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BY R D DARRELL New Year's Resolutions usually demand either giving up things one likes but shouldn't or taking up things one doesn't like but should. Neither course is easy. but the latter does promise a slightly better chance of success. In any event, the arrival of the new year strikes me as an apt time for tackling a mounting stack of tapes devoted to a wide variety of "new" music for both conventional and electronic instruments. Bolstering my own courage (and I hope that of "Tape Deck" readers) with an inspirational paraphrase of Terence--"If I am a true audiophile, nothing sonic can be wholly alien to me!"--I've plunged in, and here are the results of my discoveries. If given a fair hearing, the best of this new music well may command the respect of even conservative listeners, for it is music which speaks with unmistakable authority and eloquence despite the strangeness of the tonal language. One may not "understand" many of these ' pieces, much less "like" them on first hearing; but one can recognize immediately that what the composer has written is genuinely meaningful, promising substantial rewards if one is willing to listen attentively, rehear frequently, and study sympathetically. And for such purposes, recorded tapes are ideal, especially when heard through headphones: a headset not only helps to focus one's aural attention. but also spares less sympathetic members of the family from overexposure to unfamiliar sonic idioms. Henze, Johnston, and Stockhausen. The most impressive discoveries for me are Hans Werner Henze's gripping Double Concerto for Oboe, Harp, and Strings (1966) and vitally expressive Sonata (or Strings (1957-58). Also included is a more easily assimilable, if more superficial, Fantasia for Strings (1966). All three works are admirably played by the Collegium Musicum of Zurich under Paul Sacher and recorded with extraordinary sonic richness and warmth (Deutsche Grammophon /Ampex EX+ 7 1/2-ips reel C 9396. $7.95). Another persuasively eloquent work. despite its highly sophisticated use of the microtonal idiom. is Ben Johnston's Second String Quartet (1964). The appealing, highly skilled performance by the Composers Quartet will undoubtedly be overshadowed by its coupling. a shortened version of the notorious HPSCHD for three harpsichords and computer-produced tape materials by John Cage and Lejaren Hiller (Nonesuch /Ampex 3 3/4-ips reel E 1224, $4.95). This bold multimedia work may well he quite spectacular in its full five-hour live performance; but in the twenty-one-minute tape reduction, I found its extremely busy piping, popping, fluttering, buzzing, and clattering only mildly amusing. I was rather annoyed by the failure of the tape edition to include the additional computer print-out instructions promised on the box cover and actually supplied with the disc edition. Unfortunately, a similar dearth of annotation is only too common with open-reel (and cassette) releases, while no notes of any kind are ordinarily supplied with endless-loop cartridge tapings. One notable exception is my third outstanding example of major new works: Karlheinz Stockhausen's dramatically active Gruppen for three orchestras (1955-57) which, coupled with the same composer's Carré for four orchestras and four choruses of 1960, I reviewed last August in its open-reel edition. It's now also available in an imported cassette (DGG 921022. $6.95) and an Ampex-produced 8-track cartridge (M 87002. $6.95). Starting Out for the Far-Out. Listeners with a sense of humor may well respond to Lukas Foss's Baroque Variations, rather ribald avant-garde variations on themes by Handel, Domenico Scarlatti, and Bach. The borrowed materials are chopped up and mixed with some highly spiced interpolations by Foss, who helpfully enhances the digestibility of the concoction by his virtuoso performance with the Buffalo Philharmonic. The coupling, Cage's Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra (with Yuji Takahashi as soloist), appears to he a more synthetic mosaic of odd bits and pieces: nevertheless. it has a wistful, palely oriental atmosphere which I found by no means unpleasantly hypnotic (Nonesuch /Ampex 7 1/2-ips reel E 1202. $4.95: 8-track cartridge M 81202, $6.95). Foss and his Buffalo musicians have also bravely tackled far more difficult scores by two leading European experimentalists: Akrala and Pithoprakta by Xenakis, Capriccio for Violin and Orchestra (starring Paul Zukofsky), and De Natura Sonoris by Penderecki (Nonesuch /Ampex 3 3/4-ips reel F. 1201; 8-track cartridge M 81201). Also from Nonesuch, which has become extremely active in this field. arc two large-scale works for electronic synthesizer commissioned from Morton Subotnik (of earlier Silver Apples of the Moon fame) and Andrew Rudin. Subotnik uses a Buchla-built instrument for the relatively orthodox but often quite impressive tonal effects in Tin IVi /d Bull. which is based on an ancient Sumerian poem. Rudin uses the better-known Moog instrument in his four-movement Tragoedia, which is also inspired by ancient literature, in this case Greek drama. Both works, like so many of their kind, seem to exhaust the potentials of their basic materials rather early in the game; but the ideas themselves often are distinctive and the working-out can sometimes be genuinely exciting. Both are released in $4.95 reel and $6.95 8-track cartridge editions (Subotnik: E 1208 and M 81208; Rudin: E 1198 and M 81198). Modern No More. After hearing a good sampling of what may or may not be the music of the future, one unexpected reward for such violent stretching of aural sensibilities may be an increased appreciation for the relatively mellifluous dissonances of earlier modernists. In any case, one may well detect hitherto unrealized "classical" virtues in the first tape editions of Prokofiev's Seventh and Eighth Piano Sonatas, entrancingly played by Ashkenazy; the pianist is even more poignantly eloquent in the composer's own arrangements of two movements from the Romeo and Juliet ballet music. The recording is admirably clean, but rather close and not particularly bright ( London /Ampex EX+ 7 1/2-ips reel L 80213, $7.95). Another, less distinguished but undeniably more popular, aspect of Prokofiev dominates the first tape edition of his Op. 110 suite of waltzes drawn from his Cinderella ballet, War and Peace opera, and Lermontuv film score. They are given an appropriately romantic treatment by Rozhdestvensky and the Moscow Radio Symphony; the same artists, however, bring much more gusto to Janácek's infectiously vital Sinfonietta (Melodiya/ Angel 3 3/4-ips reel YIS 40075, $6.98)--a version superior in terms of sheer élan, if inferior in orchestral precision, to Szell's October 1966 taping for Columbia. Another former Russian enfante terrible, Shostakovich, and his onetime shocking Seventh Symphony (Leningrad) with its infamously repetitive and intentionally vulgar march tune in the first movement, no longer seems as hard on one's ears and nerves as many concertgoers and discophiles once found it. Yevgeny Svetlanov's reading is earnestly vigorous if not particularly eloquent, but the Russian recording of this first tape edition is outstandingly natural and expansive as well as robustly muscular (Melodiya /Angel 3 3/4-ips reel Y2S 4107, double-play, $9.98). ------------- (High Fidelity) Also see: CLASSICAL REVIEWS Sony / Superscope Model 630 Solid-State Stereo Tape System (ad, Jan. 1970) |