Stokowski playing Bach on the organ

Stewart Warkov, assistant manager of the Symphony of The Air in 1961 described Stokowski playing Bach on the organ:

Stokowski played Bach on the organ for me, each time one of the great pieces he had arranged. The sound, the phrasing, and the registration, the ritards and the accelerandos, gave me the impression of hearing those orchestral works through an aural microscope. I never heard any organist make those pieces sounds anything like that, and he apologized for being out of practice.

Chasins, Abrahm (1979) Leopold Stokowski: A Profile by Abram Chasins. London: Robert Hale, p.267.

Posted

in

by

Greg

Tags:

, , ,

Featured Content

Waste no note
“Never write an unnecessary note. Every note must live.” Jean Sibelius, in a radio interview with Kalevi Kilpi, 1948) Cited at: www.sibelius.fi [accessed 31 Mar 2010]. 
Music education helps to encourage empathy
“In an age when many children experience music alone on iPods and computers, especially students at the upper elementary level, the research underscores the value of face-to-face musical interactions. “The Rabinowitch work [at Cambridge University] helps reinforce the intuitive notion that engagement in music is beneficial in terms of ethos, pathos, and logos,” said Jonathan […]
Art and humanity
“Writing and performing an opera, creating any work of art in a world of violence and ease, hunger and obesity, could seem to be an act of private withdrawal. But art isn’t about itself, it’s about how men relate to the world and each other … Asking artists to keep politics out of art is […]
Man’s capacity
“There is no man living who isn’t capable of doing more than he thinks he can do.” Henry Ford, American industralist Cited at: Quotations Book
I am not highbrow
After writing his opera Porgy and Bess, producers in Hollywood started to think that Gerswhin was turning “highbrow”.  George and Ira Gerswhin’s agent told Ira :”They think George is too highbrow.  Can’t he write a few words and explain to them?” George wired: “Rumours about highbrow music ridiculous.  Am out to write hits.” – George […]
Piano Method
The shelf life of popular art
“The fact is popular art dates. It grows quaint. How many people feel strongly about Gilbert and Sullivan today compared to those who felt strongly in 1890?” – Stephen Sondheim, composer. Cited at: QuotationsBook
LA no longer the center for film scoring
“…a panel of experts warn that film, TV and videogame scoring continues to leave L.A. because producers are unwilling to meet union demands. “If work continues to dry up at the current rate, they speculated, one or more of the three remaining large scoring stages (Fox, Sony, Warner Bros.) could close “within the next two […]
Merlin the Wizard
Title: Merlin the Wizard Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Duet Level: 2 Product medium: PDF score
Playing with fantasy
“Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.” – Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist and founder of Analytical Psychology Quoted at QuotationsBook