Rhapsodies: Music of Liszt, Enesco, and Smetana.

Rhapsodies: Music of Liszt, Enesco, and Smetana. Leopold Stokowski, RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra. JVC JM-XR24019.

Many years ago I fell in love with Stokowski's vinyl recording of Smetana's "The Moldau" from Ma Vlast. It was recorded in 1960, and although I didn't get to know it until the late sixties, I had forgotten it even existed until it showed up in RCA's "Living Stereo" line of CDs some thirty years later. In fact, I probably walked by the disc a half dozen times in my neighborhood record store before picking it up and noticing that "The Moldau" was even on it. What a revelation it was at the time! Not only is it still the finest "Moldau" I've ever heard, but Smetana's Bartered Bride overture and the Hungarian and Roumanian Rhapsodies by Liszt and Enesco that accompany it are red-blooded, exciting, romantic, and heart-wrenchingly beautiful by turns.

Of course, one has to understand that Stokowski took his usual liberties with the scores, pulling and shaping them to his own eccentric tastes. A purist might take one listen to the various pauses and tempo changes and dynamic contrasts and begin pulling his hair out. But this was Stokowski; he was his own man to a fault. Yet none of the music on this disc sounds in any way distorted or wrong. Indeed, to my ears, having heard it so long ago and then living with it again on the RCA CD reissue, it sounds entirely "right." The "Moldau," for instance, is taken at a much more leisurely pace than usual, and while it may not perfectly capture the ebb and flow of the river waters it describes, it does communicate first a peaceful ease and then a rapture that transport the listener to an altogether different world than the mere living room. Isn't that what great music is all about?

Anyway, the occasion for this review is JVC's new remastering of the disc in their XRCD series of audiophile discs. They are expensive, and they offer short measure for the money, but they are unquestionably fine transfers. On RCA's "Living Stereo," the sound came up very well, with a wide stereo spread and a realistic orchestral depth. The top end appeared to me to have been suppressed slightly to reduce tape hiss, cutting off some of the music's ambient glow, but I found the effect an acceptable compromise. The new JVC improves marginally on this situation, but there's a minor rub in my comparison. Since first buying the RCA on silver, I had found it on a specially produced RCA gold disc, which was, to my ears, very slightly smoother than the silver disc. So my comparison of this new JVC was to the improved gold, and the JVC still came out on top.

The sound, always a bit warm and lush on the RCA, was even smoother in JVC's remastering, with a tad more bass presence and a fuller lower midrange. For this incremental improvement, however, one gives up the RCA's further coupling of Wagner's Tannhauser overture and Tristan und Isolde Act III prelude. Plus, one pays about twice the price. Worth it? As always, I can't say because the sonic differences are so small, they would not be worth the money to a majority of listeners. For the connoisseur of such things, though, I'd suppose price is no object, and for me, because I consider this album one of the finest ever recorded, I'm crazy enough to spend almost anything on even presumed improvements.