While long-nosed Wanda Landowska was giving brilliant, vigorous, scholarly performances of C. P. E. Bach in Toronto last week (see col. 2), Leopold Stokowski was busy in Manhattan with Johann Sebastian Bach's tremendous St. Matthew Passion. He turned it into a weird theatrical spectacle that reminded Bach scholars of the audience reaction to the first performance in Leipzig's Thomaskirche in 1729. At that time a scandalized old lady rose to her feet and exclaimed: "God help us! It's surely an opera comedy!"
With his accustomed showmanship, Stokowski glamorized the great sacred composition. He...
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