Bill concluded last night's episode with a 1951 recording of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (in the Ravel orchestration of course). The conductor was a young Rafael Kubelik, who would be run out of town on a rail by the conservative critics who were not ready for his "modernistic" programing (McLaughlin noted that, in Kubelik's tenure, the orchestra presented no fewer than 75 pieces the orchestra had never performed.) Needless to say, his Pictures is enlightening, highlight many aspects of the work that I had never considered. Tempi were radically different than the norm and the colors--what colors! The first notes one hears are played by the incomparable Bud Herseth, then just beginning his tenure with the CSO. "Backing him up" are a couple of guys named Farkas and Jacobs--not a bad brass section indeed. I only wish I knew the identification of the saxophone soloist, who played with a particularly French sound unlike is heard anywhere else.
I had previously forgotten that the CSO had offered its podium to Wilhelm Furtwangler right after the war. Unfortunately a cabal formed against him and many significant soloists indicated that they would never appear with the orchestra if WF was the music director. One has to ponder what kind of possibilities would have awaited that great American orchestra with (at the time) one of the world's significant interpreters. Of course the CSO eventually ended up with a guy named Fritz Reiner and he did a pretty good job...
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