy sources. None of it comes anywhere near the kind of fidelity that one experiences in the best surviving Toscanini recordings with the NBC Symphony; but those were preserved through an FM "pipe" and most of these appear to have been taken off air. Therefore, the sound is not great on The Art of Dmitri Mitropoulos, Vol. 2, but it is as good as it is likely to get, and will have to do.
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