This re-release of William Kapell's 1951 recording of Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini with Fritz Reiner and the Robin Hood Dell Orchestra will hopefully serve as a corrective to the many pianists who take this work at dreadfully slow tempos. The fleet and bright Kapell-Reiner reading makes this work's theme and 24 variations cohere in a way that eludes so many other interpretations--as an extended, precise, and often frenetic dance and thus not, in this way, unlike Ravel's 'Bolero.' Such a reading not only teases out a most appropriate Paganinian mania in the faster variations but also rescues the slower ones, like the eighth (here given a cool, easy swing), from sounding like dirges.
Whether under the direction of Reiner or, as with the Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2, under William Steinberg, the woodwind soloists of the Robin Hood Dell Orchestra are exemplary, while the strings (especially under Reiner) shimmer. The concerto possesses many moments that require careful advanced staging; otherwise, the work runs the risk of sounding tunefully episodic. With Steinberg keeping the ensemble super-tight throughout all three movements, he and Kapell stage these moments brilliantly.