The story of Leopold Stokowski is the stuff of legend: now universally acknowledged as one of the greatest conductors of the 20th-century, this extraordinarily gifted musician was for several decades music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra in the United States, raising it to a position of international pre-eminence. Although he finally relinquished his position after almost 30 years, he returned to Philadelphia around twenty years later for a series of concerts which have achieved legendary status, including the two Russian works on this one CD: the music of Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov was very close to the great conductor's Romantic heart, and the great Philadelphia Orchestra respond to their one-time Maestro with a combination of stunning virtuosity and sensitivity allied to very fine stereo quality sound.
