Reviewed by: RICHARD FREED, DAVID HALL, GEORGE JELLINEK, IGOR KIPNIS, PAUL KRESH, ERIC SALZMAN
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
BACH, J. S.: Mass in B Minor (BWV 232). Yvonne Perrin, Wally Staempfli (sopranos); Magali Schwartz (mezzo-soprano); Claudine Perret (contralto); Olivier Dufour (tenor); Philippe Huttenlocher (baritone); Niklaus Tuner (bass); Vocal and Instrumental Ensemble of Lausanne, Michel Corboz cond. MusiCAL HERITAGE SOCIETY MHS 1708/09/10 three discs $10.50 (plus 75¢ shipping, from the Musical Heritage Society, Inc., 1991 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10023).
Performance: Radiant
Recording: Very good
There have been all sorts of performances of this masterwork on records, some of them as solemnly "musicological" as others were solemn in their underscoring of the liturgical burden. There has been none, in my listening experience, that made it the sheer delight it becomes on these six sides. From beginning to end, the Mass here is alive with a radiant, dancing quality that makes it a sustained and convincing paean of joy. It sounds as if every singer and instrumentalist is in love with the music and exhilarated by the discovery of its wonders. There is an unparalleled vitality that has nothing to do with breathlessness: many of the tempos are on the brisk side, but always comfortable, never hard-driven; the choral lines are astonishingly clean, yet in no way "antiseptic," and Michel Corboz's unostentatious sense of architecture in the longer choral ...
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Explanation of symbols:
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Monophonic recordings are indicated by the symbol M
The first listing is the one reviewed; other formats, if available, follow it.
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... stretches is masterly. Corboz has not pre pared his own performing edition, as Nikolaus Harnoncourt and some other conductors have done, but follows the Neue Bach Ausgabe.
- MICHEL CORBOZ A sense of joyous commitment to Bach.
The sheer weight one is accustomed to in the opening of the Credo may be missed here, and a stronger voice might have been welcome in the "Quoniam," but the general level of the singing is so high and the overall impression of joyous commitment so striking that these two complaints (the only ones I can register) amount to very little, and all the female soloists acquit themselves with considerable distinction. The orchestral playing is superb throughout, and here we encounter some familiar names: Hansheinz Schneeberger plays the violin solos, Maurice Andre leads the brilliant trumpets, Aurae Nicolet's flute enhances the duet "Domine Deus," Georges Barboteu plays the horn in the "Quoniam," and the harpsichordist is Chris tiane Jaccottet. Erato's engineers have done a splendid job, and the MHS pressings are first rate. This is a genuine bargain in the best sense: a recording that belongs at the head of the list regardless of price. R.F.
BACH, J. S.: Organ Works, Vol. I: Trio Sona tas Nos. 1-6 (BWV 525-530); Fugue in G Mi nor (BWV 578); Fantasia con Imitazione in B Minor (BWV 563); Praeludium in A Minor (BWV 569); Praeludium in G Major (BWV 568); Fantasia in C Major (BWV 570); Trio in G Minor (BWV 584); Fugue in C Minor (BWV 575). Michel Chapuis ( Anderson organ of the Church of the Redeemer, Copenhagen). TELEFUNKEN BC 25098-T/1-2 two discs $11.96.
Performance Generally commendable Recording: Excellent BACH: Lutheran Organ Mass (Clavierubung, Part III, BWV 552/669-689). Anthony New man (organ); Boston Archdiocesan Boys Choir, Theodore Marier dir. (in chants and chorales); John Dunn (organ, in sung chorales). COLUMBIA E M2Q 32497 two discs $13.96.
Performance Fast, virtuosic, didactic
Recording: Some overmodulation
Add the name of the Frenchman Michel Chapuis to the list of those who have made an integral (more or less) recording of Bach's organ works, a list that currently includes Helmut Walcha on Deutsche Grammophon (his second complete recording is only partially available in this country), Walter Kraft on Vox, Marie-Claire Alain on Musical Heritage Society, Lionel Rogg on various labels (mostly imports and not as complete as the others), and Carl Weinrich on Westminster (now deleted and also not very complete).
Chapuis has a number of excellent records to his credit; I am thinking in particular of the Couperin organ Masses on RCA Victrola.
The present volume is the first of what will eventually amount to ten two-disc albums.
Telefunken has dressed its package up to include miniature scores, an illustrated brochure with instrument specifications, and an excellent commentary folder by Georg von Dadelsen, thus copying the procedure used by that company in its notable Bach cantata series. The album is therefore a handsome affair and should prove attractive for most record libraries.
Chapuis brings to this first volume, which contains the six Trio Sonatas plus a variety of smaller and (with the exception of the "Little Fugue" in G Minor) less significant compositions, an admirable directness and a good feeling for such stylistic elements as correct exe cution of the ornaments. His technique is good (barring a few moments in the hazardously fast sonata movements, where the pedals speak a bit too late); his registration is colorful (although, whether the fault of the organ, the recording, or the player, the slow movements of the Trio Sonatas seem inordinately and penetratingly loud and undulcet): and tempos are lively and geared for forward moving performances. There are a few faults here, however. Chapuis articulates in the manner common to so many organists in which notes of equal value, say a series of quarter notes, are all played with equal value so that, despite a lively tempo, the music has a tendency to emerge with a certain tedious, deliberate quality, even a kind of stodginess.
This style is very far removed from the care fully detailed and varied articulation of Hel mut Walcha, for instance, which helps so much to bring life to these scores. Also, Chapuis adds one curious bit of ornamentation to the first subject of the G Minor Fugue--not a bad idea, but he never bothers to add it to any of the other statements of the fugue theme; I find this inconsistency inexplicable.
In sum then, these are good, reliable renditions, well recorded, but not ideal in all respects. It will be interesting to see how the remaining volumes come out.
To judge from Columbia's press information, Anthony Newman is gradually in the process of recording all (?) of Bach's key board works, though at the moment there does not seem to be any particular organization to the releases, most of the previous material having been mixed recital anthologies.
However, the newest issues, including the present Organ Mass, appear to aim more for complete units. The third part of Bach's Clavier iibung consists of a mighty Prelude and Fugue ("St. Anne"), formally involving symbol elements of the Trinity (the fugue, for example, is a triple fugue), and chorale prelude arrangements of the chorales of the Lutheran catechism, each piece being set in a version for organ with pedals, as well as an other entirely different and smaller-scaled version for manuals alone. There is also a set of four duets, or inventions, which are rather more complex than the better-known collection of that name, but, as these duets are not strictly speaking connected with the Lutheran Organ Mass, they are omitted here.
The underlying production concept for this large-scale collection is quite admirable and serves an excellent didactic purpose. Before any chorale prelude is played, the chorale upon which it is based is sung, either in Bach's four-part harmonization or (before the smaller scaled chorale preludes) in unison with organ accompaniment; in the case of those chorales whose basis is Gregorian chant (Kyrie, Gott Vater in Ewigkeit, for example, is derived from the plainsong Kyrie, eleison), the original Latin chants are sung first, followed on occasion by early German troped versions which represent the vernacular adaptation in that country of the Gregorian chants. Thus one is able to trace a tune from its earliest usage through Bach's handling of it in one of his complex fugal or canonic chorale pre lude settings, a procedure which makes the recognition of the original tune far clearer than simply hearing the isolated chorale prelude. (I can report that I have tried this recording in one of my Fairfield University music courses in attempting to explain the German chorale and instrumental pieces based on it and have achieved a fair measure of success with it.) Regarding the performances themselves, Newman treats the music with his customary digital wizardry and with such interesting stylistic innovations as added ornamentation and adaptation of a homogeneous rhythmic scheme (as in the first setting of Voter unser).
Unfortunately, he chooses tempos for the faster movements that in their speed often blur the notes and prevent the harmonies from making a proper aural effect. For instance, excess rapidity works against the best interests of the music, I feel, in both sections of the E-flat Prelude and Fugue, which simply lose grandeur (though Newman correctly double-dots the opening Prelude), in the first setting of Jesus Christi's unser Heiland ( a technical tour de force, but uncomfortably hyperactive at such a tempo), and in the Fughetta on Dies sind die heil'gen zehn Gehot', in which the gigue rhythm is so fast as to sound bizarre.
The registration used throughout on the un named organ (St. Paul's Church, Cambridge?) is colorfully effective if at times a bit garish, but the organ reproduction suffers from constriction at the side ends, especially at the conclusion. The choir, which is well produced, performs very capably, with commendable Gregorian style, in the chants, and Columbia intelligently includes all the texts and translations. I.K.
BARTOK: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. Zoltan Szekely (violin); Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, Willem Mengelberg cond. QUALITON LPX 11573 $5.98.
Performance: Excellent
Recording: 1939 radio transcription
This is a transcription made at Holland Radio, Hilversum, on March 23, 1939, of the premiere of Bart6k's Violin Concerto. The work was written for and is dedicated to Hungarian violinist Zoltan Szekely, and he worked closely with Bartok preceding the performance. But, besides the documentary value of the recording, it is simply a superlative performance by a violinist better known in the West as a chamber musician (he became the first violinist of the Hungarian String Quartet) than as a soloist. The clarity, elegance, and force of the playing comes through the years quite remarkably. The orchestra does not fare as well-it lacks presence and often does not emerge clearly from the noisy surfaces. Nevertheless, this is an exceptional document, and it is certainly a fresh starting point for the study and future performance of one of Bartok's most accessible and rewarding works. E.S.
BEETHOVEN: Sonata for Piano and Violin No. 5, in F Major, Op. 24 (Spring); Rondo in G Major (WoO 41); Twelve Variations on Mo zart's "Sevuol ballare," from Le Nozze di Figaro (WoO 40). Yehudi Menuhin (violin); Wilhelm Kempff (piano). DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 2530 205 $7.98.
Performance Disappointing
Recording All right
The set of works for violin and piano Menuhin and Kempff made for the Beethoven bicentenary of 1970 is being broken up and released on single discs now. The choppy performance of the Spring Sonata was not the strongest constituent of that set, let alone the most persuasive recording of the work available. But the coupling here may enhance its appeal in some quarters, for it represents the only opportunity record-buyers have to obtain the two shorter pieces outside of a multi-disc set.
The Rondo has less appeal in its original form than the better-known Rondino on a Theme of Beethoven which Fritz Kreisler based on it; the Variations offer a certain quotient of low-key charm, but nothing like that of Beethoven's two sets of Mozart variations for cel lo and piano, both on themes from The Magic Flute. More for archivist-type collectors, I would think, than for active listener types and the archivists may be more intrigued by the very economical Vox Box SVBX-518, in which Aaron Rosand and Eileen Flissler offer the Rondo, the Variations, an even less substantial set of six German Dances, and decent accounts of the Sonatas Nos. 7-10. R.F.
BERG: Lyric Suite; String Quartet, Op. 3. La Salle String Quartet.
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 2530 283 $7.98.
Performance: Old Vienna
Recording: Lush
The highlight of this recording is the String Quartet, Op. 3. This work, a neglected older sister, has long remained in the shadow of the more famous and seductive Lyric Suite. But the Quartet has an expressionist beauty all its own. It gets its just desserts here, and its appeal turns out to be that of a simple, directly expressive work, beautifully performed and recorded.
The richer and denser Lyric Suite gets a richer and more symphonic performance and recording. While at first this might seem logical, it only serves to emphasize qualities that the piece already has in abundance. The performance is intense and, in many ways, very beautiful, but the piece needs more detail, a bit more of a chamber-music quality. I'm not sure that there is really all that much difference between the two recordings technically, but the Lyric Suite seems to have almost a string-orchestra sound. E.S.
BERLIOZ: Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14. Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa cond. DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 2530 358 $7.98, 89467 $6.98, 3300316 $6.98.
Performance: Very good
Recording: Very good
Ozawa has recorded the Fantastique before, but not with the Boston Symphony, and he has recorded with the BSO before, but not since becoming its music director. Like his earlier version with the Toronto Symphony (now on Odyssey Y 31923), this one has plen ty of momentum-not to be confused with headlong drive or sheer frenzy, for it is a beautifully disciplined performance. There are, to be sure, few works to which the listener responds as subjectively as to this one, and some may tend to write off Ozawa's handling of it as merely efficient. Just as many, I suspect (especially after a second and third hearing), will prefer his approach to those that exaggerate Berlioz's already broad dramatic gestures. Perhaps the last two movements could do with a little more swagger, but there is a good deal of subtle tension in the shaping of the slow movement and no little elegance in the waltz. Deutsche Grammophon, for its part, provides a rich sonic frame for the great orchestra. R.F.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
BOITO: Mefistofele. Norman Treigle (bass), Mefistofele; Placido Domingo (tenor), Faust; Montserrat Caballe (soprano), Margherita; Josella Ligi (soprano), Elena; Heather Begg (mezzo-soprano), Marta; Tom Allen (tenor), Wagner; Delia Wallis (mezzo-soprano), Pan tails; Leslie Fyson (baritone), Nereo; Ambro sian Opera Chorus; Wandsworth School Boys Choir; London Symphony Orchestra, Julius Rudel cond. ANGEL SCLX-3806 three discs $18.98.
Performance: Good; at times excellent
Recording: Very good
In the fifteen years since its last complete re cording (London OSA 1307), Arrigo Boito's highly individual Mefistofele has attained near-repertoire status in this country. Credit ...
NORMAN TREIGLE--A devil with authority, malice, and power
...for this is due to the various stagings (mainly by the New York City Opera Company) built around Norman Treigle's imposing character ization of the title role. These productions have elicited much praise; surely the New York City Opera Company framed this fascinating work in a strikingly imaginative stage setting. The casting, however, has seldom been well balanced: Treigle's towering devil frequently has had to contend with Margheritas and Fausts of lesser stature. No such imbalance threatens Angel's new recorded version. If the casting of Montserrat Caballe and Placido Domingo followed an all-too-predictable pattern, surely no one can object to these interpreters on artistic grounds.
In the company of artists of such calibre, Treigle no longer looms colossus-like over the opera. He is nonetheless a commanding devil, oozing malevolence in a scowling, snarling manner, with lots of bite in his parlando and firm sonority in his arias. The voice becomes dry at times, but vocal suavity is not an essential element here. The real essentials--the authority, the malice, the power, and the expressiveness--are here in abundance.
Montserrat Caballe and Placido Domingo manage to create the illusion of two young lovers in the Garden Scene-an effect not achieved by the mature-sounding pair of Renata Tebaldi and Mario del Monaco in the earlier London set. Caballe is in radiant voice throughout. She does not convey a Muzio-like tragedy in the Prison Scene, but she is always deeply touching, and the diminuendo she de livers on a high B-natural in the phrase "Ah! a questa moribonda perdonerai" is stunning.
Placido Domingo's artistically conceived and tonally refined Faust is the best on records.
His Epilogue aria "Giunto sul passo," however, is too fast to be sufficiently poetic.
If the overall performance, which is decid edly a good one, misses greatness, this must be attributed to the solidly competent yet not really inspired leadership of Julius Rudel.
Neither the Prologue nor the Epilogue achieves all the grandeur these powerful and ingeniously crafted pages contain, and the important choral passages are short on ultimate precision and finely graded nuance.
There are also some tempo miscalculations:
Rudel disregards the allegretto marking in the pact scene, adopting a rather headlong pace that is ultimately ineffective, and he turns the Garden Scene Quartet (allegretto) into a furious allegro. The latter is an awkwardly writ ten bit of music, to be sure, but it does work better in Tullio Serafin's faithful treatment in the London set. There are also some crucial ensemble scenes in the Classical Sabbath (Act IV, Scene 2) and in the Epilogue that call for firmer definition than they receive in this performance.
Josella Ligi, a soprano newcomer, makes a very favorable impression as Elena, and the supporting singers are all fine. The Ambrosian Chorus is good but not really exceptional.
Technically, there are some powerful effects imaginatively realized, and there are also a few that miss. Still, in view of the very fine singing of the three principals, the set is recommended. GJ.
BRAHMS: Klavierst iicke (see SCHUMANN)
BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 8, in C Minor.
New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer cond.
ANGEL SB 3799 two discs $11.913.
Performance: Chiefly for Klemperer buffs
Recording: Spacious
It was a 1936 broadcast performance of the Ninth Symphony with Otto Klemperer con ducting the New York Philharmonic that really opened my ears to Bruckner. The Judgment Day atmosphere conjured up by that reading still lingers in my memory. Ever since then, I have awaited eagerly each Klemperer recording of Bruckner (and Mahler) in hopes of hearing the magic of that performance again. I have been disappointed.
Most of the same failings that have marred parts of Klemperer's earlier EMI Bruckner recordings-a tendency toward stodgy pacing combined with what for my taste is overly soft-focused recording-afflict this reading of the Bruckner Eighth, the mightiest and most demanding of the nine, and are compounded by extensive cuts in the finale. In short, I can recommend this recording only to very sturdy fans of the conductor. D.H.
DEBUSSY: Piano Music for Four Hands (see Best of the Month, page 83) DVORAK: Cello Concerto in B Minor, Op. 104. Mstislav Rostropovich (cello); Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra of the All-Union Radio, Boris Khaikin cond. WESTMINSTER GOLD lug WGM-8245 $2.98.
Performance: Splendid
Recording: Respectable mono
DVORAK: Cello Concerto in B Minor, Op. 104. SHOSTAKOVICH: Cello Concerto No. 1, in E flat Major, Op. 107. Mstislav Rostropovich (cello); Moscow State Orchestra, Kiril Kondrashin cond. EVEREST 3342 $4.98.
Performance: Brilliant Shostakovich
Recording: Shostakovich bearable, Dvorak impossible
In my estimation Janos Starker and Mstislav Rostropovich are the worthy and legitimate heirs (in their very different ways) to the mantle of the late Pablo Casals, and I find the performances of the young Rostropovich (re corded during the decade following his winning of the 1950 Prague competition) espe cially treasurable in terms of interpretive freshness and elan. There are, to the best of my knowledge, three Rostropovich readings of the Dvoiak Cello Concerto that have been issued in the West from East European masters. The first, with the Czech Philharmonic under the late Vaclav Talich, was from the early 1950's or thereabouts; the second was with Boris Khaikin and the All-Union Radio Orchestra of the USSR, issued initially on MGM's Lion label in 1960, later on Monitor, and now on Westminster Gold as part of an arrangement with Melodiya in Russia. The third reading is on the current Everest issue, which credits Kiril Kondrashin as conductor.
The legitimate Westminster reissue, with proper credits-and with no monkey business by Westminster-presents a reading comparable in quality to the legendary 1937 Casals Szell interpretation with the Czech Philharmonic. Yet the two readings are totally dif ferent in style, for Casals went all out for the drama of the piece, whereas Rostropovich extracts every last bit of lyric sweetness and expressive nuance. The sonics are primitive by modern standards, and the horns are marked by the saxophone-like quality common to Soviet performances of that period, but the recording is still adequate.
The Everest issue is tagged with the usual misleading and devious credits that have be come the common language of this label when dealing with tapes of East European origin.
Both the Dvorak concerto and the Shostakovich concerto with which it is coupled are from tapes taken over by the Everest Group from Period in the early 1960's when Period ceased independent operation. In the 1963 Everest-Period issue, the Schumann Cello Concerto occupied the opposite side of the disc, and a big chunk was tape-edited from the middle of the Dvorak slow movement to allow accommodation on a single side, but the conducting was correctly credited to Nathan Rachlin- the original performance having been issued in the USSR in the middle Fifties.
(The material that was cut has not been re stored in this Everest re-release.) The complete performance, by the way, was issued on LP in this country on the Hall of Fame label as HOF 523. In all instances, including the present Everest reissue, the sound is atrocious, like that of an acoustic 78-rpm recording being played through a gigantic echo chamber.
The Shostakovich concerto is something else again. Kondrashin evidently was the conductor for a USSR radio broadcast of a public performance issued around 1960 in Russia and put out by Period-hence the "Historic Cello Concert" title of the Everest package. The cello miking is very close-up, with the orchestra somewhat in the back ground but still reasonably present and ac counted for (as is audience noise and applause at the close). Although the music itself is mi nor-league Shostakovich, it is a topflight virtuoso vehicle, and Rostropovich makes the most of it. even more in this public performance than in the much more polished re cording-session performance done for Columbia in 1959 with Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. D.H.
DVORAK: Piano Concerto in G Minor, Op. 33. Michael Ponti (piano); Prague Symphony Orchestra. Jindfich Rohan cond. TURNABOUT TV-S 34539 $2.98.
Performance: Sparkling
Recording: Good
Criticisms of Dvorak's first fully realized work in concerto form have centered on its awkwardly written solo piano part, and a number of efforts have been made, notably by Vilem Kurz and Rudolf Firkusny, to make the G Minor Concerto a viable repertoire vehicle through redistributing the solo writing and bolstering the orchestral role. Firkusny has recorded his version twice, once with Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra in the middle Fifties and again in 1963 for Westminster.
Now we have another pianist's reading of it, and whatever this concerto may lack in pianistic interest it certainly makes up in good tunes and lively rhythms. Backed by a Czech orchestra and conductor, Michael Ponti delivers a sparkling and thoroughly enlivening performance, enhanced by warm and spacious recorded sound. At $2.98, this disc is an excellent buy. D.H.
FAURE: Ballade for Piano and Orchestra (see SAINT-SAENS) FRANCK: Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra (see KHACHATURIAN)
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
GOTTSCHALK: Piano Music. Souvenir de Porto Rico, Marche des Gibaros, Op. 31 (RO 250); Columbia, Caprice Americain, Op. 34 IRO 61); The Dying Swan, Op. 100 (RO 76); Pasquinade, Op. 59 (RO 189); Murmures Eoliens, Op. 46 (RO 176); The Banjo. Op. 15 (RO 22): Danza. Op. 33 ( RO 66); Hercule. Grand Etude de Concert, Op. 88 (RO 116). Edward Gold (piano). MUSICAL HERITAGE SOCIETY MHS 1629 $3.50 (plus 75e handling charge, from the Musical Heritage Society, Inc., 1991 Broadway, New York. N.Y. 10023).
Performance: Appropriately romantic
Recording: Good
To the extensive Gottschalk collections is sued on the Desto and Turnabout labels, this Musical Heritage Society issue makes a fine supplement, for, along with the familiar Marche des Gibaros, Banjo, and Pasquinade, it includes four first recordings: the delightful proto-I vesian Columbia, based on My Old Kentucky Home, two sentimental-romantic numbers, The Dying Swan and Murmures Eoliens, and a set of variations in the grandiose French virtuosic manner, Hercule.
Brooklyn-born Edward Gold does a nice job here, both with the music and with the excel lent sleeve notes. In contrast to the rather straightforward style of Eugene List or Jeanne Behrend, whose recorded Gottschalk collections were the best of the monophonic era, Gold leans toward a full-blown romantic manner, flexible tempos and all, but not disturbingly willful. His treatment of Pasquinade and Marche des Gibaros are instances in point.
Mr. Gold's program as a whole is a well chosen one, effectively representing the Afro Caribbean, sentimental, and virtuosic aspects of the Gottschalk idiom. The recorded sound is clean and intimate. D.H.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
HAYDN: Trio No. 34, in B-flat Major (Hob. XV 120); Trio No. 38, in D Major (Hob. XV 124); Trio No. 31, in G Major (Hob. XV/32). Beaux Arts Trio. PHILIPS 6500 522 $6.98.
Performance: Vital
Recording: Flawless
The Beaux Arts Trio (Menahem Pressler. piano; Isidore Cofien, violin; and Bernard Greenhouse, cello) is, for me, just about the best in the business nowadays. And they are aided and abetted by the fine recording given their performances by Philips. which seems bent on recording the entire significant Classic and Romantic piano trio repertoire as performed by this ensemble.
Their latest Philips issue brings to fifteen their Haydn trio recordings, most of the works being from the Esterhaza master's post-1790 output, the time of the greatest string quartets and symphonies. The fact that the trio in Haydn's day was generally a vehicle for amateur performance, more so than the string quartet, may explain the somewhat less weighty and lengthy character of the musical content. But it is also a fact that these late ...
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NEELY BRUCE Prodigiously musical; ANTHONY PHIL II' HLINRICH I 1781--1861) A quite American eccentricity
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... trios of Haydn did establish the character of the piano trio, which was subsequently expanded by Beethoven and his successors in the mainstream of music. There is delightful and sometimes poignant listening fare to be discovered here, too. The minor-major contrasts in the finale of the B-flat Trio anticipate Schubert, and they, as well as the light and dark harmonic chiaroscuro of the slow move ment in the D Major Trio, are among the memorable aspects of the disc under review here. I also enjoy thoroughly the zest and sparkle of the little two-movement work in G Major, arranged from an earlier violin sonata.
As with most of the other Beaux Arts Trio recordings, this one offers playing flawless in technique and vital in execution, with beautifully balanced recorded sound to match. D.H.
HAYDN: Trumpet Concerto
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
HEINRICH: The Dawning of Music in Kentucky. Hail to Kentucky; The Young Columbian Midshipman; The Voice of Faithful Love; The Minstrel's March, or Road to Ken tucky; Epitaph on Joan Buff. Gipsey Dance; The Musical Bachelor; Irradiate Cause; Barbecue Divertimento. Neely Bruce (piano): American Music Group, Neely Bruce cond.
VANGUARD VSD 71178 $5.98. VSQ 30028 $6.98.
Performance: Good to very good
Recording: Good
Anthony Philip Heinrich, born in Bohemia but transplanted to Kentucky, was known to his contemporaries--some of them, anyway as the Beethoven of America. More modestly, he liked to refer to himself as the log-house composer from Kentucky or, more simply, as "the natural harmonist A. P. Heinrich." Neely Bruce, in his liner notes, evokes Ives, Satie, Debussy, Cage, Berlioz, Wagner, Max Reger, and a good deal of skepticism: Heinrich couldn't possibly be all that good, could he now? Well, not quite, but he was a fascinating figure. There is more than a touch of originality and eccentricity about this Central European playing Nature Boy in the American Wilderness and writing Beethovenesque key board music with titles like Barbecue Divertimento that ends up with "the Negro's Banjo Quickstep" consisting of ten minutes of free association music which, among other whimsies, quotes Yankee Doodle, God Save the King, and Heinrich's own Hail to Kentucky in a kind of purposefully rambling, run on sentence of melodic invention that may put you in mind of Padre Antonio Soler's great, and almost equally long-breathed, D Minor Fandango. The prodigiously musical Neely Bruce plays the, uh, dickens out of it. There is, of course, no tradition for performing this music, but Bruce has been able to establish one at a stroke with these two sides.
Heinrich's music is not merely quirky; it is all very accomplished and self-assured--almost cocky. Hail to Kentucky has a rather pompously naïve melody with a highly elaborated piano accompaniment that gets more grandiose and more elaborate on each succeeding verse. The Epitaph on Joan Buff tells us about a woman who sneezed herself to death after taking a pinch of snuff (!). It seems to get more serious, more expressive, and more elaborate as it goes on, with astonishing choral entries, sudden harmonic shifts, and a kind of understated wit that turns into some thing oddly touching and even beautiful. This is really quite a remarkable work, and, as Neely Bruce suggests, quite contemporary in its ambiguous attitude. It is unfortunate that texts are not provided; it is not always easy to catch the words.
On the whole, the performances and recordings are highly successful. Professor Bruce and his performers catch the spirit of the thing, and Heinrich emerges as a very competent, delightfully eccentric, and thoroughly original type in the very best American tradition. A real find. E.S.
HUMMEL: Concerto in G Major for Mandolin and Orchestra, Op. 73; Introduction, Theme and Variations for Oboe and Orchestra, Op. 102; Adagio and Rondo de Societe for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 117. Andre Saint-Clivier (mandolin); Jacques Chambon (oboe); Anne Queffelec (piano); Jean-Francois Paillard Chamber Orchestra, Jean-Francois Paillard cond. MUSICAL HERITAGE SOCIETY MHS 1701 $3.50 (plus 75c handling charge from the Musical Heritage Society, 1991 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10023).
Performance: Delightful
Recording: Excellent
A pupil of Mozart and a pianistic rival of Beethoven, Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837) appears to be emerging just very slightly from undeserved neglect by the record companies. Perhaps the "Romantic revival" has something to do with this. While Hummel's work is not on a par with that of his better-known contemporaries, he was nonetheless capable of great charm, melodic invention, and imagination. Much of his output can be described simply as pleasurable. No better example of this exists, certainly, than the G Major Mandolin Concerto, written in 1799 for Venetian virtuoso Bartolomeo Bortolazzi and later arranged as a piano concerto by the composer: this work is an absolute de light in its liveliness and amazingly virtuosic writing for the solo instrument. The set of variations for oboe and orchestra similarly exploits the technical abilities of the soloist, whereas in the relatively brief Adagio and Rondo, one of Hummel's later works (1829), there are to be heard many of the same melodic figurations and harmonies that are present in the exactly contemporaneous concertos of Chopin. The performances here are scintillating, and they are enhanced by pristine, well balanced recorded sound. I.K.
JANACEK: Youth, Suite for Wind Sextet.
MARTINU: Sextet for Piano and Winds.
KABELAC: Sextet for Winds, Op. 8. Prague Wind Quintet: Milan Slavik (oboe): Karel Bidlo (bassoon): Adolf Nachvatal (bass clari net): Jan Panenka (piano). SUPRAPHON 1177 $5.98.
Performance. Good
Recording Good enough
It is the Jandeek, not surprisingly, that is the most interesting music on this record-to such a degree that it seems rather unfair to the other two pieces. It is given a handsome, if somewhat understated, performance, as are the Martine' and Kabelk. I have always had great admiration for Martine', but I cannot pretend that every work of his is a master piece, and this Sextet of 1929 certainly is not.
The wind complement is the conventional wind quintet, but with a second bassoon instead of a horn, and the accent is on jazz and the blues as then perceived by the composer-and this seems to have been entirely through Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.
This makes for some probably unintentional humor, but not much else. The 1940 Sextet of Miloslav Kabelk (calling for a total of ten instruments. with doublers playing piccolo, English horn, saxophone, and bass clarinet) is of such numbing vacuousness that the most brilliant show of virtuosity cannot save it. I deplore the practice of gratuitously splitting a fifteen-minute work for turnover (in this case the Martine') in order to accommodate three pieces of equal length on a disc, but in this case it matters less because the Jankek would be my only reason for buying or recommending this record. R.F.
KABELAC: Sextet for Winds, Op. 8 (see JANACEK)
KHACHATURIAN: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra.
FRANCK: Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra. Alicia de Larrocha (piano); London Philharmonic Orchestra. Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos cond. LONDON CS 6818 $5.98.
Performance Both start dull, but build
Recording: Very good
Larrocha and Fruhbeck give a downright poetic account of the slow movement of the Khachaturian concerto (in which the Flexa tone player should have a solo credit for his beautiful contribution), and follow through with an ingratiatingly lighthearted one of the usually hard-driven finale. Their first movement, though, is a rather static affair. Better this way, I suppose, than the reverse, as in the Entremont-Ozawa version on Columbia M 31075, which starts off all aglitter and goes down from there. But if I really had to have this work I would settle happily for Loren Hollander and Andre Previn on RCA LSC 2801, for their version benefits from a consistency of approach throughout the piece and has the advantage of being packaged with the only recording of Bloch's interesting Scherzo Fantasque. The Franck on the new disc, curiously, repeats the pattern of the concerto performance: slow in getting up steam, un usually touching middle section, bright and convincing conclusion. The late Robert Casadesus' authoritative versions of this work and the D' Indy Symphony on a French Mountain Air, both with Ormandy, are recommended as a genuine bargain (Odyssey Y 31274). R.F.
LITOLFF: Scherzo from Concerto Symphonique No. 4 (see SAINT-SAENS)
LOCKE: Suites for Viols in D Minor, D Minor, G Major, and C Major; Second Gaillard from "The Tempest"; A New Year's Song; Cantate Domino; Ne'er Trouble Thyself; Away with the Causes of Riches; A Dialogue Between Thirsis and Dorinda; The Song of Echoes. Golden Age Singers (Margaret Field-Hyde and Val erie Cardnell, sopranos; Andrew Pearmain, counter tenor; Ian Partridge and Alfred Hep worth, tenors; James Atkins, bass), Margaret Field-Hyde dir.; Elizabethan Consort of Viols (Dennis Nesbitt and Benjamin Ken nard, treble viols: Jillian Amherst, tenor viol: Nancy Neild and Dietrich Kessler, bass viols), Dennis Nesbitt dir.; Roger Pugh (harpsichord continuo); Dennis Nesbitt (viol continuo). WESTMINSTER GOLD WGS-8242 $2.98.
Performance: Very good
Recording: Excellent
Aside from a disc devoted to his keyboard music by Colin Tilney on the British Pye label, the present collection of music for voices and viols is the only full record featuring the works of Matthew Locke (1630-1677). Com poser in Ordinary to Charles II, Locke wrote in almost all the standard forms of the day, including sacred and secular vocal pieces, works for viol consort, and such theatrical endeavors as the masques Cupid and Death and The Siege of Rhodes and incidental music to Shadwell's adaptation of The Tempest. A conservative in many ways (he preferred the old-fashioned viol consort), Locke was nevertheless a highly expressive composer, and he had considerable influence on Purcell, who succeeded him in his court position; compare Locke's Song of Echoes from Psyche with Purcell's echo chorus at the end of Act 1 in Dido and Aeneas, for instance.
The selection here is an excellent one, and the performances by both instrumental and vocal groups are quite satisfying, except possibly for a disinclination on the part of the viol consort to add ornaments. The recorded sound, dating from ten years ago when this disc was first released (as Westminster WST 17082), shows not the slightest hint of age. In one respect, though, the older issue still has the advantage, for this new issue has had its texts partially excised (four verses and the refrain of A New Year's Song, for instance, are not printed on the jacket, and all except the first four lines of A Dialogue Between Thirsis and Dorinda has been deleted). More over, the reissue does not name all the participants, who are therefore listed above.
I .K .
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
MAHLER: Symphony No. 4, in G Major. Mar garet Price (soprano); London Philharmonic Orchestra, Jascha Horenstein cond. MONITOR MCS 2141 $3.49.
Performance: Special
Recording: Clear enough
The Perfect Mahlerites among us have long espoused the Gospel According to J. Horenstein. In contrast to the endless flow of musically or sonically overblown Mahlerei-gorgeous impastos, thickly laid on-we have here the ultimate in clarity, restraint, and beauty of phrase. Orchestrally speaking, this playing can be beat, and in more than one place I feel the confines of a tight rein; for example, the second movement seems constantly to want to take off but never does. But Horenstein is the master of the most essential ingredient of all: the long line. Everything is built up in long, intense phrases that shape the larger flow. The orchestration sounds as transparent as Ravel; everything can be heard! And the last movement, gloriously sung by Margaret Price, is the gate of heaven itself.
The recording is said to be stereo, although I hear very little separation or depth. And, alas, the surfaces are noisy. No matter, I hear everything I have to hear, and that is more than I can say for a great many more spectacular Mahler recordings. Amid the well-known Mahlerian complexities, Horenstein has captured the essential naturalness and simplicity for which Mahler himself struggled so hard.
He would have loved it. E.S.
---------------
MATTHEW LOCKE (1630-1677) Purcell's more conservative predecessor MARTINU: Sextet for Piano and Winds (see JANACEK)
MOZART: Songs, Vol. I. Das Veilchen; Als Luise die Briefe; Des kleinen Friedrichs Ge burtstag; Sei du mein Trost; Der Fruhling; Die Verschweigung; Der Zauberer; Abend empfindungen an Laura; Ridente la calma; Un moto di gioia; Oiseaux, si tous les ans; Ah! spiegarti, oh Dio; Das Kinderspiel; Die Alte; Die Zufriedenheit; Die kleine Spinnerin; Sehnsucht nach dem Fruhlinge. Edith Mathis (soprano); Bernhard Klee (piano); Takashi Ochi (mandolin, in Die Zufrieden heit). DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 2530 319 $7.98.
Performance: Good
Recording: Good
This is the first of what appears to be a projected two-record set of Mozart songs. The total number of these songs is around forty, the exact figure depending upon one's definition of what constitutes a "song." Very few of Mozart's songs are "lieder" in the sense Schubert's are. They antedate the Romantic age and the German poets whose soaring imagery inspired the song composers of the generation that followed Mozart. Moreover, the roots of Mozart's songs are rarely embedded in German soil. They are related either to the French salons or to Italian opera, Mozartian or otherwise.
There are, however, many delightful pieces among them, and the best-Das Veilchen, Abendempfindungen, Der Zauberer- are quite well known. All three of these are on the present disc, but so are several lesser-known or completely unfamiliar gems eminently worth discovering. Die Alte (K. 517 from 1787) is a comic aria with an ageless message about the generation gap, while Sehnsucht nach dem Fruhlinge (K. 596) is a rollicking delight. It is built on the rondo theme of the B-flat Piano Concerto (K. 595) of the same year- 1791, Mozart's last.
Edith Mathis is one of the most consistently pleasing performers before the public. She sings with artless simplicity, with a tone of appealing freshness and purity, and in a style that is always persuasive. Her expressive range has its limits, but few of these songs present a challenge to it. Still, the gentle tragedy Elisabeth Schwarzkopf could make of Das Veilchen is not at Miss Mathis' interpretive command, nor is her diction as pointed as that of a seasoned recitalist. Within its boundaries, though, this is a fine and enjoyable collection.
The piano accompaniments are expertly played on what sounds like a period instrument of limited resonance. (According to the DG office, though, it's a modern Steinway.) GJ.
PENDERECKI: Utrenja. Delfina Ambroziak, Stefania Woytowicz (sopranos); Krystyna Szczepatiska (mezzo-soprano); Kazimierz Pustelak (tenor); Wlodzimierz Denysenko, Bernard Ladysz (basses); Boris Carmeli, Peter Lagger (basso profondos); Chorus and Symphony Orchestra of the National Philhar monic, Warsaw, Andrzej Markowski cond. PHILIPS 6700 065 two discs $13.96.
Performance Hair-raising
Recording: Very good
About halfway through this wallow of beefy bellowing-an Easter celebration that sounds like the last agonies of the damned-I stood up and addressed a personal plea to Pan Penderecki. The basso was groaning profundissimo, the sopranos and tenors were sliding up to E's and A's in alt, and the massed choirs of Warsaw had been screeching and gabbling nonstop fortissimo for a fearful quarter of an hour. Supressing the tendency to reach for a Polish joke, I gravely addressed my speakers in as dignified a tone as I could muster for the occasion: "Ah, shut up." Utrenja is the morning service of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki has chosen texts from the Easter Saturday and Sunday morning ser vices in Old Slavonic-used in the Eastern rites more or less as Latin is (or was) used in the West. None of the choices here were particularly obvious. Poland is a strongly Roman Catholic country with tremendous cultural and artistic ties to the West. The kind of avant-gardism represented by Penderecki's slashing vocal-and-instrumental tone-cluster style is associated with Poland's break-out from Stalinism and Russian cultural domination in 1956. So Penderecki's choice of subject matter and language is a conscious and striking look Eastward-particularly ironic in that both parts of this work were commissioned and first performed in West Germany.
The work was composed in two parts. "The Entombment of Christ" is scored with a sledgehammer density that is particularly ferocious even for Penderecki. The solo parts, punctuated by ominous orchestral rumbles, slide constantly toward the greatest extremes.
The chorus, sounding more like the legions of hell than the heavenly hosts suggested by the texts, breaks into babbles, shouts, or (surprise) four-part harmony, Eastern Orthodox style. Part 11, "The Resurrection of Christ," adds noisemakers--rachets and bells-a boys' choir, and lots more four-part harmony. Perhaps the tone is intended to change a bit, but somehow the single out standing quality seems to be desperation.
As always, Penderecki's strokes are, in a certain sense, telling. As always, the effect is melodramatic, nearly unbearable, and, to me, completely insincere. I get the sense that the composer is consciously and constantly manipulating and jarring the listener to no purpose. There is no deeper message. Everything is on the surface, nothing is left to the imagination. The terror of existence is imposed on the listener like a sentence without appeal.
The album seems to be made up of two quite separate recordings with rather different casts. The performers, under the skillful direction of Andrzej Markowski, are impressive; I did not have the score to check them out, but they seem to know quite well what they are about. The recording, made in Poland, is excellent.
But what a racket! The old tricks are wearing thin; I hope for Penderecki's sake that, by his next piece, he thinks of some new ones.
E.S.
RACHMANINOFF: Six Preludes, Op. 23, Nos. 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, and 8; Seven Preludes, Op. 32, Nos. 1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 10, and 12. Sviatoslav Richter (piano). MELODIYA/ANGEL SR 40235 $5.98.
Performance: Good, but not great
Recording: Variable acoustic
Rachmaninoff's rather ancient regime Romanticism has never had a particularly strong appeal for Soviet musicians, although (as in the case of the much more controversial Stravinsky) they do seem to have a rather ambivalent interest in him as a major Russian composer. Richter has played some of these preludes for many years, and his recorded centennial homage is apt and attractive. He clearly prefers to emphasize the Classical and heroic aspects of this music, which thus emerges with a strong Lisztian flavor.
The piano sometimes sounds curiously distant, although in general it has good presence. The splicing is not always very subtle, and I suspect that the recording was put together from different takes with slightly different microphone placements. E.S.
RACHMANINOFF: Symphony No. 1, in D Minor, Op. 13. L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Walter Weller cond. LONDON CS 6803 $5.98.
Performance: Good
Recording: Excellent
This is the third stereo version of Rachmaninon First Symphony--reconstructed in 1945 from a combination of orchestral parts and a four-hand piano reduction, since the composer apparently destroyed the score following its first performance fiasco in 1897--and by and large it is the most satisfactory yet.
The Suisse Romande is not quite the equal of the Philadelphia Orchestra, but Walter Weller does avoid the occasional exaggeration of phrase that crops up from time to time in Eugene Ormandy's reading on Columbia. He also avoids the hysterical excess that Svetlan ov inflicts on the closing pages in his Melodiya/Angel recording. The recorded sound is by far the cleanest and best balanced, though not as rich as Columbia's sound, which, however, is troubled by some excessive reverberation.
I have yet to hear a totally satisfying re cording of what 1 consider one of Rachman inoff's best symphonic works. Perhaps Andre Previn can do a better job, but this London offering is the best so far. D.H.
RAVEL: Piano Music for Four Hands (see Best of the Month)
SAINT-SAENS: The Carnival of the Animals.
FAURE: Ballade for Piano and Orchestra.
LITOLFF: Scherzo, from Concerto Sympho nique No. 4. John Ogdon (piano); Brenda Lucas (piano, in Saint-Satins); City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Louis Fremaux cond. KLAVIER KS 527 $5.98.
Performance: Over-house-broken
Recording: Brilliant
SAINT-SAENS: The Carnival of the Animals. Sir Noel Coward (narrator); Leonid Hambro and Jascha Zayde (pianos); orchestra, Andre Kostelanetz cond. WALTON: Façade. Dame Edith Sitwell and David Horner (readers); chamber orchestra, Frederik Prausnitz cond. ODYSSEY Y 32359 $2.98.
Performance: Classic
Recording: Well-preserved
Camille Saint-Satins wrote his Grande Fantaisie Zoologique in 1886 for a Mardi Gras concert and apparently didn't think much of it. During his lifetime, he prohibited further performances- except for The Swan-and wouldn't have the score published. But The Carnival of the Animals has been putting up its tent for concerts all over the world since the time of the composer's death in 1921. On records, it has been a resounding success since Stokowski first put together an album for Victor in the 1930's, and there are a half-dozen versions in the current catalog. Now come two more.
John Ogdon and Brenda Lucas are delightful as the virtuoso pianists, roaring like lions and offering a rippling accompaniment to the gliding cello that limns out the famous, serene, noble melody of The Swan. Since the Saint Saens zoo also provides a cage containing pianists who rush up and down the keyboard practicing their scales, Ogdon and Lucas have much to do, and they do it brilliantly. The City of Birmingham Orchestra plays with virtuosity but somewhat circumspectly under M. Fremaux in a carefully buttoned, perhaps over-subtle, and too adult performance. Personally, I like my donkeys to bray less taste fully than they do in Birmingham, my roosters to crow with more abandon, my lions to roar more bloodcurdlingly. But the suite is quite beautifully played and recorded, and the orchestra really comes into its own for Fossils, made up of creaking nursery songs, the clacking bones of the composer's own Danse Ma cabre, and defunct clichés from French folk music to Rossini. On the other side of the record, there's a lovely version of Faure's long, dreamy, pastoral Ballade with John Ogdon alone at the keyboard, as he is in most sparkling form for the Scherzo from Henry Litolff's Concerto Symphonique No. 4-the only work by that nineteenth-century French man (who settled in London) that ever seems to get a hearing.
A Carnival of the Animals in more boisterous shape is available in a re-release by Odyssey of the long-admired version Andre Kostelanetz made many years ago for Columbia.
And here the work has the advantage of Ogden Nash's verses, written for the record at the invitation of Goddard Lieberson, and re cited in his very own mordant style by Sir Noel Coward. Mr. Kostelanetz takes numerous liberties with the music to make the suite dovetail with the delightful narration, and every bit of it works beautifully. Who knows? --even the modern child might like it. On the other side of the Odyssey release is Dame Edith Sitwell reading her Facade verses to William Walton's music at a historic Museum of Modern Art appearance in 1948, with a chamber orchestra conducted by Frederik Prausnitz. Dame Edith and Sir Noel stopped talking to each other early in their careers after he disparaged the lady's verses, walked out on the premiere of Façade in London's Aeolian Hall, and parodied the Sitwells in a sketch that was part of his 1922 Chariot Revue London Calling, so it's a bit ironic to have them back to back here. The poems deal with fossils-the pretension of outworn musical and poetical styles, the tourist's travel-poster Spain and Scotland and Switzerland-a world to which "man must say farewell" as he grows up. Walton's music is full of wicked parodies, too, half-concealed in his taunts of tangos, hornpipes, polkas, and rheumatic foxtrots. David Homer reads the Tango Pasodoble in a version that defies its tongue-twisting hazards but is otherwise a mite too precious in tone. Dame Edith reads the rest, and, except for an occasional fluff or muddled cue, is in excellent form. Missing, however, is the Tarantella, which she did read on a now-defunct London recording where she shared the platform with Peter Pears. The sound is dated, too, and a text would have helped, but what do you want for $2.98? The record is a classic. P.K.
SCHOENBERG: The Complete Works for Piano Solo. Three Pieces, Op. 11; Five Pieces, Op. 23; Suite for Piano, Op. 25; Six Little Pieces, Op. 19; Two Pieces, Op. 33. Marie Frangoise Bucquet (piano). PHILIPS SAL 6500 510 $6.98.
Performance: Good
Recording: Very good
When, some months ago, Marie-Francoise Bucquet gave an extraordinarily well publicized series of twentieth-century piano recitals in New York-Schoenberg, Stockhausen et al.--a contingent of cognoscenti apparently stalked out of the hall claiming that she was faking the music. On the other hand, reports have it that she is a charming stage personality and creates a good deal of enthusiasm among the (perhaps fortunately) less well-in formed by carrying off the performance of supposedly forbidding music with great flair, filling it with color and drama.
In fact, these recorded performances do not reinforce either point of view. They are reasonably careful, not at all flashy, and reason ably well carried off. There is probably no contradiction here at all. In the heat of a live performance and in the effort to communicate some kind of drama it would be easy (although of course not to be condoned) to throw away whole fistfuls of Schoenbergian chromatics. But the forbidding microphone and the knowledge that every note will be permanently on display for posterity can (and probably should) prompt more care.
The merits of the case are really quite simple. These are good, not tremendously exciting performances of a repertoire that is, on the whole, not easy to carry off-especially all in bunch. The recordings are attractive (I'm overlooking a bit of background noise here and there). Perhaps Mlle. Bucquet should have insisted on more of her characteristically dramatic approach, though. E.S.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
SCHUBERT: Die Winterreise. Hermann Prey (baritone): Wolfgang Sawallisch (piano). PHIL IPS 6747 033 two discs $13.96.
Performance: Excellent
Recording: Excellent
Schubert's Winterreise is to singers what his Ninth Symphony is to conductors: a challenge to be undertaken more than once in a lifetime. This is Hermann Prey's second re cording of it. No less than three different versions by Hans Hotter have come and gone, but the catalog still lists two alternative versions by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore, and one by Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten. I should state at the outset that Hermann Prey's ranks with the best.
The baritone's partner is Wolfgang Sawallisch. a sensitive accompanist with an eloquent touch entirely attuned to the singer's interpretation. The team's approach to this bleak and relentlessly pessimistic cycle tends to alleviate its gloom: relatively brisk tempos are favored, and the intimate style of communication-deeply involved, yet without bathos or over-dramatization--produces effects that are more melancholy than tragic. This view seems eminently valid to me, but it may not meet with the approval of those partial to Hans Hotter's shatteringly dejected Traveler or Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's more theatrical one. Unquestionably there are songs in which more deliberate pacing might be more appro priate. Fischer-Dieskau and Moore seem to probe deeper in Die Kruhe and Der Wegweis er and make even more of the sudden dramatic contrasts in Rast than Prey does.
In terms of pure vocalism, however, I do not recall a Winterreise since the classic old Gerhard Hirsch version that can match this one in control and refinement. Prey's tone, beautiful and perfectly equalized, allows him to manage the wide range without distortion at either end. His sense of dynamics is superb, and he sails over the subtle technical challenges-ornamentations and wide interval leaps-gracefully and effortlessly. Moreover, he sustains an undistorted vocal line through out-no ranting or breaking up phrases in the passionate climax of Au,' dem Fhtsse or in the harsh interjections of Ruckblick.
Perhaps not all the depths of this profound ly moving cycle are plumbed, but Hermann Prey and Wolfgang Sawallisch have given us a beautiful interpretation of the fullest artistic refinement. It is captured in clear and natural sound. G J.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
SCHUBERT: Sonata in A Major (D. 959). Christoph Eschenbach (piano). DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 2530 372 $7.98.
Performance Exalted
Recording: Excellent
During the last half-dozen years Eschenbach has made a number of recordings-Mozart.
Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin. Schumann-in which, despite his impressive sensitivity, his playing invariably seemed more fastidious than communicative. His first Schubert record is a different story-one of those happily predestined meetings between music and interpreter in which everything seems to work effortlessly, giving off an air of almost improvisatory spontaneity. Eschenbach's approach, however. is actually a good deal more subtle than that, and to some listeners it may seem austere. His is not cozy drawing-room Schubert, but an exalted statement of a great work, aristocratic in its restraint, elegant in its articulation; in its somewhat sober frame it achieves a degree of intimacy that enables both the poignant, bittersweet character of the music and its heroic proportions to register most effectively. It is not the only way, but it is an uncommonly convincing one, and the sound is as clean and crisp as could be. R.F.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
SCHUMANN: Bunte Blotter, Op. 99.
BRAHMS: Klavierstucke, Op. 118: No. 1, Intermezzo in A Minor; No. 3, Ballade in G Mi nor; No. 6, Intermezzo in Elicit Minor. Sviatoslav Richter (piano). MELODIYA/ANGEL SR-40238 $5.98.
Performance. Inspired
Recording Excellent
If any further proof were needed that Sviatoslav Richter is the foremost keyboard poet of the day, this recording should do the trick.
The accumulation of fourteen piano pieces that Schumann composed over a nearly ten year period and finally published as his Op. 99 poses a fantastic challenge to the pianist-interpreter in terms of its variety and its curious unevenness in musical quality. But Richter makes the whole thing into a unified and soulful experience. Wistfulness, passion, and virility are the hallmarks of the first three small pieces from 1839. The next five "varied leaves" include one (No. 4) on which Brahms based his Op. 9 Variations, another (No. 6) which evidently was first intended to be part of Camaro!.n and the enigmatically brooding No. 7. built around a constantly repeated descending chordal sequence. Of the later pieces, most impressive are No. 11, suggestive of a funeral cortege, and the taut G Minor Scherzo, No. 13. I can't imagine a finer realization of this music than what has been achieved here. I do wish, however, that there were banding between the numbers.
Richter's way with the Brahms G Minor Ballade is rather brisk, but his A Minor Inter mezzo is imbued with vital passion. and the great E-flat Minor Intermezzo spins out its plangent lament in poignant accents that have been matched by only two other re corded performances that I can remember those of Backhaus and Cliburn. I'm happy to say that the piano sound is flawless in bal ance and body from beginning to end, with careful attention being accorded Richter's subtle dynamic gradations. D.H.
RECORDINGS OF SPECIAL MERIT
SHUTZ: Kleine Geistliche Konzerte, Books and H. Maria Friesenhausen, Rosemarie Adam, Adele Stolte, Herrad Wehrung, Gun dula Bernat-Klein (sopranos); Emmy Lisken, Eva Bornemann, Frauke Haasemann (altos); Johannes Hoefflin, Rolf Bossow, Hans Joach im Rotzsch (tenors); Wilhelm Pommerien. Carl-Heinz Muller, Johannes Kortendiek, Jakob Stampfli (basses); Heinrich Haferland, Hans Koch (viola da gamba); Arno Schott stedt (positive organ, harpsichord); Walter Gerwig (lute); Ferdinand Conrad Recorder Ensemble; Otto Steinkopf (dulcian); other instrumentalists; Westphalian Kantorei; Wilhelm Ehmann dir. MUSICAL HERITAGE SOCIETY MHS 1553/58 six discs $21.00 (plus 75c mailing and handling, from the Musical Her itage Society Inc., 1991 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10023).
SCHUTZ: Kleine Geistliche Konzerte, Book II. Vocalists and instrumentalists as above, Wilhelm Ehmann dir. NONESUCH HD-73024 four discs $13.92.
Performance: Ideal
Recordings: Both excellent
The record subsidiary of the German publish ing house Barenreiter originally issued the complete Schutz Kleine Geistliche Konzerte on six discs in Europe several years ago. The first book, the 1636 collection, was released in this country about four years ago by None such on two discs (HB-73012): now None such has issued the second book (1639), and simultaneously Musical Heritage Society has released the complete two books in one inte gral six-disc package. Thus it is possible to obtain the same performance on two different labels.
The Little Sacred Concertos, which are concertos only in the sense of the inherent elements of contrast in the writing, a technique Schutz picked up in his Italian studies, are really a collection of motets. twenty-four contained in Book I and thirty-one in Book II.
They are scored for one to five solo voices (a choir is called for in only three concertos), with accompaniment restricted to continuo instruments. The lack of more lavish instru mental and vocal forces in this music was a direct outcome of the ravages of the Thirty Years War, during which both war and plague decimated the ranks of church and court per formers. Schutz's writing during the 1630's and 1640's was therefore a matter of expediency, but having to write for little more than solo voices elicited from the composer more than merely an economy of means. Schutz managed within each of these relatively brief works (most are under five minutes) to adapt the new monodic Italian style to his native German language and incorporate it into a series of highly expressive, intense, and per sonal commentaries on his faith. There is anguish in the chromaticisms. but along with the despair over the external miseries of that period there are also a quality of hope and a striving for an afterlife that are expressed with an almost metaphysical sweetness and fervor.
These varied characteristics are superbly set forth in the performances under that marvelous Schutz specialist, Wilhelm Ehmann, and his experienced vocal and instrumental soloists. This is an important recording, and no Schutz lover should be without it. It re mains only to decide whether the integral MHS album at $21.75 has any advantage over the two separately issued books on Nonesuch costing just about the same, less the handling charge. Obviously those who al ready own Nonesuch's first volume will want the second. Both companies' sound is highly satisfactory (that on Nonesuch is a little higher-level and just a bit fuller in the bass), and both supply texts and translations and individual commentary. The MHS text book let, however, is more detailed in its annotations for the individual concertos as well as in providing greater information about the com poser; Nonesuch uses essentially the same Bfirenreiter annotations but reduces the commentary somewhat. L.K.
SHOSTAKOVICH: Cello Concerto No. 1, in E-flat Major, Op. 107 (see DVORAK) TIPPETT: Symphony No. 3 (see Best of the Month, page 84)
VILLA-LOBOS: Bachianas Brasileiras: No. 2, for Orchestra; No. 5, for Soprano and Eight Cellos; No. 6, for Flute and Bassoon; No. 9, for String Orchestra. Mady Mesple (soprano); Orchestre de Paris, Paul Capolongo cond. ANGEL S-36979 $5.98, ® 8XS-36979 $6.98, 4XS-36979 $6.98.
-------------- Lauritz Melchior (center) and Giulio Gatti-Casazza (left)
admiring the hand-forged sword presented to the great tenor by Fiorello LaGuardia
(right). mayor of New York City, in February 1935.
Performance: Medium
Recording: Good
This was a nice idea for a record. Villa-Lobos' Brazilian Bachery is delightful stuff. Here is No. 2, which ends up with that little train of the Caipira but has many other charms en route; No. 5 is, of course, the Bachianas Brasileiras-for soprano and eight cellos. No. 6 is for flute and bassoon only-quite enough, though-while No. 9 is a neo-Classical prelude and fugue for strings (and, in my opinion, the least interesting). That this recording originated in France is not without a kind of logic, for Villa-Lobos spent much of his creative life in that country, where he was published and rather well appreciated.
These are good but not knock-out performances. The sensuousness of No. 5 really escapes Mady Mesple, whose voice seems strangely distant, notably on the return of the main tune where she seems to sing off-mike, an effect which is the exact opposite of the close, intimate sound requested by the com poser. Otherwise, the recorded sound is okay. E.S.
WAGNER: Arias and Lieder (see Collections--Lauritz Melchior)
WALTON: Facade (see SAINT-SAENS) COLLECTIONS RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
SAMUEL BARON: Music for Flute and Tape. Korte: Remembrances. Davidovsky: Synchronisms No. 1. Kupferman: Superflute. Samuel Baron (flute), with prerecorded tapes. NONESUCH H-7I289 $3.48.
Performance: Spectacular
Recording: Excellent
Superflute, the title of the Kupferman work on this disc, would have been an appropriate heading for the entire package, for in these three pieces Samuel Baron makes his instru ment yield every sound dreamed up for it and then some-in addition to having contributed to the electronic portion of the Kupferman by doing the actual tape splicing for a section he had recorded. These are not just the bloop bleep sounds that make up so many electronic pieces: all three composers have shown imagination that is not only rare but genuinely musical in their combining of the live flute with prerecorded ("synthesized processed") sounds. Davidovsky's brief 1962 Synchro nisms has become a classic of its kind, while the two longer works, both composed for Baron in 1971, go still farther in exploring the possibilities of such a format; they exhibit some fascinating sonorities, several of which-whether intentionally or accidentally-evoke both the sound and the spirit of Japanese classical music. As a thoroughly musical argument for the validity of the use of synthesized sounds, and for a staggering demonstration of what a super-flutist can do, this album is a knockout. R.F.
ENGLISH CONTEMPORARY MUSIC. Alwyn: Four Elizabethan Dances. Berkeley: Symphony No. 3. Bush: Music (1967) for Orchestra. Maconchy: Proud Thames. Lon don Philharmonic Orchestra, William Alwyn cond. (in Alwyn), Lennox Berkeley cond. (in Berkeley), Vernon Handley cond. (in Bush and Maconchy). MUSICAL HERITAGE SOC. MHS 1672 $3.50 (plus 0.75 shipping, from Musical Heritage Society Inc., 1991 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10023).
Performance: Authoritative
Recording: Good
MHS, having given us several intriguing recordings of music by Bax, Hoist, Ireland, et al. taken from the English Lyrita catalog, has drawn on the same source for this assortment of works by four contemporary Britons whose names are less likely to be familiar in this country. The best-known is the seventy three-year-old Lennox Berkeley, whose powerfully wrought Third Symphony, com posed in 1969, is both the newest and the most substantial part of this package. The one-movement work emphasizes color and thrust more than melodic interest (themes appear for the most part only in fragments, and there is none of germinal importance), and in those terms sustains its quarter-hour brilliantly. Geoffrey Bush, the youngest of this foursome (born 1920), might have called his Music (1967) a symphony, too, for it is laid out much like the Berkeley, in a single movement with four clearly separate sections, but it is really more in the nature of a concerto for orchestra, an imaginative display piece written on commission for a school orchestra in Shropshire.
The disc is well worth its modest cost for these two works-or for the Berkeley alone and the other two are easy to take, if not especially memorable. Elizabeth Maconchy (born 1907), known primarily for her chamber music, won the London County Council prize for a coronation overture in 1952 with her Proud Thames; it is a fine title, but the six-minute work itself is rather undistinguished, except perhaps as an example of Maconchy's craftsmanship as an orchestrator. Alwyn (born 1905) combines that virtue with more imagination and a bit of charm in his Elizabethan Dances-Nos. 1, 2, 5, and 4 from a set of six relating to the times of both Elizabeths.
The two composer-conducted performances must be regarded as authoritative, and the other two sound no less so; all four are up to the London Philharmonic's current high standard, and the recording does them full justice. R.F.
LAURITZ MELCHIOR: Heldentenor of the Century. Wagner: Parsifal: Atnfortas! Die Wunde! Nur eine Waffe taugt. Lohengrin: In fernem Land; Mein lieber Schwan. Die Meistersinger: Am stillen Herd; Prize Song. Siegfried: Nothung. Nothung; Schmiede. mein Hammer. Tannhauser: Dir tone Lob! Rome Narrative. Die Walkure: Finale of Act I. otterdammerting: Zit neuen Taten. Tris tan and Isolde: Love Duet. Wesendonk Lied er: Schmerzen; Tr-drone. Leoncavallo: Pag liacci: Vesti la giubba; No! Pagliaccio non son. Richard Strauss: Zueignung; Cucilie; Trout» (lurch die Dammerung; Heimliche Aufforderung. Wolf: Schon streckt ich aus im Bett; Ein Stundchen Eruh zu bringen. Brahms: Auf dem Kirchhofe. Grieg: En Svane; Ich liebe dich: Eros. Sibelius: Svarta Rosor. Sjoberg: Tonerna. Trunk: Mir truumte von einem Konigskind; Stilles Lied. La Forge: Into the night. Jordan: HOrer Du: Drick. Lauritz Melchior (tenor): Helen Traubel (soprano, in Die Walkure and Goner dammerung); Kirsten Flagstad (soprano, in Tristan and Isolde): Ignace Strasfogel (piano. in various songs); Philadelphia Orchestra. Eugene Ormandy cond.; NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini cond.; San Fran cisco Symphony, Edwin McArthur cond.; other orchestras, Edwin McArthur and Fausto Cleva cond. RCA CRM-3-0308 three discs $11.98.
Performance Exceptional
Recording Fair to fairly good
After a steady stream of record releases, there is an unprecedented abundance of Melchior facing today's buyers. Such a rich representation is eminently deserved, but my own contentment would be greater if I did not know how much the artist would have enjoyed it while he was alive. Heaven knows, he waited long enough for it; he died a few days short of his eighty-third birthday, in 1973.
I have mixed feelings about RCA's newly released collection, also. It contains much important and representative material, and even offers a few previously unpublished items. On the other hand, it duplicates many selections that are not only already in the catalog but also available on RCA's own bargain Victrola label.
Naturally, none of this should be held against the artist, and, in any case, I am un able not to recommend a Melchior collection, however it is merchandised. The sheer sound of the man, the opulence of the voice, the ample reserve behind it, the unstinting yet wise and skillful use of it-all this must be at hand for the knowledgeable collector to keep his bearings straight and his standards high.
The much-reviewed Wagner material needs no new comment. The Strauss songs (dating from 1937 and 1938 and long unavailable) are a bit too operatic, yet who knows if the com poser did not have Melchior's kind of resources in mind for the challenges of Cudlie.
The previously unreleased Wolf and Brahms songs disclose some tonal imperfections, but not enough to becloud their value. The Grieg and Sibelius items (from 1937-1941) are hard to duplicate on records; they are all lusciously vocalized, with a lovely mezza-voce floated in En S vane. There are some minor songs by minor composers to round out the collection, as well as two Pagliacci arias. Though originating in 1946, the singer's fifty-sixth year, the latter still reveal an imposing voice, man aged with a firm command if not in a fully Italianate style.
The technical work is satisfactory.
(Nothing will ever really undo the acoustic horrors of the old NBC studios...) Although a worthy appreciative essay by Irving Kolodin comes with the set, the album pack aging (labeling, sequencing, clarity) is faulty and ill-organized. G J.
SHERRILL MILNES: Great Scenes from Ital ian Opera. Rossini: 11 Barbiere di Siviglia: Largo al factotum. Bellini: / Puritani: A h. per sempre /o ti perdei. Donizetti: La Favorite: Lionor, viens. Verdi: Ernani: Oh de'verdi anni miei; Oh sommo Carlo. Don Carlos: Oui, Carlos, c'est mon jour suptime; Carlos ecoute. Otello: Brindisi; Credo in un dio cru de/. Ponchielli: La Gioconda: Pescator, affon da l'esca. Puccini: La Fanciulla del West: Minnie, dalla mia casa. Sherrill Milnes (baritone); supporting singers; Ambrosian Opera Chorus; Wandsworth School Boys Choir; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Silvio Varviso cond. LONDON OS-26366 $5.98.
Performance: Uneven
Recording: Excellent
These are indeed "Great Scenes from Italian Opera." Although La Favorite (1840) and Don Carlos (1867) were composed to original French texts and introduced in Paris, this is Italian music, and it should surprise no one that both operas have had more success in their subsequent Italian versions. Just the same, Sherrill Milnes deserves praise for having chosen these arias with the unfamiliar French texts. If they do not sound very different from "Vien, Leonora" or "O Carlo, ascolta," it is possibly because they are delivered in a forthright, Italianate manner which, frankly, is all right with me. Since the annotator (William Weaver) finds the Italian text of Don Carlos "mediocre," I would have liked to have the French original for comparison, but no texts are supplied with the disc.
The renditions are in the characteristic Milnes manner: vigorous, opulent, all-out singing, idiomatic in style and intelligent in characterization. The Don Carlos, La Gio conda, and Otello excerpts are particularly effective. Much of the singing, however, is tonally unrefined and carelessly articulated a notable flaw in Rossini and Bellini. Intonation is another problem that has plagued this artist in all his recordings, but apparently not enough to be of any concern to him or to his producers. (The opening of "Oh sommo Carlo" is the most damaging example; it should not have been passed for release.) For those who cherish this sort of thing I should add that Mr. Manes caps the conclusion of his La Favorite aria with a high B-flat (!!), but the final note, alas, is a very unsteady F.
The vocal blessings, then, are mixed, but the contributions of orchestra, chorus, and supporting singers, especially the fine Cassio of John Dobson, are on a consistently high level under Silvio Varviso's lively direction, and the sound is exceptionally rich. G J.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
O VILANELLA--SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ITALIAN POPULAR MUSIC. Anon./Paco oni: La Gamba. Azzaiola/Phalese/Johnson: Chi passa per sta strada. Anon.: Dance Suite. Pacoloni/Azzaiola: Street Songs and Dances.
Anon./Nicholson: The Bergamasca. Lasso/ Adriensen: Madonna ma pieta. Ruffo: Fan tasias on Popular Tunes. Pacoloni/Ortiz: The Passamezzo A ntico. Waelrant: 0 Vilanella. Consort of Musicke, Anthony Rooley dir. 1:01SEAU-LYRE SOL 334 $5.98.
Performance: Thoroughly entertaining
Recording: Excellent
This intelligently conceived program revolves around a variety of popular sixteenth-century Italian tunes in a variety of settings and ar rangements. The album title is taken from Hubert Waelrant's O Vilanella (O little peasant girl), and its treatment provides an idea of the varied instrumentation throughout: it is first presented by four solo voices, then by two rebecs and two violins, and last by voices, two rebecs, two violins, and three lutes, a spectacular assemblage. Filippo Az zaiola's four-voice Chipassa per stastrada (Whoever walks along this road) similarly is presented in a vocal version, then in a two lute setting by Pierre Phalese, and again in an arrangement with violin divisions by John Johnson. All kinds of favorite tunes, serious as well as frivolous, are handled this way, a system that allows one to follow a popular bass pattern such as the Bergamasca, for in stance, and immediately recognize what would account for the popularity of any com poser's setting of it. The instrumental playing throughout is exceptionally lively and marvelously precise (the several pieces played on three lutes are especially delectable), and the voices are very accurate, though vibrato-less and dynamically rather flat. An exception to that style of singing, which admittedly is a controversial musicological affair, is the Las so madrigal, Madonna ma pieta (My lady, have mercy), which is quite beautifully rendered and is followed by another one of those intriguing settings for lute trio. The sound is excellent throughout, and L'Oiseau-Lyre has provided all the texts and translations as well as multilingual annotations. I.K.
VICTORIAN SONGS (see Best of the Month, page 85)
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THE AVANT-GARDE--A Pair to Draw To Reviewed
by Eric Salzman
EVERY once in a while in this business of reviewing records something unexpected turns up from an unexpected source.
Two unusual recordings that have just been released by a company that calls itself Opus One, for instance. Opus One operates out of Box 604, Greenville. Maine. and is run, no doubt, by charter subscribers of the Maine Times. More power to 'em.
One of Opus One's new discs contains three pieces by Frederic Rzewski, one of the most notable of the younger American composers. Rzewski, who lived and worked abroad for many years, has recently re turned to this country, and, following a period of involvement in improvisation, his work has undergone a rather remarkable change in the way of simplification, direct ness, and, as the French has it, engagement.
Two of the three pieces on this record use texts by inmates of Attica State Prison con nected with the 1971 uprising. A fragment of a letter by Sam Melville, written a few months before he was killed, describes the passage of prison time and the evolution of his life as a convict. The other text is a quote from Richard X. Clark on his release from Attica a few months afterwards, and I can't resist quoting it here. Asked how it felt to leave Attica behind him, he replied. " Attica is in front of me." Both texts, read (or in toned) by Steve ben Israel of the Living Theatre, are highly ritualized, with cycles of verbal-rhythmic repetition interwoven with long, intense tonal-rhythmic instrumental patterns. The result--if you stay with the long, seemingly endless shifting patterns of repetition--is evocative and moving.
Les Moutons de Panurge (Panurge and his sheep are characters in Rabelais' Gargon tua and Pantagruel) is a melodic piece built on a rhythmic cycle. Any number of instruments may play: they start out in unison un til-this is the twist-the stitchwork begins to come undone. Inevitably one player, then another and another, gets out of synch with the others, and they continue the pattern in a kind of heterophony without any attempt to get back in unison again. Since the first piece on this disc is called Coming Together. this one could be called "Coming Apart." It works very well as a percussion piece (I have heard it in a piano version I do not like as much), and it is very well performed here.
The recording, made at the University of Northern Illinois where the excellent Black earth Percussion Group is located, is a little dry, but the performance is catchy. The other performances are effective, particularly if you dig the very special quality of Steve ben Israel's narrations, and the recordings are okay.
Of the four works on the other Opus One disc, Joel Chadabe's Street Scene is the grabber. This unlikely combination of disparate elements-an electronic sound that bubbles and boils throughout, a jazz collage., a solo for English horn, and a reading of Feringhetti' s The Long Street-somehow makes a striking unity. In contrast to this unity out of variety, Daisy attempts variety out of unity: a single electronic sound in a state of programmed flux. The analogy to the programmed growth of a flower suggest ed by the title does not seem quite apt, for flowers have a complex functionality in their beautiful simplicity. Street Scene, although clearly an urban inflorescence, seems to me a better expression of a certain idea of growth. Good piece.
Newton Strandberg's Xerxes is an original and striking work for band. I don't know what the significance of the title is, but, like Street Scene, the piece is an ingenious collection of heterogeneous elements, including the singing and speaking voices of the players as well as extended instrumental possibilities. I'm not sure exactly how much of a unity is achieved in the end, and I'm not sure I care; I do know I like it very much.
Lawrence Moss' Evocation and Song is an attractive work for saxophone with multi ple tape tracks that the composer describes as jungle-bird sounds (although they don't come across to me as very true to life). The work was recorded in live-performance fashion in a recital hall; it might have come off better as a studio mix. Otherwise the four pieces in this collection are all very well performed and recorded.
What is especially nice about these two discs is that they are made up of new music that is distinguished by diversity and wit and that seems rooted in some kind of reality about living in America in the late twentieth century. Yet this is music that does not rely exclusively on the ultra-personal expressionist anguish that seems to characterize so much contemporary American art.
Both discs are well worth your attention.
RZEWSKI: Coming Together; Attica. Steve ben Israel (speaker); Karl Berger (vibraphone); Alvin Curran (synthesizer, piccolo trumpet); Jon Gibson (alto saxophone); Joan Kalish (viola); Garrett List (trombone); Frederic Rzewski (piano, electric piano); Richard Youngstein (bass). Les Moutons de Panurge. Blackearth Percussion Group.
OPUS ONE 20 $4.98 (from Opus One, Box 604, Greenville, Maine 04441).
CHADABE: Street Scene. Patricia Grignet (English horn); electronic tape. Daisy. Elec tronic tape. STRANDBERG: Xerxes. Sam Houston State University Concert Band, Huntsville, Texas, David Worthington cond. MOSS: Evocation and Song. George Etheridge (saxophone): electronic tape.
OPUS ONE 16 $4.98 (from Opus One, Box 604, Greenville. Maine 04441).
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