reviewed by:

ROYAL S. BROWN ABRAM CHIPMAN R. D. DARRELL PETER G. DAVIS SHIRLEY FLEMING ALFRED FRANKENSTEIN KENNETH FURIE CLIFFORD F. GILMORE HARRIS GOLDSMITH DAVID HAMILTON DALE S. HARRIS PHILIP HART PAUL HENRY LANG ROBERT C. MARSH ROBERT P. MORGAN CONRAD L OSBORNE ANDREW PORTER H. C. ROBBINS LANDON JOHN ROCKWELL PATRICK J. SMITH SUSAN THIEMANN SOMMER

BACH: Cantatas, Vol. 9. Boy soprano and alto from the Vienna Choir Boys; Paul Esswood, countertenor; Kurt Equiluz, tenor; Siegmund Nimsgern, baritone; Vienna Choir Boys, Chorus Viennensis; Vienna Concentus Musicus, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, cond. Walter Gampert, boy soprano; Rene Jacobs, countertenor; Marius van Altena, tenor; Max van Egmond, baritone; Hannover Boys Choir; Leonhardt Consort, Gustav Leonhardt, cond. TELEFUNKEN SKW 9, $13.96 (two discs, manual sequence).

BACH: Cantatas, Vol. 10. Boy soprano from the Vienna Choir Boys; Paul Esswood, countertenor; Kurt Equiluz, tenor; Ruud van der Meer, bass; Vienna Choir Boys, Chorus Viennensis; Vienna Concentus Musicus, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, cond. TELEFUNKEN SKW 10, $13.96 (two discs, manual sequence).

Vol. 9: Cantatas: No. 31. Der Himmel lacht. die Erde jubili ree; No. 32, Liebster Jesu. mein Verlangere; No. 33. At tain zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ'. No. 34, 0 ewiges Feuer. o Ursprung der Leibe. Vol. 10: Cantatas: No. 35. Geist und Seele wird verwirret; No. 36. Schwingt freudig euch em por; No. 37, Wer da glaubet und getauft wird; No. 38, Aus tiefer Not schrei' ich zu dir.

The latest installments of Telefunken's Bach cantata series keep its high standards intact. Vol. 9 is divided between performances of Harnoncourt's Vienna Concentus Musicus and the Leonhardt Consort, pro viding certain stimulating comparisons be tween Harnoncourt's robust baritone soloist (Siegmund Nimsgern) and Leonhardt's sweet-toned, less assertive one (Max van Egmond, who collaborates marvelously with the boy soprano in the jubilant "Gone Is .Sorrow" duet in No. 32), and between the smoother rhythmic flow of the first group and the more heavily accented, sometimes slightly laborious drive of the second.

The listener who takes these eight cantatas more or less at one sitting will find most of the pulse-quickening music in the first set: The triumphant spirit of trumpets-and-timpani scoring occurs in Nos. 31 and 34. For the rest, the soul-searching timbre of strings and/or oboes prevails, encompassing texts that dwell on themes of sorrow and suffering. Various movements of high individuality stand out: the second tenor aria of No. 36, where the soloist has his work cut out for him vis-à-vis a pair of busy oboes over which he must prevail (and does): the soprano/alto canon of No. 37; the anguished chromaticism of the fugal chorus opening No. 38: the terzetto (soprano, alto, bass) of the same cantata, curiously grip ping in the peculiar timbre of these combined voices.

The cantatas cover a broad compositional time span, from Weimar of 1715 (No. 31) through three Leipzig cycles of the mid-1720s to the reworking in the early 1740s of No. 34. first written as a wedding cantata in 1726. S.F. Um: Concertos for Three Harpsichords and Strings: in D minor, S. 1063: in C, S. 1064. Concerto for Four Harpsichords and Strings, in A minor, S. 1065. Karl Richter, Hedwig Bilgram, Iwona Ritterer, and Ulrike Schott, harpsichords; Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, cond. [Gerd Ploebsch, prod.] ARCHIV 2533 171, $7.98.

Richter's new recording of the Bach concertos for three and four harpsichords is among the best available but not, it seems to me, up to his own standards.

Ensemble playing is polished and assured; tempos are appropriately brisk. However, that dramatic intensity for which Richter has long been famous has been drastically subdued here in favor of rich, luscious string sound. It is a very attractive sound, and some listeners may actually prefer it to the leaner textures of the Leonhardt performances (in his five-disc set of all the harpsichord concertos, Telefunken SCA 25); I prefer the more incisive playing of Leonhardt's group and miss the intensity of many of Richter's earlier Bach recordings. Still, this is a welcome addition to the catalogue.

C.F.G.

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Explanation of symbols

Classical:

B Budget

H Historical

R Reissue

Recorded tape:

@@ Open Reel

[8] 8-Track Cartridge

** Cassette

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[B] BACH: Flute Works. Jean-Pierre Rampal, flute; Robert Veyron-Lacroix, harpsichord; Jordi Savall, viola da gamba. RCA RED SEAL CRL 3-5820, $13.98 (three discs, automatic sequence).

Sonatas for Flute and Harpsichord: No. 1, in B minor, S. 1030; No. 2, in E flat, S. 1031; No. 3, In A, S.1032. Sonatas for Flute and Continuo: No. 1, in C, S. 1033; No. 2, in E minor, S. 1034; No. 3, in E. S. 1035. Sonata for Violin or Flute and Harpsichord, in G minor, S. 1020. Sonata for Solo Flute, in A minor, S. 1013. Sonata for Flute, Violin, and Continuo, in G, S. 1038 (with Robert Gendre, violin). Sonata for Two Flutes and Continuo, in G, S. 1039 (with Alain Marion, flute). Partite for Lute, in C minor, S. 997.

The basic Bach solo-flute repertory of the six sonatas S. 1030/5 usually is augmented by the unaccompanied sonata (or partita) S. 1013 and sometimes also by the very early (c. 1703) S. 1020 sonata for flute or violin and continuo. Over the years, there have been several first-rate recorded collections, notably the 1955 mono set by Wummer and Valenti for Westminster and the still in-print 1965-66 Shaffer/Malcolm stereo set for Angel. But those by Rampal and Veyron-Lacroix (first in mono for La Bofte a Musique and London/Ducretet-Thomson, later in stereo for Epic in 1963, currently reissued as Odyssey Y2 31925) always have been ranked close to if not at the top.

Their latest version has the added attractions--not only of gleamingly clean, up-to date, not oppressively close recording and an acoustical ambience more expansively open than is usual for chamber music, but also three works more than the standard eight. These are the somewhat meandering S. 1038 sonata for intertwined flute and violin (quite possibly the composition of a Bach student rather than the master him self) and the more distinctive, now plaintive, now bubbling S. 1039 sonata for two flutes, plus the more debatably pertinent, but delectable in its own right, S. 997 partita usually considered to have been intended either for lute or harpsichord solo.

A rich feast indeed--and everything is done with the familiar Rampal/Veyron Lacroix mastery of phrasing and tonal-coloring techniques. The deftly collaborating violinist in S. 1038 and flutist in S. 1039 are perhaps just a bit too modest in unobtrusively blending their parts with Rampal's, but violist Savall is more outspoken than most continuo gamba players. My only (quite minor) adverse criticisms are of some lack of personal involvement on Rampal's part and that the playing-in both style and smoothly contoured tonal coloring--is more characteristic of today's highest standards than those, undoubtedly less "perfect," of Bach's own time. Compare, for example, this beautifully restrained and polished performance of the greatest of all the flute works, S. 1030, with the recent more boldly personal and eloquently out spoken Holliger performance of the same music in a reconstructed oboe version. (Philips 6500 618). -R.D.D.

BACH: Organ Works. Michael Murray, organ (Von Beckerath organ of the First Congregational Church, Columbus, Ohio). ADVENT 5010, $6.98.

Preludes and Fugues: in D. S. 532; in B minor, S. 544. Toccata and Fugue in D minor. S. 565. Concerto No. 2, in A minor, S. 593. Cantata No. 29: Sinfonia.

Michael Murray arrived on the scene some months back with two superb records of French Romantic organ music [December 1974], played with surefire and exciting technique and a very attractive, no-non sense approach to the music. I find his first Bach record irresistible too, despite various reservations. Murray does not search for profound "inner meanings"; he seems equally unconcerned with Bach's ceaseless architectural master strokes and with the intricate matter of baroque performance practices. Nevertheless, his Bach renditions have tremendous surface appeal: His technique is dazzling, and he plays with wonderful energy and excitement, clean articulation, and an abundance of rhythmic drive.

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Critic's Choice

The best classical records reviewed in recent months:

• BACH: Sonatas, Partitas. Novotny. SUPR. 1 11 1 101 /3 (3), March.
• BARTOK: Concerto for Orchestra. Kubelik. DG 2530 479, May.
• BRAHMS: Symphony No. 1. Kertesz. LON. CS 6836, March.
• CHOPIN: Scherzos. Barbosa. CONN SOC. CSO 2071, March.
• FRANCK: Symphonic Variations; Liszt: Totentanz. Watts. COL. M 33072, April
• HANDEL: Cantata Lucretia; Arias. Baker. PHI. 6500 523, March.
• MAHLER: Symphony No. 4. Blegen, Levine. RCA ARL 1-0895, June.
• MOZART: Concertos Nos. 14-19. P. Serkin. RCA ARL 3-0732 (3), May.
• PRAETORIUS: Dances and Motets. Munrow. ANG. 5 37091, June.
• RAVEL: Piano Works. Simon. Vox SVBX 5473 (3), April.
• Schoenberg: Piano Works. Jacobs. NONE. H 71309, June.
• Schoenberg: Pierrot lunaire. Maxwell Davies. UNI. RHS 319, May.
• SCHUBERT: Piano Trios. Szeryng, Fournier, Rubinstein. RCA ARL 2-0731 (2). June.
• Schubert: Wanderer; Sonata, D. 845. Pollini. DG 2530 473, May.
• STRAUSS, R.: Last Songs; Death. Janowitz, Karajan. DG 2530 368, March.
• TCHAIKOVSKY: Sleeping Beauty. Previn. ANG. SCLX 381 2 (3), March.
• AFTER THE BALL. Morris, Bolcom. NONE. H 71304, March.
• CELLO SONATAS. Sylvester. DEsTo DC 7169, June.
• ENGLISH HARPSICHORD. Kipnis. ANG. SB 3816 (2), April.
• OBOE RECITAL. Holliger. PHI. 6500 618, June.

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^^^^^^ Robert Veyron-Lacroix ...

^^^^^^ ... and Jean-Pierre Rampal-a rich feast of Bach flute works.

The best performances are on Side 1: the famous D minor Toccata and Fugue and the A minor Vivaldi-Bach concerto. In both Murray sets very fast tempos and keeps them going without a suggestion of difficulty. There's scarcely any rhythmic inflection, even in the free fantasy sections of the toccata, but he uses the rhythmic regularity to build a tremendous amount of tension and excitement.

The D major Prelude and Fugue, taken somewhat less briskly, is only a bit above the ordinary. The B minor Prelude and Fugue has in common with Bach's other very late works the most profound emotional content expressed in the most complex musical structure. The music itself has great depth and comparatively little surface appeal, and Murray's style, at least at present, is the opposite.

All but one of the works here were re corded on a 1972 Von Beckerath tracker organ in Columbus, Ohio, with which Murray seems somewhat uncomfortable. He plays it 'with the surface touch of a player accustomed only to electric actions, seemingly insensitive to the more subtle possibilities of a mechanical action. The three-manual instrument has forty-six stops, dominated by two ranks of en chamade Spanish trumpets. The basically German classic design has cornets added to all three manual divisions, giving it a great deal of flexibility. It is not, however, a particularly distinguished instrument. Specifically, it has several badly scaled (or poorly regulated) ranks of high-pitched pipes, which destroy the cohesion of the full ensemble and give it a raucous, unrefined sound.

Murray also gives an ebullient reading of an organ transcription of the Sinfonia to Cantata No. 29 (complete with gradual closing and re-opening of the swell shutters. a la Virgil Fox). That performance is on the organ of St. Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana, the same instrument he used on his Franck disc. -C.F.G.

BEETHOVEN: Sonatas for Violin and Piano: No. 2, in A, Op. 12, No. 2: No. 9, in A, Op. 47 (Kreutzer). Itzhak Perlman, violin; Vladimir Ashkenazy, piano. LONDON CS 6845, $6.98.

This disc, the first installment in a complete cycle of the Beethoven violin sonatas. leaves the subtle but unmistakable impression of a piano-dominant partnership. It is not really a matter of loudness: the re corded balance is very considerate of both instruments. Rather Ashkenazy exerts an added measure of authority through minute control of musical character, delineation of phrases, articulation, and texture. He is completely responsive to sudden mood changes, to shifts among staccato, legato, and portamento. His incisive playing displays a constantly probing mind aware of all sorts of fine points often passed over in the average--or even above average--performance. For example, in the variation movement of the Kreutzer, the beginning of the coda is made more effective by the astute observance of both the sforzando and the forte that follows it in the reliable Henle urtext edition (some versions print only the sf)--a seemingly small point that nonetheless has a revelatory impact.

Perlman is a substantial virtuoso, but his playing is in the main just that bit more generalized than Ashkenazy's. The violin playing is muscular, musicianly, and straightforward, but overly reliant on a constant, plushy vibrato-lacking, in other words, the variety of color and intensity needed to match the incisiveness of the piano part.

Op. 12. No. 2. is beautifully worked out from an ensemble standpoint. The first movement, such an exciting scramble in the old Szigeti/Arrau version. is spectacularly together here. This is clean, direct, completely unpretentious music-making.

In the Kreutzer, I would welcome more fervor. (How many works, after all, have two Presto movements?) Even so, the Perl man/Ashkenazy version is anything but slow-footed and Brahmsian. There is bite to the sonority and ample vigor and classical contouring. Perlman and Ashkenazy also shun many of the bad habits of generations and generations of performers; they don't, for instance, anticipate the ritards in the third movement's second theme.

So if there must he a tinge of disappointment, it is at the highest level; I can imagine a Milstein or Kyung-Wha Chung matching Ashkenazy phrase for phrase. Still, this should be a fine series indeed. H.G.

BERG: Quartet for Strings, Op. 3; Lyric Suite. Alban Berg Quartet. TELEFUNKEN SAT 22549, $6.98. Comparison. LaSalle Quartet DG 2530 283.

The Alban Berg Quartet was founded in 1970 by four professors at the Vienna Hochschule fur Musik: the first and second fiddles were former concertmasters of, respectively. the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. They re solved to perform in every recital a piece by Berg, Schoenberg, Webern, or a contemporary composer. And for a year, according to a note on the sleeve of this record, these Viennese players went to Cincinnati to study interpretation and execution of the Second Vienna School with the LaSalle Quartet. The LaSalle's splendid album of the complete string-quartet works of Schoenberg. Berg, and Webern, for Deutsche Grammophon, was welcomed in these pages by David Hamilton. in March 1972. Some of it is also available separately: and one of the separate discs (2530 283) presents the same coupling-Berg's string quartet and Lyric Suite-as the Berg Quartet's record under review. The sleeve re marks that "it would be presumptuous to claim that at this stage the musicians from Cincinnati have already been surpassed." Nevertheless. I think perhaps they have been, in the performance of the string quartet. But not in the Lyric Suite. So neither disc is clearly preferable to the other. Both are first-rate recordings of first-rate performances.

Anyone who owns the Lyric Suite al ready in. say, the (recently deleted) Juilliard Quartet version may like to head for the Telefunken version of the quartet. The timbre of the LaSalle playing is bewitching--four beautifully matched musicians playing four beautifully matched Amati instruments. aristocrats in sound. in delicacy and finesse of phrasing, in the polish of their discourse. But in the Berg Quartet's interpretation of the work, the bones of the structure are somewhat nearer the surface, and that, it seems to me, is what the piece needs. Schoenberg, in the famous "testimonial" to his former pupil, wrote of "the fullness and unconstraint of the string quartet's musical language, the strength and sureness of its presentation, its careful working and significant originality." The slightly more robust, slightly more emphatic, slightly more vigorously rhythmical performance by the Viennese players emphasizes these qualities. Neither quartet, by the way, gives full romantic value to the portamento swoops asked for in the sehr ruhig and massig section of the finale.

And neither quartet, it seems to me, plays the first tenebroso section in the fifth movement of the Lyric Suite with quite the magical effect suggested by the score. The chords here are lapped like shadows cast upon shadows; the marking for each is ppp with a poco crescendo to p. but the players make rather bigger crescendos than that marking would suggest. Otherwise, I prefer the LaSalle version for its uncannily beautiful performance of the Allegro misterioso with its string writing that Elliott Carter would mark scorrevole (the Berg Quartet produces a slightly more sibilant rustle), and for the serenity and evenness of those wonderful final pages that succeed the big climax (the beauty of the LaSalle sound here is surely unsurpassable). Other small points of difference: The LaSalle's cellist, Jack Kirstein, begins the Adagio appassionato rather more expressively, but the Berg's cellist. Valentin Erben, begins the last movement, the Largo desolato, with a slightly heavier, and slightly more affecting, pianissimo tread.

It is interesting to note that, after the first performance of the Lyric Suite. Berg wrote to Schoenberg reporting, with pleasure, that there had been applause after each movement from the second on. Audience habits have changed. In the same letter, Berg gives the duration of his work as 30-35 minutes: the score suggests about 32; in both the recorded versions, the timing is about 26 minutes. A.P.

BERG: Three Orchestral Pieces, Op. 6; Three Pieces from the Lyric Suite. For a feature review, see page 61.

[B] BERG: Wozzeck.

[R] Marie Eileen Farrell (s) Margret Edwina Eustis (a) Manes Child Bess Ann Herdt (s) Wozzeck Mack Harrell (b) Drum Major Frederick Jagel (t) Captain. Soldier; Idiot Joseph Mordino (1) Andres David Lloyd (t) Doctor Ralph Herbert (b) 1st Apprentice Adolph Anderson (bs) 2nd Apprentice Hubert Norville (b)

High School of Music and Art Chorus; Schola Cantorum; New York Philharmonic, Dimitri Mitropoulos, cond. ODYSSEY Y2 33126, $6.98 (two discs, mono, automatic sequence) [from COLUMBIA SL 118, recorded at concert performances, April 1951].

Among the various operatic recordings on the Odyssey label that bear the rubric "Legendary Performances," this, I venture to say, is virtually the only one to deserve such an accolade. It wasn't the first American performance of Wozzeck; Stokowski did that back in 1931, a fully staged production in Philadelphia and New York, but the Depression and the war forestalled any significant consequences. The Mitropoulos concert performances twenty years later started a new cycle of appreciation for the work, especially when Columbia arranged to issue a recording, with the proceeds to benefit the orchestra's pension fund. For over a decade, this remained the only recording of Wozzeck, and can still be heard with pleasure and profit.

Most importantly, it is a "real performance"--that is, it conveys the presence of something really happening, with compelling force and immediacy. Mitropoulos certainly grasped the shape of the opera as well as any conductor ever to undertake it, and he drew from the Philharmonic much brilliant and remarkably accurate playing.

Mack Harrell, though short of voice for the lower notes of the title role, is thoroughly convincing in all its other phases, becoming more of a presence as the opera goes along and Wozzeck's agony tears apart his earlier mute suffering. Except for David Lloyd. a brilliant Andres, the others are all problematic in one way or another, with strong and weak points. Miss Farrell is often impressive, but frequently misses a comfortable and convincing articulation of her lines; she commits some decidedly approximate pitching here and there, including-rather endearingly--a couple of overly enthusiastic high Bs that top the mark by a semitone or more. In the upper part of the Captain's range, Joseph Mordino is almost fantastic, but he must compromise with the lower material, while Ralph Herbert has to do the opposite for the Doctor; what with these problems and some rough ensemble, the second scene of Act II (Wozzeck taunted by the Captain and Doctor) is per haps the least successful stretch of the performance.

But most of its goes with a galvanizing urgency that even the recording's limited dynamic range and sometimes awkward balances cannot dampen seriously. You will, naturally, hear much more detail on either of the full-priced stereo recordings (of which the Boulez is particularly notable for its extraordinary orchestral clarity and balancing, although the singers are equally notably for their laissez-faire approach to the notes). At half-price, though, the Mitropoulos makes a valuable supplement-or even, I think, a good introduction to Wozzeck for the timid. Its value for the latter is enhanced by the inclusion of a complete libretto and translation (which the original full-priced issue eschewed), along with as much of the late Herbert F. Peyser's Phil harmonic program notes as were (un-acknowledgedly) pillaged for use in the Boulez set. -D.H.

BONONCINI, GIOVANNI: Divertimenti da Cam era. Hans-Martin Linde, alto recorder; Eduard Muller, harpsichord; Konrad Ragossnig. lute; Josef Ulsamer, viola da gamba. [Klaus Scheibe and Andreas Holschneider, prod.] ARCHIV 2533 167, $7.98.

This is the Bononcini, often erroneously identified as Giovanni Battista (as even the usually reliable Archiv labels do here), who was born in 1670 and died in 1755 and who should not be confused with either his father, Giovanni Maria (1642-78), or brother, Antonio Maria (1675-1726). Perhaps most distinctively he is the man whose rivalry with Handel in London in the 1720s, one of the great feuds in music history, has been memorialized in a famous epigram by the contemporary Jacobite poet John Byrom: Some say, that Signor Bononcini, Compared to Handel's a mere ninny; Others aver, to him, that Handel Is scarcely fit to hold a candle Strange! that such high dispute should be 'Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Today's discophiles never have been given a fair chance to decide for themselves whether Byrom was as unfair to Bononcini as we know he was to Handel. Except for a few opera airs and a couple of suites plus No. 7 of the present divertimentos (the last three once included in a Montreal Trio col lection, "Music of the Italian Baroque," for Vox), the Archiv release is the first substantial representation of Giovanni's work I know. The music was published in London in 1722, only a couple of years after Bononcini had arrived in England following his operatic triumphs in Rome, Berlin. and especially Vienna. Not surprisingly, these works, more like sonate da camera than the suite-like divertimentos of later years, have considerable stylistic kinship with Handel's music--and in the Lento movement of No. 5 even a decidedly Handelian lyrical pathos. Nevertheless, there's a distinctive individuality evident here, scarcely boasting a protean genius comparable to Handel's, of course, but surely a music-maker of notably high talent with a gift not only for often genuinely eloquent Italian lyricism, but also for both ceremonial nobility and lilting vivacity.

But the varied delectabilities of Bononcini's music here owe a considerable debt to the zest and grace of the performances. In beautifully pure and natural recording, Hans-Martin Linde's playing is well-nigh ideal both tonally and interpretatively. He is admirably accompanied too, with the continuo parts effectively varied from the usual harpsichord/gamba combination to lute/gamba (in Nos. 2 and 4) and for one work (No. 7) to harpsichord/lute/gamba. -R.D.D.

BRAHMS: Ballades, Op. 10--See Schumann: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra.

BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 5, in B flat (ed. Nowak). Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Lorin Maazel, cond. LONDON CS 2238, $13.96 (two discs, automatic sequence).

Comparisons: Haitink/Concertgebouw Phi. 6700 055 Klemperer/New Philharmonic Ang. SB 3709 Even for a conductor of Maazel's unflappable professionalism, the Fifth is a pretty fearsome choice for a first Bruckner recording. Quite aside from the length, matched only by a slow performance of the Eighth, this score offers the conductor such challenges as smoothly integrating the alternate adagio and allegro speeds of the opening movement; managing the frequent four-against-six rhythm in the slow movement; gauging the Scherzo's now sudden, now gradual pickups of tempo between the two principal themes; holding a rock-steady beat in the finale, while making sure that all the permutations of scoring within which the two fugue subjects embed themselves are clearly heard.

^^^^^ Mitropoulos, Farrell, Jagel, and Lloyd--a legendary Wozzeck.

Maazel's concert performances last sea son with the Cleveland Orchestra, technically polished though they were, somehow failed to mesmerize, which made me all the more curious about the recording. I must begin by stating that, in its general level of musicianship and executant competence, it is far more satisfactory than London's ear-Tier effort with the Vienna Philharmonic Knappertsbusch's (Stereo Treasury STS 15121/2), which is in any case disqualified by its use of the Schalk brothers' butchery of the score. Furtwangler's VPO concert performance (Rococo 2034) is intriguing for its uncharacteristic driving dynamism and many expressive moments, but it is ragged and undisciplined and the sound is atrocious. Jochum's Fifth (DG 2707 020) is romantic and atmospheric, but it too is dis-jointed--in a work that depends on rigorous formal cohesion.

That leaves, in addition to Maazel, the quite different but magnificently played and recorded versions of Haitink and Klemperer. The London recording, to begin with, offers a more generalized orchestral perspective than the other two: Though wide in range and clean enough, the sound here does not allow the trombones and tubas to emerge with the crisp, snarling edge they have with Klemperer or to maintain individual timbre as they do in the tighter and more backward ambience of the Haitink version. Actual problems of execution and intonation are minor enough, and the string tone is perhaps the warmest and loveliest of all, but I find over and over that the Concertgebouw performance is more attentive to nuances of phrasing, dynamics, and articulation, while the New Philharmonia has been captured by EMI's engineers with more presence and transparency.

Maazel takes the first movement at a moderate pace. The changes from adagio to allegro are less mercurial and exciting than Haitink's. I'm sorry that Maazel overlooks the ritardando at bar 387, and I don't care for the crescendo he introduces from 45 to 50. At least he avoids the slowdown for the pizzicato theme, a trap into which Klemperer falls, leaving nowhere to go when ritards are called for.

In the slow movement, Maazel begins at hearty Klemperer's vigorous, and ante-like tempo. But unlike Klemperer, who kept up that pace, he broadens at letter B, where Bruckner marks sehr kraftig. He winds up taking almost as long as Haitink, with his broader basic tempo. Maazel is generally the most flexible of the three in this movement, coordinating the duple-against-triple meter as smoothly as Haitink and better than Klemperer. Unlike the others, Maazel phrases the ornamental turns that first occur at measure 47 as long notes rather than appoggiaturas.

In the Scherzo, he fails really to slow down for the second theme, missing the inimitable parodistic quality Klemperer achieves. Haitink doesn't leave himself room here to get back to the main tempo without speeding up drastically.

In the finale, Maazel overdoes a gearshift here, underplays one there. The brass introduction to the second (chorale) fugue subject is less steady and majestic than with Haitink and Klemperer. And the softening of detail is a particular problem in the big climax. Haitink's virtuosity remains un matched, though he almost runs away with himself in the contrapuntally developed passages. Klemperer, at a broad but inexorable clip, achieves enormous cumulative power to match his richly detailed texture; that is one of the most roof-raising climaxes I know of on an orchestral recording.

A.C. CHOPIN: Sonata for Piano, No. 2, in B flat minor, Op. 35; Scherzo No. 2, in B flat mi nor, Op. 31; Andante spianato and Grande polonaise brillante, Op. 22. Martha Argerich, piano. [Rainer Brock, prod.] DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 2530 530, $7.98.

Martha Argerich's tempestuous, even rashly aggressive recording of the Chopin B minor Sonata (DG 139 317) prepared me for a similar approach to the far more dramatic B flat minor. And yet she sounds relatively cool and collected this time! The over-all effect calls to my mind the venerable recordings of Rachmaninoff (Victrola VIC 1534 or RCA ARM 3-0294) and Cortot (his earlier, better one, never transferred to LP), though the treatment of detail is different and of course the approach is thoroughly modern in its respect for the composer's written indications. It is largely a matter of timing and pedaling: In the "wind over the grave" finale, Argerich's command is fantastic, giving a large, spanning conception with individual notes hound together into screaming siren wails.

A certain spookiness pervades the first three movements too, but never to the detriment of poetry or structure. The leaps in the scherzo are unfailingly strong and accurate.

This is definitely one of the most absorbing (and masterfully played) readings of this demanding sonata to come my way recently. Argerich, incidentally, takes the famous funeral march rather swiftly and begins the return of the first section at the prescribed soft dynamic.

The Andante spianato and Grande polonaise gets a rather angular, deliberate reading. The pedaling is spare, the colors sober; again structural articulation is uppermost. I have heard brighter, more rippling performances of this early work, but Argerich, by underplaying the salonish qualities, man ages to endow the piece with impressive intellectual weight and stature.

The B flat minor Scherzo is one of the most Beethovenesque of Chopin's works; it tends to he built up with motivic figurations and dynamic contrasts. Argerich navigates a rather severe course in the middle section, where many players broaden out rhetorically, but conversely she could have kept the line of the opening melody longer and more urgently directional. For me she doesn't fully project the magnificent power and severity of this scherzo.

Argerich plainly has her own view of these oft-played works, and her assured, completely natural pianist ic command, her lyrical instinct, her glistening passagework are completely musical and a pleasure to hear. H.G.

Dvorak: Mass in D (original version). Neil Ritchie, boy soprano; Andrew Giles, boy alto; Alan Byers, tenor; Robert Morton, bass; Nicholas Cleobury, organ; Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford; Simon Preston, cond. [Michael Bremner, prod.] ARGO ZRG 781, $6.98.

Comparison: Smetridek /Prague Sym. Supr. 1 120981/2 Dvorak composed this Mass for the consecration of a private chapel, where it was premiered in 1887 in the organ--accompanied form here recorded by Argo. For its publication in 1892, Dvorak orchestrated the Mass, and that version can be heard on Smetatek's Supraphon recording (which features the same conductor, chorus, and orchestra as, but different soloists from, an earlier Musica Sacra recording).

Both versions have staunch adherents. I find that the orchestration adds little to the Gloria, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei, while some of the woodwind writing in the Kyrie and the brass effects there and in the Credo are impressive and touching. But that's not the only difference between the two recordings.

Argo uses boy soloists for the soprano and alto parts, yielding a more celestial and sweet sound, with occasional pitch imprecision, in contrast with the lustier and more professionally polished quality of Supraphon's female soloists.

Each reading is devoted and stylish in its own way, and both have spacious sonics, with Argo's perhaps more close up and translucent. There is no dearth of bass response in either, the organ registering quite imposingly in both (it still has a part to play in the orchestral version).

^^^^ Martha Argerich Completely musical.

The work itself is by and large rather sober and austere. The Dvorak of the sym phonies and Slavonic Dances, the tone poems and concertos, even the mature chamber masterpieces, rarely emerges.

Many of Dvorak's other sacred works are more characteristic: the Stabat Mater and Requiem, with their vein of heartrending lyricism; the Te Deum, with its super charged vitality and abandon; the enormously dramatic oratorio St. Ludmila, with its expressive range and grandeur. The Smetadek reading of this Mass shares a two-disc set with the Te Deum, Psalm 149, and the five Biblical Songs. That album and Supraphon's St. Ludmila (SUAST 50585/7) deserve highest consideration for domestic release by Vanguard. A.G.

Gesualdo: Nine responsories and other chants marking Holy Saturday. Prague Madrigal Singers, Miroslav Venhoda, cond. TELEFUNKEN SAWT 9613, $6.98.

Don Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa (c. 1560-1613), is best known for his six books of five-voice madrigals (147 in number) and especially for the later ones in which he experimented with unique, bold, and-even today-startling chromatic phrases. Besides these secular works, he also published two books of Sacrae Cantiones in 1603 (one of the books survives only in incomplete form) and a book of Responsoria et alia ad Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae Spectantia in 1611, the same year that saw the publication of the fifth and sixth books of madrigals.

The twenty-seven six-voice responsories, plus a psalm and a canticle, con tained in this late publication have a strictly liturgical function. On certain of the more important church holy days, for which the daily liturgy has retained its full form, the Office of Matins is divided into three nocturnes. Each of the nocturnes in cludes three readings or scriptural lessons, and each of these lessons is followed by a sung responsory, the text of which is partly Biblical and partly free verse. The texts of Gesualdo's twenty-seven responsories are those for the three nocturnes of Matins in Tenebrae (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday). This new Valois/Telefunken disc makes available for the first time the third group of nine, proper to the three nocturnes of Matins of Holy Saturday, plus the psalm and the canticle.

The Gregorian responsories all consist of two sections, the respond (sung by the choir) and the verse (soloist or soloists), after which the respond is repeated either complete or, more often, from some mid point. Gesualdo followed this structure precisely in each of his polyphonic settings, even frequently reducing the normal six-voice texture of the respond to fewer voices in the verse. The boldly expressive chromaticism of his late madrigals is employed in the same manner and to about the same degree in these works, the expressiveness here illustrating the story of Christ's Passion, with which these three most solemn days of the Christian year are concerned.

As a kind of addendum to the publication, Gesualdo included six-voice poly phonic settings of Psalm 50 (Miserere mei) and a canticle (Benedictus Dominus Deus Israel). Both are proper to the Office Hour of Laudes on all three days in Tenebrae. In both cases Gesualdo has followed the tradition of setting only the odd-numbered verses, leaving the alternate verses to be chanted to the appropriate psalm tone. The two pieces are performed in that manner on this recording, and the proper antiphons are even included before and after the psalm and canticle (0 mors with Miserere, and Mulieres sedentes with Benedictus).

I wish I could be as enthusiastic about the actual performances here as about the music and the over-all production. The Prague Madrigal Singers number twenty one singers on this recording. Their conductor, Miroslav Venhoda, obviously has good ideas and a good understanding of the mu sic, but his vocalists simply can't deliver what he is calling for. The group is a collec tion of "mature" voices, to say the least, and, while we can't accuse them of having wobbles, we can complain that they sing with too much vibrato and too much porta mento, leaving the pitch frequently vague and imprecise. In any polyphonic music this can be harmful, but in Gesualdo's chromatic music, which is so difficult to tune anyway, the ambiguous intonation is disastrous. The ensemble of the group is also less than precise.

In view of the excellence and interest of the music and the unlikelihood of another recording in the near future, I will recommend this one anyway. We need recordings of the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday segments before we ask for a new recording of this group.

The recorded sound is fairly good, though individual singers with unattractive voices are miked rather too closely. The jacket notes include complete Latin texts but no translations.

-C.F.G.

LEKEU: Sonata for Violin and Piano, in G.

VIEUXTEMPS: Ballade et Polonaise, Op. 38.

Ysivi E: Reve d'enfant, Op. 14. Arthur Grumiaux, Dinorah Varsi, piano. PHILIPS 6500 814, $7.98.

There was a good idea behind the programming of this recital: three Belgian composers performed by a Belgian violinist. The composers, moreover, are related to each other in hierarchical fashion, Vieuxtemps having taught Ysaye, who in turn was a mentor of Guillaume Lekeu (1870-1894). The trouble is, three-quarters of the disc is consumed by the Lekeu sonata, an arch-Roman tic piece awash in luxuriant melody that never seems to get anywhere, fulsomely scored in the piano part, broad, rhetorical, and interminable. Lekeu, who wrote the sonata at twenty-two and died of typhoid at twenty-four, might have tightened up his style eventually; but the piece made me feel as if I were swimming in oatmeal.

The Ysaye is short, gentle, and slightly Debussy-ish; the Vieuxtemps, thank heavens, is first lean and spare, then (in the Polonaise) genuinely brilliant, diverting, and direct in its grandstand gestures. Vieuxtemps knew just where he was going.

Grumiaux performs the works in a rich and generous manner, as is his wont, and Miss Varsi is thoroughly up to the demands made on her, which are considerable. S.F.

[B] LISZT: Dante Symphony. Psallette de Lorraine Vocal Ensemble; Luxemburg Radio Orchestra, Pierre Cao, cond. CANDIDE OCE 31082, $4.98 (OS-encoded disc).

Liszt's two symphonies were written in the same period, with the composition of the Dante score falling between the beginning and the final revision of the more familiar Faust Symphony. Those who admire that work should find much to please them in this one, for they are very much alike: ro bustly Romantic scores, more tone poems than symphonies on classical models, that are alternately dramatic, erotic, pious, and exotic in the Lisztian manner (with occa sional Wagnerian overtones). In any well conducted Romantic revival the Dante Symphony would return to the repertory, and this recording may assist that process since it puts the work in the catalogue in a thoroughly effective and sympathetic statement that is enhanced by good use of four-channel techniques. (My, what a splash Liszt's orchestration makes when you have drum rolls ominously replying to low brass across the room!) The first movement ("Inferno") might well have been the model for Tchaikovsky's Francesco do Rimini. In tripartite form, it places an extended outpouring of Lisztian love music between two statements of the hell-fire and brimstone themes. The "Purgatory" music is quite sentimental and very pretty in a manner of cultivated prettiness. (Hell is really more interesting.) The final "Magnificat" recalls Liszt's other religious music. Heaven reveals itself in carefully graded shades of mauve and puce. There is a large satin divine throne, and the saints and martyrs have all become beautiful people. Still, it's done with a flair.

If you want to know what the nineteenth century was all about, this record helps a great deal. R.C.M.

Win: Sonata for Piano, in B minor; Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6, in D flat. Alexander Slobodyanik, piano. COLUMBIA / MELODIYA M 33119, $6.98.

Slobodyanik gives very freewheeling performances, with plenty of technique and aristocratic phrasing. He never abuses his instrument: He pedals sparingly and re fuses to batter dramatic passages senseless.

Nevertheless, there is something slightly monochromatic about the (very good) sonority he draws from his piano. Melodic strands are clear enough, but rarely do they spring to life with the vivifying impact of the Richter, Arrau, Curzon, and Cortot performances of the sonata. Nor does the rhapsody, played with grace and velocity, pro duce the awesome, massive impact of Horowitz's touched-up reading (RCA LM 2584, mono).

---------- Murray Perahia Subtle and precise Mendelssohn

Still, my chief complaint has nothing to do with Slobodyanik. I find it difficult at this late date to recommend an edition of the continuous Liszt sonata with a side break. The sonata could easily have been offered complete on Side 1, with the rhapsody plus additional material on Side 2. Columbia's layout is musically damaging (is that what the LP is for?) as well as poor value. -H.G.

MASSENET: Manon.

Manon Des Grew( Lescaut Coury des Grieux Janine Micneau (s) Lthero de Luca (t) Roger Bourdin (b) Julien Giovanetti (bs)

Opera-Comique Chorus and Orchestra, Albert Wolff. cond. RICHMOND RS 63023, $10.47 (three discs, mono, automatic sequence) [from LONDON LLA 7, 1952, and A 4305, 1957].

Comparisons:

Sills. Gedda. Rude! ABC ATS 20007 De los Angeles. Legay. Monteux Sera. ID 6057.

It's hard to see to whom this reissue is ad dressed. Those whose primary interest is the opera itself will gravitate to the Ruder recording, which is well cast, sonically up to date, and uncut. Those who are attracted to elegance (or are budget-minded) will opt for the Monteux.

Perhaps the Richmond set is designed to appeal to those with a nostalgia for European broadcasts of a quarter-century ago. Not that this Manon derives from a broad cast. It simply sounds like one, having been furnished with the sort of benign commentator who once upon a time used to mediate between listeners and performance by setting the scene and explaining the action-particularly during those passages when the orchestra alone was playing. (It is possibly to accommodate this additional role that the score has been so heavily cut.)

The performance itself is pleasing enough; it achieves the level you might have encountered on a good night at the Opera-Comique around 1950. Albert Wolff keeps everything deft. Janine Micheau lacks allure, but she is an affecting Manon and is more idiomatic than either Sills (ABC) or De los Angeles (Seraphim). The Swiss tenor Libero de Luca has a decent enough voice but is off pitch a lot of the time. Roger Bourdin, however, is a first-rate Lescaut. The small roles are convincingly done, and the orchestra and chorus are creditable. Text and translation, including the narrator's role.

- D.S.H.

MENDELSSOHN: Concertos for Piano and Orchestra: No. 1, in G minor, Op. 25; No. 2, in D minor, Op. 40. Murray Perahia, piano; Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. [Andrew Kazdin, prod.]

COLUMBIA M 33207, $6.98. Quadriphonic: MO 33207 (SQ-encoded disc), $7.98; MAO 33207 (0-8 cartridge), $7.98.

Comparison: Serkin, Ormandyi Philadelphia Col. MS 6128

It is often noted that Mendelssohn's famous E minor Violin Concerto (1844), by dispensing with the opening tutti exposition and presenting the initial theme straightaway on the violin, helped revitalize the concertante idiom, which had been faltering since the days of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto (1809) and, to a lesser extent, the diverse concert ante works of Weber. Yet the Mendelssohn piano concertos are in most ways every bit as innovative.

The G minor begins, after a short, nervous introduction in the orchestra, with an immediate statement on the piano of the opening thematic material, and it is like wise the piano that introduces the calmer and more unified second theme. While the orchestra has a more important role at the beginning of the D minor Concerto, it by no means gives a complete statement of the main themes before the piano returns. Both concertos feature a fairly equal interplay between piano and orchestra in the first-movement expositions, in which repetition is an element of the thematic structure and development (notice how many of Mendelssohn's melodic fragments are repeated immediately, either literally or in sequence) and not of the form. Furthermore, in both works Mendelssohn solves the cadenza problem by simply eliminating it altogether.

But the amputation of the cadenza is by no means a copout. Perhaps because of the innate difference between the piano sound and that of the instruments of the classical orchestra, Mendelssohn tends to use the solo instrument as a different element of the orchestral sound, thereby integrating it with the orchestra in a much more thorough fashion than perhaps had ever been done before; a cadenza would have tended to un balance the works. And one is struck, in listening to these concertos (especially in the outer movements), by surprisingly frequent changes in configuration in the solo instrument-vs-orchestra relationship. Compare this with the style of the two Chopin piano concertos, written slightly earlier (in 1829 and 1830).

Perhaps as a consequence of this piano-orchestra integration, these works often lack that solid, lyrical flow one comes to expect from the Romantic concerto. But it seems to me that the composer more than makes up for this by the exhilarating sense of drama and movement he creates not only through the soloist-orchestra structures, but also in his harmonic language, which constantly establishes an atmosphere of expectation. What the listener finally ends up with is the impression of an integral, highly dynamic, rather non-Romantic structure particularly resistant to the isola tion of its individual parts.

I have heard no performer capture the drama and tension of these concertos as thoroughly as Rudolf Serkin, whose recording is marked by strikingly brisk pacing and by an exceptionally full and rich accompaniment by the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Yet, as Harris Goldsmith once pointed out, the Serkin renditions lack-although not entirely, to my mind-an essential Mendelssohnian lightness and grace. And while I would not be without his interpretations, there is certainly room for the much more idiomatic approach of Murray Perahia and Neville Marriner, who sacrifice little to Serkin in terms of pacing and briskness but do clear up the storm clouds from time to time and allow milder breezes to blow.

Compare, for instance, the simple, unobtrusive way Marriner and his excel lent orchestra present the opening theme of the D minor Concerto's second movement with the almost overwhelmingly dolce pose of Ormandy and the Philadelphians. Or compare the definition and leaflike softness of Perahia's figuration to Serkin's magnificently phrased, all-in-one-piece runs. In the present recording, both soloist and conductor seem to make a constant effort to avoid overstatement and to maintain a structurally reasonable dynamic relation ship both between the piano and the orchestra and between the diverse episodes of the musical development.

Occasionally, Marriner becomes a bit too dry as in parts of the G minor's first movement. And I am less than fond of the lifeless impression left by Perahia's playing of those ever-so-typical Mendelssohn scherzando chords used in the opening theme of the D minor's finale. But, considering the fine recorded sound and the subtlety, precision, and idiomatic transparency of the performances, Columbia's second round with the Mendelssohn piano concertos makes a perfect complement to its Serkin/Ormandy Round 1.

R.S.B.

MOZART: Concertos for Horn and Orchestra. Hermann Baumann, valveless horn Vienna Concentus Musicus, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, cond. TELEFUNKEN SAWT 9627, $6.98.

Concertos: No. 1. in D, K. 412; No. 2. in E flat, K. 417; No 3. in E flat, K. 447; No. 4, in E flat. K. 495.

Most Mozarteans who share my conviction that the horn concertos are the most rousingly invigorating of all his "occasional" works probably have been won over by the now nearly legendary recordings starring that prodigally gifted, traically short-lived virtuoso Dennis Brain, still in print as Angel 35002. (A few veterans among us go back a couple of decades earlier, making their delighted first acquaintance with a Mozart horn concerto as played by Dennis' father, Aubrey Brain.) But there have been many other worthy recordings in recent years of the standard four works, sometimes augmented by one or two additional fragments. The Brain/Karajan version aside, the preferred choice today is a tossup between the 1972 Tuckwell/Marriner set (Angel S 36840) and the 1973 Civil/ Marriner set (Philips 6500 325); but not far behind are earlier versions by Tuckwell and Civil (with, respectively, Maag and Klemperer, London CS 6403 and Angel S 35689), and also the 1965 Jones/Ormandy (Columbia MS 6785) and 1961 Linder/ Swarowsky (Vanguard Everyman SRV 173 SD) versions.

One thing none of these gives us (except Mason Jones, but only in the Rondo of K. 412) is the sound of the instrument Mozart actually wrote for: the natural (i.e., un valved) horn. And while no one is likely to claim that the older instrument is prefer able to its successor, no one can deny that it was tonally different, partly as a result of the crook changes required for every key change, but mostly because of the compass limitations and the necessity for bringing certain notes into tune by the adroit use of the player's hand in the horn bell, inevitably involving some tone-muffling. Hence it's a matter of considerable interest to Mozarteans to hear what these concertos sound like not only from a specialist virtuoso playing a c. 1800 natural horn, but also as accompanied by an appropriately small orchestra (fourteen strings, eight winds) made up entirely of period-instrument players.

The results are arrestingly successful as far as soloist Hermann Baumann is concerned: He's master of fine big, boomy horn-tone qualities; he's amazingly skilled at achieving as homogeneous a blend of open and stopped tones as is humanly possible; and he brings an infectious bluff, swaggering, personal relish to his performances. His own cadenzas for the Third and Fourth Concertos are admirably in keeping except for the anachronistic introduction of a double-note chord or two-or did any player of Mozart's time, such as his friend Leutgeb, know this trick of playing one note while singing another into the horn? Apart from the solos, cleanly open recording, and smooth-surfaced disc processing, however, there is more here to repel than to attract non-historically minded listeners. The old string instruments tend to sound wiry-toned or even shrill-toned in loud upper-register passages. Worse, conductor Harnoncourt is nervously tense throughout, "leaning" too heavily on ac cents, too often pressing tempos, too often jerkily or surgily expressive. Too bad--Baumann, to say nothing of Mozart, deserves better.

R.D.D.

--------- Victoria de los Angeles Povera Butterfly

PUCCINI: Madama Butterfly.

Cio-Clo-San Suzuki Pinkerton Goro Sharpless Victoria de los Angeles (s) Anna Maria Canal! (ms) Giuseppe di Stefano (t) Renato Ercolani (t) Tito Gobbi (b) Rome Opera Chorus and Orchestra, Gianandrea Gavazzeni, cond. SERAPHIM IC 6090, $11.94 (three discs, mono, automatic sequence) [from RCA VICTOR LM 6121, 1955, and CAPITOL GCR 7137, 1959].

Time does odd things to one's ears. Listening to this Butterfly after more than a decade, I find that the singing of Victoria de los Angeles, which once seemed exceptionally beautiful to me, begins to sound unnervingly mannered. I can only suppose that, bemused by the glorious quality of the soprano's middle register-uniquely caressing in timbre, rich, wonderfully liquid-one did not in those days notice so quickly the tricky use of slightly flat intonation, a de vice also much employed at the time by Viennese singers like Irmgard Seefried, to create dramatic emphasis. Today, unfortunately, the effect smacks less of vivid characterization than of coyness and sentimentality. The result is that De los Angeles' Butterfly fails to convince one of its sincerity. Matters are not helped by the soprano's hard-driven top register, a constant technical problem throughout her career, or by her rather placid temperament, which pre vents her from committing herself to the full emotionalism of the final scene.

Tito Gobbi, too, is very disappointing.

Like De los Angeles, he falls back far too readily on the device of flatness, and a lot of his vocal acting brings him dangerously close to parlando. His characterization of Sharpless, moreover, is singularly unattractive in its loud, monotonous sternness, especially in the scene with Butterfly in Act II, where a certain amount of tenderness and delicacy is surely called for.

Giuseppe di Stefano, on the other hand, sounds splendid. Time has done nothing to diminish the mastery of this Pinkerton: vocally golden, spontaneous, and youthful, thoroughly and convincingly characterized. The minor parts are idiomatically done. Gianandrea Gavazzeni leads a competent, unardent performance.

Text and translation, the latter a "singing" version and therefore only approximate.

D.S.H.

RACHMANINOFF: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, No. 2, in C minor, Op. 18; Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43; Prelude in C sharp minor, Op. 3, No. 2. Iiana Vered, piano; New Philharmonia Orchestra, Andrew Davis, cond. (in the concerto); Lon don Symphony Orchestra, Hans Vonk, cond. (in the Rhapsody). [Tony D'Amato, prod.] LONDON PHASE-4 SPC 21099, $6.98.

The biggest question here is technological: Unlikely as it would seem, especially for so sound-conscious a label, the 37:35 Rachmaninoff 2 nd concerto has been accommodated on a single side.

A little proviso says that although there is "no loss of sound quality ... you may find it necessary to increase your volume control slightly." Even if the claim is not entirely fulfilled, the results are pretty tolerable. The piano is sonorous enough and the signal-to-noise ratio good enough to with stand the necessary decibel boost. Nonetheless one has only to sample the overside Paganini Rhapsody to hear the ill effects of London's overcrowding. The concerto lacks the Rhapsody's finely etched detail, the spacious expansiveness, the comfortably wide dynamic range. Some of the blame undoubtedly traces back to the original recording and mixing, for the recorded balance has the piano far to the front with the orchestra relegated to painted-backdrop generality.

Vered is not the most disciplined of pianists, and certain notorious "hot spots" in the concerto sound either a shade over extended (the first-movement development) or simplified (the third movement's first theme). She also tends toward percussiveness in forte passages and favors a rather garish type of rubato phrasing. The concerto's alla marcia first-movement reprise, for example, is subjected to an overemphasized hauling about, and more than a few of the best-known melodic bits are rather lavishly smeared with straw berry jam.

On the whole, however, I rather enjoyed Ms. Vered's approach to all three works.

She has flair, communicativeness, a truly atmospheric pianissimo (which she employs at least as frequently as, and to far better purpose than, her unpleasant fortissimo). The early C sharp minor Prelude is especially finely conceived. I found the ending, with its simulated tolling of bells, particularly affecting.

Both young conductors provide impressive, controlled, and unpretentiously de tailed frameworks. Rachmaninoff's sentiment and tonal coloration receive their due, but of meretricious, soupy flamboyance there is none.

H. G.

RACHMANINOFF: Symphony No. 2, in E mi nor, Op. 27. Bolshoi Theater Orchestra, Yevgeny Svetlanov, cond. [Yuri Kokzhayan, prod.] COLUMBIA / MELODIYA M 33121, $6.98.

It is something of a mystery why Angel, which issued Svetlanov's Rachmaninoff First and Third Symphonies, shied away from this Second, but here it is, even if on a different label.

Those who must have a bargain price are directed to Wallenstein (Seraphim S 60133).

Nor does Svetlanov offer either textual completeness or the most up-to-date sound, both of which are provided by Previn (An gel S 36954) and Kletzki (London CS 6569) neither, it happens, any disgrace as a performance. Even for a "Russian"-style performance there is the option of Sanderling (see my September 1974 review of his three-disc Everest symphony cycle), less conveniently accessible and a poorer recording, but with a greater orchestra (the Leningrad Philharmonic) and a bolder, more sweeping conception of the music. Svetlanov seems to be following a similar "heart-on-sleeve" approach, but with more tentative commitment.

Still, taken absolutely by itself, Svetlanov's is a more than satisfactory Rachmaninoff E minor. There is plenty of warmth, sensitivity, "give" in the handling of lyrical lines, and bracing energy. The fairly good Bolshoi orchestra plays idiomatically, and the engineering-which must date back about a decade-is a good ex ample of Soviet technology of its vintage.

The cuts in the first three movements are opened, but the finale is conventionally truncated (with the composer's authorization, of course).

A.C.

RAVEL: Orchestral Works. For a feature review, see page 66.

SAINT-SAENS: Concertos for Piano and Orchestra: No. 2, in G minor, Op. 22; No. 5, in F, Op. 103. Gabriel Tacchino, piano; Luxemburg Radio Orchestra, Louis de Froment, cond. CANDIDE QCE 31080, $4.98 (OS-encoded disc).

Comparisons:

7 Ciccolini, Baudo/Orch. de Paris (Nos. 1-5) Sera. SIC 6081 Rubinstein. Ormandy/Philadelphia (No. 2)RCA LSC 3165

These excellent performances are rather similar in style to those in the Seraphim al bum of all five Saint-Saens piano concertos by Aldo Ciccolini and Serge Baudo. In other words, Tacchino and Froment apply patrician rhythm, nimble dexterity, phraseological symmetry, and other prerequisites of the "French" style in place of the B more headstrong bravura that, say, Artur Rubinstein brings to his account of the G minor Concerto (the recording with Ormandy is the better of his two).

Tacchino and Froment, like Ciccolini and Baudo, fill out the bones of the "traditional" Conservatoire manner with coloristic nuance and tonal beauty, happily avoiding the often heard karate-chop brittleness. So in the end we have the best of both worlds: The warm-blooded lyricism of the Romantic manner fuses ideally with the logic and grace of classicism. In terms of refinement of playing and crispness of reproduction, the beautifully processed Candide disc surpasses the admirable Seraphim, which in any case is available only as a set.

-H.G.

SAINT-SAINS: Samson et Dalila.

Dalila Samson High Priest Abimelech An Old Hebrew Messenger First Philistine Second Philistine Chnsta Ludwig (ms) James King (t) Bernd weixi(b) Alexander Malta (bs) Richard Kogel (bs) Heinrich Weber (t) Albert Gassner (1) Peter Schranner (bs) Bavarian Radio Chorus and Orchestra, Giuseppe Patane, cond. [Theodor Holzinger and Oskar Waldeck, prod.] RCA RED SEAL ARL 3-0662, $20.98 (three discs, automatic sequence) [from EURODISC 86 977, 1974].

Comparisons:

Gorr, Vickers, Blanc, Pretre Ang. SCL 3639 Bouvier, Luccioni, Cabana!, Fourestier Odeon C 053 10617/9

It's about time somebody said straight out that Saint-Saens's Samson is one terrific opera. Even its defenders praise it with condescension. Martin Sokol, in his otherwise reasonable liner note for RCA's issue of the recent Eurodisc Samson, reopens the silly opera-or-oratorio argument and winds up with a definition of oratorio that would em brace at least half the operatic repertory.

No, there will be no apologies for the op era here. It would be nice, though, to have a recording that fully projects its grandeur.

All it takes is a great French contralto and heroic tenor, a potent and mellifluous baritone, a couple of sonorous basses, a first rate chorus, and of course a conductor who has the sensitivity to pulse and the sheer authority and conviction to make the thing go.

I'm afraid I can't quite share the admiration P.G.D. expressed for this set in his July 1974 review of the original issue. It is competent or better in nearly every department, but not really right in any. The basic sonic character (and I don't mean just the engineering) is soft-grained and strained.

Christa Ludwig does much lovely singing, but it doesn't, for me, add up to Dalila-the lower part of the voice in particular isn't capable of the voluptuous expansion that Rita Gorr, for one, could deploy (on the complete Angel set with Pretre). James King is an adequate Samson, which counts for something, yet he can manage neither power nor delicacy.

For an opera of Samson's quality, the discography is pretty skimpy. This recording might serve aptly for those who don't much like the piece, but it seems to me farther off the mark than the Romanian recording on Electrecord, which is sound in conception and merely uneven in execution. That leaves the two French recordings, which have quite a lot to offer. The Angel stereo set, conducted with a solid sense of shape, has an altogether grand Dalila (Gorr) and High Priest (Ernest Blanc) and a good bass (Anton Diakov) doubling Abimelech and the Old Hebrew. Its most conspicuous weakness, the slurping Samson of Jon Vickers (who at least had the voice for the part), is admirably complemented on the 1946 Fourestier set by the strong, cleanly focused work of Jose Luccioni. That set, though necessarily constricted in sound, has a fine sense of style and a strong and idiomatic cast.

If anyone is contemplating a new recording, I would point out that the most problematic role, Samson, currently has one of its ablest exponents in James McCracken.

The sound on the RCA version is much the same as the Eurodisc, for better or worse. Complete texts are included.

-K.F.

SCHOENBERG: Pelleas and Melisande: Verklarte Nacht, Variations for Orchestra. For a feature review, see page 61.

SCHUMANN: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, in A minor, Op. 54; Introduction and Allegro appassionato, in G, Op. 92. Wilhelm Kempff, piano; Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rafael Kubelik, cond. [Rudolf Werner, prod.] DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 2530 484, $7.98.

BRAHMS: Ballades (4), Op. 10.

SCHUMANN: Piano Works. Wilhelm Kempff, piano. [Rudolf Werner and Cord Garben, prod.] DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 2530 321, $7.98.

SCHUMANN: Arabeske, Op. 18; Romances (3), Op. 28; Waldszenen, Op. 82: No. 7, Vogel als Prophet; Bunts BIM-ter, Op. 99: No. 9, Novelette.

Even in his eighties, Kempff remains capable of great performances. These can, alas, be separated by considerable lapses from grace. Like some of his great predecessors--Cortot, for example--this distinguished artist can be perplexingly schizophrenic. Even on his first New York visit in 1964, I heard him follow up horrendous, brutal accounts of the Schubert D. 845 Sonata and Schumann Davidsbandler with as perfect an account of the Brahms Op. 5 Sonata as I expect ever to hear.

Something of the same sort happens on these two, presumably contemporaneous, records. The Kempff/Kubelik Schumann concerto is, to put it bluntly, awful. It is not so much Kempff's square, idiosyncratic treatment of phrasing and rubato as the la bored, un-supple playing, the lack of any fluidity and grace in the passagework.

Kubelik supports in a clear, cautious, os tensibly sympathetic fashion, but surely the conductor must have been on pins and needles, scarcely knowing what would happen next. Such expressive details as the cellos in the second movement are throttled and inexpressive. Moreover, the balance between piano and tutti sounds precarious at times (especially in the first movement), with the solo a bit too distant in relation to accompanying instruments. Certain or chestral passages, like the fugato in the third movement, are magnificently clarified by the engineering, but the piano through out sounds pingy and harsh.

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Aksel Schmitz (1906-1975)

by Paul Moor

OCCASIONALLY--very infrequently--a musical performer appears who for one reason or another establishes himself in a category apart from al most all his colleagues. Thanks to his voice, his musicality, his intelligence, and to the medium of phonographic recording, the great Danish tenor Ak sel Schiertz, whom leukemia and an intestinal cancer finally vanquished in Copenhagen on April 19 at the age of 68, belonged in such a category. Admirers who knew his recorded repertoire regarded him, to put it simply, as unique. Relatively few, though, knew the details of the tragic episodes that restricted that great singing largely to recordings.

And what records! When they were imported to New York in 1946 or 1947, they caused-especially two breath taking Messiah arias--a true sensation among collectors, repeating an earlier sensation in England. Fortunately, be fore illness abruptly canceled his public career soon after the war, HMV in Denmark and England had recorded a lengthy repertoire, including two complete major Lieder cycles, Schubert's Schane Miillerin and Schumann's Dichterliebe, with Gerald Moore at the piano.

Outrageous fortune surely has plagued few artists-few human beings-as it repeatedly did Aksel Schtatz. Starting adulthood as a provincial schoolteacher, he had a rich tenor voice full of vibrato but free of tremolo, with an uncanny baritone timbre throughout its range. Many admirers thought that voice justified a full-time professional career, but the three children Schiertz and his admirable, stalwart wife, Gerd, had to feed and clothe made him hesitate. (And later, twins made their responsibilities even more sobering.) Finally, however, he took the plunge.

The morning after his professional debut in Copenhagen, Danes woke up to find their little country occupied by Hilter's Wehrmacht. With foreign appearances now impossible, Schiertz set about using his art for the comfort and reassurance of his countrymen.

As a patriot, he dropped his entire German repertoire for the duration-a crippling sacrifice for a Lieder specialist. To fill that void he revived much very worthwhile but neglected, or even forgotten, Danish music. He sang everywhere-in schools, in churches sometimes defiantly, such as at the funeral of the patriotic writer Kai Munk, whom the Germans had killed. After the war the king of Denmark awarded Schiotz the country's equivalent of a knighthood. Literally everyone in Denmark knew him, admired him, and loved him.

Wartime broadcasts of Schiotz's early recordings had caused important ears to prick up in England. As soon as possible, HMV brought him to London for extensive recording, and at Glyndebourne's world premiere of The Rape of Lucretia, which had dual casting in all roles, he alternated with Peter Pears as the Male Chorus. That summer began lifelong friendships with Benjamin Britten, Kathleen Ferrier, and Pears. It also brought the first symptom--double vision--of a tumor acusticus, the same type of growth be hind the ear that had killed George Gershwin.

Schiotz survived the operation he had in Stockholm, but the surgeon's unavoidable severing of a nerve cable affected his body as if a guillotine had sliced it in half frontally from head to toe, leaving the right half blind, deaf, and lame. The surgeon said that Schiolz would never sing again but that, with luck, he might walk again.

In 1948, after months of recuperation during a tramp-steamer voyage, indomitable Aksel Schiotz gave a comeback recital in Copenhagen. He was brought to New York soon there after for three Town Hall recitals. The first sold out immediately, the second attracted about half capacity, the third drew virtually no one who had paid for his ticket. Some years later, Schiotz attempted another comeback as a baritone. Tapes he made then in America (where he taught) of Schubert's Winterreise cycle-never, un fortunately, released on discs-proved that nothing had affected that great artistry. He called the book he wrote simply The Art of Singing, and he could lay more legitimate claim to that title than could, or can, the vast majority of his colleagues.

And now at least we have those magical, those unique recordings made almost thirty years ago. As long as people set stylus to disc, they will remain treasures beyond price, inimitable examples of what the human voice, in very rare instances, can communicate.

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The overside Introduction and Allegro appassionato is altogether better. Kubelik is more assertive; Kempff, though still rather square-cut, plays with greater energy; and the total balance is more convinc ing. Yet even here, I suspect that Kempff would have given a better account of him self fifteen years ago. This will not supplant the magnificent Serkin/Ormandy performance ( Columbia MS 6688, also coupled with the concerto).

But from the very first phrase of the Brahms Op. 10, No. 1 Ballade, Kempff sounds like his old self. He gives the "Ed ward" piece a grim, assertive rendering-full of dynamism and energy. His approach to phrasing is again rather square, but in early Brahms this Germanic way is all to the music's good. In the three remaining ballades, some of his tempos are slower than one usually hears, but the symphonic clarity and strength of the playing are incontestable. And within the deceptively inflexible ground plan, Kempff manages all sorts of supple adjustments and caressing nuances.

He remains a supreme master of pedaling.

This Brahms playing is in the best German tradition, a more poetic counterpart to Backhaus'.

The over-side Schumann pieces are done with appropriate fervor. Some might prefer a less metronomic account of the second Op. 28 romance, but Kempff's is broad and expansive even so. He is even more to the point in Op. 28. No. 1, and in the march-like No. 3 (so very like the first Op. 21 novelette).

His "Vogel als Prophet" is presumably ex cerpted from the recently issued complete Waldszenen (I didn't compare them and thus cannot say for sure). Again, the reading is rather spare and plain, yet suitably poetic in the magical harmonic turns of the central section. The little "Novelette" from Bunte Blotter gets a more caustic sort of treatment than on the rippling, suavely executed old Gabrilowitsch version. In some ways, I like it even better than that classic in each instance, a great stylist is at work.

The reproduction on the solo disc is splendid, with a welcome return to the solid, spacious type of piano sound heard on Kempff's mono Beethoven-sonata recordings. Both discs are impeccably pressed.

-H.G.

STRAUSS, J.: Die Fledermaus.

Rosalinde Gundula Janowitz (s) Adele Renate Holm (s) Orlofsky Wolfgang Windgassen (t) Alfred Waldemar Kmentl (t) Eisenstein Eberhard Wachter (b) Falke Heinz Holecek (b) Frank Erich Kunz (b) Dr. Blind. Frosch Erich Kuchar (t) Vienna State Opera Chorus; Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Karl Biihm, cond. LONDON OSA 1296, $13.96 (two discs, automatic sequence).

Once again, Fledermaus casting turns out to be something of a closed shop. Here we have Renate Holm as Adele for the third time in a row, to which there can be little argument (except perhaps from other coloraturas who may resent her apparent monopoly). Erich Kunz still manages Frank pretty well; what with earlier appearances in this part, as Falke, and twice as Frosch, he retains the Golden Bat trophy.

Hard on Kunz's heels is Eberhard Wachter, once a Frank and a Falke, adding a second Eisenstein to his total-not, it turns out, a very wise move. In fact. I don't think he should get full credit this time, considering how few of Strauss's notes he sings. The part is for tenor, of course, and Wachter's first attempt (on the now-deleted Danon set for RCA) was a calculated risk on his high extension. The risk has now become a distinctly bad one; the only things worse than the innumerable lowered vocal lines for Eisenstein in this recording are the ones left unaltered-and lunged at with rough, ugly tone.

Kmentt's Alfred is somewhat more tolerable, although the tone isn't sweet enough to convince us that he's really the narcissis tic Alfred.

There is, however, some new blood. Gun dula Janowitz, despite a few phrases of over-refined, almost private singing, does some elegant and stylish work, unleashing a fetching Hungarian accent in the Watch Duet (where, unfortunately, Wachter is most tried and most trying). As Orlofsky, we have the late Wolfgang Windgassen no, that is not a printer's error-singing well enough to make us wish he were doing Eisenstein; there is nothing like a sound, professional vocal technique for withstanding the onset of age. The Falke and Blind are routine; the latter is also listed for the speaking role of Frosch, but I can detect no iota of his work in that part, for all the spoken dialogue (save Kunz's melodrama in Act III) has been omitted.

Since the other current stereo recordings of Fledermaus all include dialogue, this may in itself be a deciding factor for you one way or 'tother. (Also worthy of note, textually, is the substitution of the polka Unter Donner and Blitz for Strauss's origi nal ballet music-rather an explosive intrusion after the sentiment of the "Duidu" ensemble. The "standard" musical cuts are also made.) As you may have gathered, this is vocally a rather uneven affair. Not so the orchestral playing that Bohm elicits from the superb orchestra: beautifully tuned, balanced, blended, and unified at nearly every point.

The rhythmic impulse of Orlofsky's couplets has rarely been so well defined, and the tempos of the Watch Duet are very smoothly integrated. On the debit side are a few failures of ensemble and the slightly blary trumpets of the "Duidu" number, plus a slight but pervasive stodginess-it's all very neat and highly refined, but with little of the relaxed warmth that pervades Krauss's mono version (Richmond RS 62006, also lacking dialogue). At any rate, the recorded sound is fine: clean, clear, with a nice tight definition to the bass and unobtrusive, natural balances.

The libretto booklet reprints the essay, plot summary, and relevant parts of the libretto from London's Karajan set (OSA 1319 with the "gala" sequence, OSA 1249 without), vocally a more satisfactory enterprise than this one, if somewhat over-grandly conceived.

-D.H.

SUPPE AND STRAUSS: Overtures. Johann Strauss Orchestra of Vienna, Willi Boskovsky. cond. ANGEL S 37099, $6.98. Tape: 411, 4XS 37099, $7.98; 10, 8XS 37099, $7.98.

SUPPE: Boccaccio [from S 36826, 19711; Light Cavalry [from S 36887. 1972]; A Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna; Poet and Peasant [from S 36956, 1973). J. STRAUSS II: A Night in Venice; Blindekuh.

If our printers could supply a "1/2-R" symbol. it would be appropriate here, since three of the Suppe overture performances are reissues from Vols. 1-3 of Boskovsky's "Music of Vienna" series. However, the other recordings are appearing in this country for the first time: the fourth Suppe over ture, Ein Morgen, ein Mittag, ein Abend in Wien, and the two Strauss overtures, the fine, too seldom heard Eine Nacht in Vene dig and the almost totally unknown (in this country at least) Blindekuh.

The latter, surely a recording first, is less a dramatic curtain-raiser than a potpourri of the 1878 operetta's hit tunes. And while I have no idea what the "story" may be of a theater work whose title translates literally as Blind Cow, its now gay, now seductively lyrical tunes and toe-tickling rhythms surely must rank among the most engaging Strauss ever created. If they're characteristic of the whole operetta, I can't imagine why Blindekuh has been allowed to fade so deeply into obscurity.

As anyone who has heard the earlier three Suppe overtures might expect, the new performances are just as invigoratingly and catchily vivacious, the recordings just as cleanly bright. The present disc surfaces, however, are undeniably rougher.

R.D.D.

TCHAIKOVSKY: Orchestral Works. For a feature review, see page 63.

VIEUXTEMPS: Ballade et Polonaise-See Lekeu: Sonata for Violin and Piano.

VIVALDI: La Stravaganza, Op. 4. Carmel Kaine and Alan Loveday, violins; Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. [Michael Bremner, prod.] ARGO ZRG 800/1, $13.96 (two discs, manual sequence).

Of Vivaldi's some 300 violin concertos, nearly 200 of them for one rather than two or more violin soloists, the best known are those in the enticingly named collections: first, 11 Cimento dell' armonia e dell' inven tione, Op. 8 (especially for its leadoff Four Seasons concertos); then, La Cetra, Op. 9; and, trailing a bit behind, the present Stravaganza, Op. 4. Despite this collec tion's come-on title, which applies more to its extravagant display of harmonic and formal inventiveness than to spectacular virtuosic showmanship, there have been only two previous complete recordings: the pioneering Barchet/Reinhardt/Vox mono version of 1954 (currently available in an "electronic-stereo" reissue, Vox SVBX 531) and the Ayo/Musici/Philips stereo set of 1965, which 'disappeared with the last of the domestic Philips pressings.

If you're a victim of the old delusion that Vivaldi wrote not 300 violin concertos, but the same concerto 300 times over, all you need for correctional enlightenment is to listen to the present twelve examples of the Red Priest's inexhaustibly imaginative powers of melodic, rhythmic, formalistic, and atmospheric invention. And in doing so, your consistently refreshened relish well may be further enhanced by remembering that this music had the same effect on Vivaldi's own discriminating contemporaries-one of whom, Johann Sebastian Bach himself, greedily appropriated Nos. 1 and 6 to serve as his own unaccompanied clavier "concertos" S. 980 and S. 970, respectively.

Any good modern recording of Op. 4 in its variegated entirety would be mightily welcome, but we are exceptionally lucky to get one as exuberantly yet sensitively played and as beautifully engineered as this one. The musical variety itself is subtly italicized by the use of two comparably deft but always ensemble-minded soloists (Carmel Kaine in Nos. 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, and 10; Alan Loveday in the others), and by constantly shifting the continuo instruments: organ alone in No. 4, harpsichord alone in No. 8, varying combinations of organ, harpsichord, theorbo, bassoon, and violone in the others. Yet editor Hogwood's and conductor Marriner's mastery of baroque-era stylistic and idiomatic traditions never is a matter of musicological fitness alone-it is fired with the blazing personal involvement of everyone participating. As with the same artists' Corelli Op. 6 of last January (ZRG 773/5), these performances almost palpably radiate the players' sheer joy in both the music and their own powers. As with their 1973 set of Vivaldi's Op. 3 L'Estro armonico (ZRG 733/4), they "sail into the music [in my colleague S.F.'s apt description] as if it were being presented to the world for the first time."

-R.D.D.

WAGNER: Der fliegende Hollander (excerpts).

Senta Mary Enk Steersman Dutchman Deland Viorica Ursuleac (s) Luise Willer (a) Karl Ostertag (t) Franz Klarwein (t) Hans Hotter (b) Georg Hann (bs) Bavarian State Opera Chorus and Orchestra, Clemens Krauss, cond. BASF KBF 21538, $6.98 (mono) [recorded 1944].

The complete Flying Dutchman from which these excerpts come has been out of the catalogue for nearly twenty years and de serves to be restored in its entirety. Apart from its fascination as a historical document (the performance comes from a 1944 Munich broadcast), the conducting of Clemens Krauss is superb and there are two classic portrayals, the Daland of Georg Hann and the Dutchman of Hans Hotter.

Krauss gives what is still for me the finest account of the score on disc: swift, taut, colorful, evocative. His handling of the opera's dynamic flow is particularly thrilling: From beginning to end the work moves in one long, unbroken arc. Excerpts, of course, can give no idea of this aspect of his achievement. They tend, on the other hand, to make unduly prominent such momentary lapses as the untidy choral entries in Act 11.

The excerpts, in any case, have been poorly chosen. The Steersman's ditty, uningratiatingly sung by Franz Klarwein, and Erik's cavatina, a sturdy but provincial performance by Karl Ostertag, take up space that could have been given to the Daland/Dutchman exchange from Act I.

Moreover, I would gladly have sacrificed Ursuleac's clumsy account of Senta's Ballad for the complete Senta/Dutchman duet that closes Act II. As it is, the duet is represented by a fragment that runs from "Wohl kenn' ich, Weibes heil'ge Pflichten" to the end of the act, and this makes neither musical nor psychological sense.

Despite such abbreviations, Hotter's performance is a thing to wonder at. Even in 1944, when he was in his mid-thirties, one discovers that the tone was woolly and unsteady, that his legato was imperfect, and that consonants--syllables, even--got lost in the shuffle. Yet the fervor and intensity of his portrayal sweep all other considerations aside. Every note bespeaks the damned, tragic figure of Wagner's youthful imagination, every phrase is eloquent with meaning.

In Georg Hann, a ripe, shrewd Daland, Hotter has a worthy partner. Viorica Ursu leac is another matter. Though Ursuleac created the leading soprano roles in three of Richard Strauss's later operas (Arabella, Friedenstag, and Capriccio), what survives of her work discloses little more than un steady tone, unattractive timbre, and lack of technical finish. Her notes above the staff were powerful and bright and she was clearly intelligent, yet she remains an un lovable singer, and a lot of what one hears on this disc comes close to caterwauling.

The recording is what one might expect of a World War II broadcast: rather coarse and congested. There are no texts. Jacket information is unreliable. Luise Willer, a singer much praised in her day by Bruno Walter, is said to have retired from opera with this broadcast, whereas she remained at the Munich opera until 1955, when, with a final performance of Erda, she retired at the age of sixty-seven.

D.S.H.

WAGNER: Lohengrin.

Elsa Ortrud Lohengnn Telramund The Herald King Henry Leonore Kirschstein (s) Ruth Hesse (ms) Herbert Schachtschneider (t) Heinz lmdahl (b) Hans Helm (bs) Waller Kreppel (bs) Vienna State Opera Chorus; South German Philharmonic Orchestra, Hans Swarowsky, cond. [Heinz Schurer, prod.] WESTMINSTER GOLD WGSO 8285-4, $13.96 (four discs, automatic sequence).

If you skip the prelude, which is at once rhythmically square and shapeless, this Lohengrin starts out decently enough, for Hans Helm is one of the okayest Heralds on disc (a modest compliment, to be sure). As the King and Telramund make their successive entrances, disaster sets in. Walter Kreppel has some of the ingredients for a King: He can actually sing down to low F, and he pulls himself together nicely for the punishingly high Act I prayer. But the bulk of the role is Wagner's unique brand of declamation (a sort of ring-around-the-break), which seems an irresistible invitation to barking. Kreppel copes as well as he can with the remnants of his once pleasant high bass, and he almost sounds like a bel cantist next to Heinz Imdahl's Telramund, a dead loss. (The King's "Dann schmaht wohl niemand mehr das deutsche Reich" is almost immediately proved a false prophecy.) Elsa's entrance brings a measure of professionalism. Leonore Kirschstein has a voice and some notion of what to do with it, but the sound is tremulous and generally unpleasant. Ditto her Ortrud, Ruth Hesse. I suppose they are the class of the cast, but I don't relish the prospect of rehearing them go at each other in Act II.

Herbert Schachtschneider, the Lohengrin, is probably best known as the Waldemar of Kubelik's Gurre-Lieder, and he makes much the same impression here: a singer of such sound musical instincts that one regrets all the more the dry, wobbly quality of the voice.

These people are all very conscientious, and Swarowsky beats the thing out correctly, inexorably. (The orchestra, how ever, often sounds puzzled.) But Lohengrin doesn't survive such treatment well. This is the cheapest version available, but the Keilberth/Bayreuth set (Richmond RS 65003), though it costs $3.49 more, is in an other league altogether-and its mono sound is at least the equal of Westminster's mediocre 1968 stereo. K.F.

-------- Ruggiero Ricci Bringing back Ysaye's diverting sonatas.

WEBERN: Passacaglia, Op. 1; Five Movements, Op. 5; Six Pieces, Op. 6; Symphony, Op. 21. For a feature review, see page 61.

YSAYE: Rove d'enfant-See Lekeu: Sonata for Violin and Piano.

YSAYE: Sonatas for Solo Violin (6), Op. 27. Ruggiero Ricci, violin. CANDIDE QCE 31085, $4.98 (OS-encoded disc).

One of the most diverting discs to come my way lately, this first complete recording of Ysaye's six solo sonatas makes me wonder why we don't hear these pieces more often on stage or as part of recorded recital pro grams. Perhaps taken singly their interest would he diluted; part of their fascination lies in what they reveal, collectively, about Ysaye's view of some of his famous younger colleagues. Each sonata is dedicated to a fellow fiddler: Szigeti, Thibaud, Enesco, Kreisler, and two lesser-knowns, Mathieu Crickboom (from Ysaye's own town of Liege) and the Spaniard Manuel Quiroga.

The composer tailored each sonata to fit its recipient and in the process, of course, showed as much about himself as about any of them.

Every aspect of violin technique is exploited; there is an abundance of Bach-like passagework and counterpoint (and in Thibaud's sonata, No. 2, actual quotation from the Prelude to the Partita in E, an obsessive idee fixe that becomes terribly funny, though it isn't supposed to be). There is also an inescapable Frenchness in much of the music, a concern with color and surface shimmer. The gossamer glow that marks the opening of Sonata No. 5 creates some pages of Impressionism that could serve as a classroom text on the subject. Ysaye never matches Bach in really extended polyphony-his fugues, or fugatos, peter out quickly-but his aim, as is quickly apparent, was not to imitate Bach in any case.

(Paganini is another shadow in the back ground-vide the footnote on left-hand pizzicato in the score of No. 5.) Many moods are struck, for some of this music is illustrative: Sonata No. 2 contains a Melanconia and a Dance of the Furies, and No. 5 a Rustic Dance; the Ballade of No. 3 is a masterpiece of contemplative intro version, and many other pages are outright pure "fiddle" music.

Ricci is at his best in the robust, vigorous movements. The more subtle colorations elsewhere might have been handled with greater sensitivity and range of palette, but taken as a whole the recording makes its point. These sonatas are an attractive segment of the violin repertory. Where have they been all this tithe?

S.F.

Recitals and Misc.

VICTORIA DE LOS ANGELES: Five Centuries of Spanish Song. Victoria de los Angeles, soprano; instrumental ensemble. SERAPHIM 60233, $3.98 (mono) [from RCA VICTOR LM 2144, 1957].

Seraphim has performed a real service by making this attractive recital-originally is sued by Victor nearly two decades ago available once again. The selections range from medieval songs to the Virgin (one pre served in the Llibre vermeil, a fourteenth-century codex in Montserrat; the other from a mystery play of the same period) to three colorful arias from eighteenth-century tonadillas, a form of theatrical interlude that flourished in the latter half of the century. All in all, the music is both delightful and enlightening.

The accompaniments--arranged for various combinations of instruments--while, strictly speaking, unauthentic, show a welcome sensitivity toward the style of this material. The use of string quartet and harpsichord is particularly attractive in such Renaissance songs as Valderrabano's "De donde venis amore." which sounds better here than on Teresa Berganza's re cent "Canciones Espafiolas" (DG 2530 504), where it is given guitar accompaniment.

De los Angeles was at the height of her vocal powers when she made this record.

High notes give only a minimal sense of strain: All the rest is mellifluousness, commitment. and authenticity. And, I must con fess, a certain sameness.

No texts, a serious and limiting omission that, in fairness to Seraphim, dates from the original issue.

-D.S.H.

THOMAS BEECHAM: Legendary Performances. Royal Philharmonic Chorus* and Orchestra, Thomas Bee cham, cond. ODYSSEY Y 33283/8, $3.98 each (mono) [from various COLUMBIA originals, recorded in the 1950s].

Y 33283: Deuus: Appalachia*: North Country Sketches.

V 33284: Dews: Paris: Eventyr; Koanga: Closing Scene

V 33285: Hume-BEECHMA: The Faithful Shepherd Suite.

HAYDN: Symphony No. 93, in D.

Y 33286: BERLIOZ: Harold in Italy, Op. 16 (with William Primrose, viola).

Y 33287: Berlioz:Overturn Roman Carnival; King Lear; Le Corsaire: Les Francs-Juges; Waverley.

Y 33288: BERLIOZ: Les Troyens: Prelude to "Les Troyens a Carthage": Trojan March. MASSENET: La Vierge: Last Sleep of the Virgin. Rtisaxv-Kofulaxov: The Golden Cockerel: March. Smeuus: Karelia Suite, Op. 11: No. 3. Alla marcia. The Tempest. Op. 109 (incidental music, excerpts).

Like Bernard Shaw, Sir Thomas Beecham at times appeared to act on the premise that a major English artist would not be taken seriously unless he played the part of an outrageous clown. But that is only part of the Beecham legend, and these six reissues from Odyssey constitute a welcome reminder of the real substance behind the legend.

Many consider Beecham's attitude toward musicologists misguided. yet he had real contempt for them only when their scholarly views conflicted with his own artistic insights or his conception of what the public wanted to hear. (His outrageously inflated last recording of Messiah often causes us to forget that his earlier ones were considerably more "proper" musicologically.) The Handel-Haydn record (Y 33285) is a case in point. In arranging his suite (mostly) from II Pastor fido. Beecham eschewed what he considered an anemic scoring of oboes and strings, delightedly expanding Handel's orchestration to a nineteenth-century-size ensemble. Echt Handel this certainly is not, but it is a vehicle for Beecham at his most extrovertedly original; he must have relished this venture greatly, for he performs the suite with incredible gusto.

His disregard for recent Haydn scholar ship was less outrageous; if he ignored tex tural criticism, he at least did not rescore the symphonies, though his textures are some what richer than most musicologists would approve. Nevertheless, his Haydn perform ances were more perceptive than those of most of his contemporaries-their joy and vitality reveal real sympathy with the com poser. No one else, for instance, has per formed the Great Bassoon joke in the slow movement of Symphony No. 93 quite as effectively as Sir Thomas does here; for that we can forgive him many a scholarly sin.

Beecham is well and justly remembered as one of the early and great champions of Berlioz. The Harold in Italy on Y 33286, with the fine collaboration of William Primrose, is a truly legendary performance, a milestone in the Berlioz discography. The succession of five overtures on Y 33287 may be an indigestible dose of Berlioz, but they show Beecham's superb grasp of the com poser's style, as do the imperial readings of the Troyens excerpts on Y 33288.

Y 33288 also represents another com poser with whom he was closely associated, Sibelius, and these too are classic recordings, in particular the Tempest mu sic. The balance of the record, however, shows primarily how Beecham's obvious joy in music-making vitalized a great deal of second-rate music. Yet another composer whose cause the conductor espoused ardently is well represented here. Through much of his career Sir Thomas fought critical and popular indifference to establish Delius in the repertory, both by polemic and by performance, and Y 33283 and Y 33284 restore to the catalogue his definitive readings of some of the best music Delius wrote.

All of these recordings date from the Fifties, after Beecham had returned to Eng land from his wartime sojourn in America.

The Royal Philharmonic was his orchestra (as the London Philharmonic had been be fore the war), and it responded superbly to him. The sonics were considered good for their time, and in selected comparisons I found the sound of these Odyssey reissues, if anything, slightly better. P.H.

[B] CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER. [Nathan Kroll, prod.] CLASSICS RECORD LIBRARY SOM 80-5731, $12.50 plus 75 cents postage and handling (four SQ encoded discs; Classics Record Library, 280 Park Ave., New York, N.Y. 10017).

BACH: Concerto for Violin. Oboe, and Strings, in C minor. S. 1060 (Hiroko Yajima. violin: Leonard Amer. oboe: Charles Treger and Romuald Tecco, violins; Walter Trampler, viola; Leslie Parnas, cello; Alvin Brehm, bass: Anthony Newman. harpsichord). Beethoven: Trio for Strings. in G, Op. 9. No. 1 (Treger, Trampler, Parnas). Brahms: Gestillte Sehnsucht; Geistliches Wiegenlied (Maureen Forrester, alto; Trampler: Charles Wadsworth. piano). CARTER: Eight Etudes for Woodwind Quartet (Paula Robison. flute; Amer; Gervase de Payer. clarinet; Loren Glickman, bassoon). FAURE: Dolly. Op. 56 (John Browning and Wadsworth, piano). Sicilienne. Op. 78; Fantasy. Op. 79 (Robison, Wadsworth). HAYDN: Trio for Strings. in G. Op. 53. No. 1 (Treger, Trampler, Parnas). MOZKOWSKI: Suite for Two Violins and Piano, in G minor, Op. 71 (Treger. Jaime Laredo. Wadsworth). Mozart: Quartet for Piano and Strings, No. 2, in E flat, K. 493 (Richard Goode, Treger, Trampler, Parnas). SAINT-Sanes: Caprice on Danish and Russian Airs, Op. 79 (Rob ison. Amer, De Payer. Wadsworth). SCHUMANN: Andante and Variations ( Wadsworth, Goode; Parnas and Lau rence Lesser, cellos: John Barrows, horn). Fantasie stucke. Op. 73 (De Peyer. Goode).

If composers were more practical in choosing their performing forces, there would be no need for chamber music societies. As it is, how else do we get to hear concert performances of such works as Schumann's Andante and Variations in its original (in both senses of the word) scoring for two pianos, two cellos, and horn? It took the Book of the Month Club's Classics Record Library to give us this first substantial recorded representation of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and at this price it seems to me pretty hard to resist, whatever my reservations. The repertory is large and varied, and the performances maintain a fairly high level.

Since the purpose of a chamber music society is to explore the fringes of the repertory, it is all but inevitable that a sampling of its repertory will result in a fairly random collection. This matters more on records than in concert, where, for the sake of a live performance of a particular work, one may well suffer a wholly unrelated pro gram. On records, how often will one want to hear, say. a Haydn string trio followed by Faure's Dolly suite? And on records one has much readier access to performances of these "oddball" works.

That in turn places an extra burden on the performances themselves. Certainly the Society's wind soloists meet that challenge.

The trio of flutist Paula Robison, oboist Leonard Amer. and clarinetist Gervase de Peyer turns in two of the set's best offerings: Elliott Carter's Eight Etudes for wood wind quartet (with bassoonist Loren Glick man) and Saint-Saens's breezy Caprice on Danish and Russian Airs (with the Society's artistic director. Charles Wadsworth. at the piano). I'm not wild about Arner's thick, English-hornish tone, but these virtuosos sail through both works with gusto, precision, and sensitivity. But why, oh why, didn't they include the Fantasy that goes with the Carter Etudes? The composer did provide elaborate instructions for partial performances of the Eight Etudes and a Fantasy. but a quarter-century later are there still listeners willing to settle for less than a complete Carter work--particularly on records? More's the pity, for the performance is so vital and comprehending that it should have superseded the one by members of the Dorian Quintet (Candide CE 31016), whose slight rhythmic and into national uncertainties make the work sound forbidding, which it isn't at all. But the Dorian's remains the only recording of the Fantasy.

The woodwind trio's string counterpart--violinist Charles Treger, violist Walter Trampler, cellist Leslie Parnas--is less successful. The players aren't especially well matched stylistically, nor do they attend ideally to the stylistic requirements of the classical repertory they are tackling. The performance of the Haydn Op. 53, No. 1 Trio is bigger in sound. with wider contrasts of tempo and dynamics, than the re cent one on Archie 2533 136, and yet the German musicians' more sober treatment works better: The musical materials of this piano-sonata arrangement are too slight to fill out the Americans' more grandiose framework. (The Germans are also far more generous with repeats. which helps them get the proportions right.) The Beethoven Op. 9, No. 1 Trio is efficient, if not particularly distinguished.

The Mozart E flat Piano Quartet, how ever. goes rather nicely. It's a frantic, knock-'em-dead performance, solidly anchored by pianist Richard Goode's splendid rhythmic pulse. The effect is partly spoiled, though, by faulty recording balance, which renders the piano barely audible. (This un fortunately also is true of the other works in which Goode participates, which is a great pity. He's one of the most consistently interesting pianists around, and we have heard all too little of him on records: but I'm afraid we don't get to hear much more of him here.) Treger makes a more positive impression in the Moszkowski G minor Suite for two violins and piano (with Jaime Laredo and Wadsworth), a delightfully big and sweaty piece of Romantic sound-and-fury. It winds down rather badly in the Molto vivace finale. but the performers might have done more to divert attention from the thin musical substance.

The democratic virtues of a chamber mu sic society show to good advantage in the Bach violin-and-oboe concerto and the two Brahms Op. 91 songs. The Bach is pleasantly vigorous and robust; most one-player-to-a-part baroque performances use that awful dry "authentic" style. Maureen Forrester has been singing the Brahms songs quite a while now, and her un-self conscious textual authority, combined with the sumptuous ease of the voice, makes the songs sound less turgid than I have ever heard them. What's more, the viola obbligato for once gets its sonic due, and Trampler makes the most of the opportunity. But here again I sense an opportunity missed:

Isn't this kind of collection the ideal place to juxtapose Brahms's "Geistliches Wie genlied" with Wolf's nervous, intense "Die ihr schwebet"? The songs have nothing in common, except that they happen to be set tings of the same poem, a startling instance of two composers responding to a poem in completely different ways. (Do make the comparison, though, with Jan DeGaetani's miraculously precise performance on her disc of Spanish Songbook selections, Nonesuch I-I 71296.) It is appropriate that Schumann is represented twice in this collection, for unusual combinations of tone colors often characterized his unique flights of musical fancy.

The Fantasy Pieces for clarinet and piano have never much appealed to me; this seems to me one of those cases where Schumann's fertile imagination lagged behind his coloristic gestures. De Peyer and Goode might well be the pair to convince me other wise, but not here-De Peyer plays quite beautifully, but with no revelations of purpose or poetry, and Goode, as noted, sounds as if he's playing in the next room.

Unlike the Fantasy Pieces, Schumann's Andante and Variations leaves no doubt of its greatness, even in the composer's "more practical" reworking for two pianos alone.

The original version, however, is one of the great Romantic conceptions-the cello and horn parts are integral to Schumann's precisely imagined brooding and soaring. The performance is serviceable but not very vividly characterized; both competing recordings communicate the work more fully.

The double representation of Faure is less understandable. Robison and Wads worth give a first-rate account of the pair of flute pieces, but the music seems to me utterly devoid of personality, especially following (as it does here) the Bach concerto.

The Dolly suite for piano duet, on the other hand, is a thoroughly charming collection of miniatures. But the Browning/Wads worth performance is the set's one out-and out failure. The primo player (Browning, I assume from the billing) gives the music no shape whatsoever, and the secondo part, while firmer rhythmically, is leaden. The fast numbers ("Mi-a-ou" and "Pas espagnol") are okay, but the others commit the unpardonable sin of making the music sound uninteresting. (My notes for "Ten dresse" read "clunk-clunk-clunk-clunkty clunk-clunk.") I don't want to leave on that negative note; the set as a whole provides consider able stimulation and enjoyment, at a re markable price. The sound, except for the balance problems noted, is generally bright and clean. There are notes by Harris Gold smith, which I haven't seen. - K.F.

[B] LES Menestriers. Yves Audard, recorders, krummhorns, and rackett; Jean-Pierre Batt, viols, gamba, and krumm horn; Daniel Dossmann, pandora, cittern, and percussion; Bernard Pierrot, lute; Julien Skowron, treble viol, vielle, and rebec. VANGUARD EVERYMAN SRV 316SD, $3.98.

Last year New York audiences were de lighted by a quintet of engaging Frenchmen calling themselves Les Menestriers. The intimacy of their cabaret-style performance, the casual ease with which the twentieth century minstrels set aside their medieval instruments to join voices for a verse or two, their obvious enjoyment of the music they make, can now be shared by a wider audience in this, their first disc to be re leased in this country.

Although all the members of Les Men estriers are multitalented, they are primarily an instrumental ensemble specializing in the lighter side of the medieval and re naissance repertory. It takes imaginative scoring to keep this somewhat simple fare interesting, but the musicians present a veritable feast of sweet and spicy delicacies to please the most epicurean listener. The full bodied resonance of three Praetorius dances contrasts with the bright, scraping sound of the medieval fiddle in the fourteenth-century rotta "La Manfredina." An extraordinary effect is made by an ensemble of plucked instruments in the first verse of William Byrd's "My Lord of Oxen-ford's Mask," followed by a no less fascinating sound in a rendition for broken con sort, flute, viol, lute, and cittern. The conflicting rhythmic patterns of fifteenth-century Hayne van Ghizeghem's "Gentil Gallans" are clearly delineated in a particularly sprightly performance.

Les Menestriers sing as well as play, and here too their appeal is immediate and direct, from the innocent delights of a thirteenth-century love song, "Voulez-vous que je vous chante," crooned with the in souciant charm of a Chevalier or a Montand, to the lively close harmony of Janne quin's witty "II Malt une fillette." "Ma peine n'est pas grande," by the same com poser, is so convincing vocally and instrumentally that one could almost believe Jannequin wrote it particularly for this ensemble. In keeping with the intimate night club atmosphere, Les Menestriers conclude the recording with a Weill-like finale, angry flutes and plucked strings snapping at the saucy dissonances of Hans Neusiedler's Ju dentanz.

The only fault one might find with this record lies not in the music or its performance, but with the packaging. There are no texts, and the contents are listed wrongly in the sleeve. Moreover the program itself lasts under thirty-four minutes, short change even for $3.98. S.T.S.

ANTONY PEEBLES: Piano Recital. Antony Peebles, piano. UNICORN RHS 323, $7.98.

BARTOK: Etudes (3), Op. 18. COPLAND: Fantasy. DALLAPIC eau: Ouaderno Musicale de Annalibera.

Antony Peebles is a superb British pianist who has won some prizes in Europe and will probably hit the American circuits be fore long. He has a tremendous tone, a mastery of shading such as one has not heard since Horowitz was in his heyday, and a sense of rhythm and shape of a profoundly musical variety.

On this record he displays several aspects of his ability. One side is devoted to the huge, epical, sonatalike Fantasy by Aaron Copland and the Bartok Op. 18 Etudes, for the fingers-of-steel department.

The second side is given over to the Quaderno Musicale di Annalibera by Luigi Dal lapiccola, a work of supreme delicacy and finesse, performed here to perfection. A.F.

[B] ROBERT THOMPSON: The Baroque Bassoon. Robert Thompson, bas soon, Thomas Trobaugh, harpsichord. Musical HERITAGE MHS 1853, $3.50 (Musical Heritage Society, 1991 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10023).

Boismortier: Sonata No. 5, in G minor. Fasch: Sonata in C. GALLIARD: Sonata No. 3, in F. Schutz: Symphoniae Sacrae. Book I: Nos. 16 and 17 (with Elsa Charlston, soprano Loretta Zion, alto). TELEMANN: Sonata tor Viola da Gamba, in E minor.

As a onetime (clumsily amateur) bassoon ist, I've retained a special affection for what is perhaps more the philosopher of the orchestra than (as popularly dubbed) the clown. And I've always regretted the scar city of recorded representations of the instrument's solo repertory.

So I have a warm welcome even for a program that should more properly be titled "Bassoon Music of the Baroque Era," since what Thompson plays here is not a period or replica instrument, but a quite modern Heckel. No matter: Thompson, a busy concertizing soloist, once with the Indianapolis Symphony, is not merely a proficient technician, but commander of admirably "fat," robust, and juicily soft-reedy tonal qualities, and he brings an infectious relish to everything he plays. Hence, even though both his continuo harpsichordist and recording engineer make sure that he is given front-stage prominence, prime interest is centered on the inspired choice of music itself.

The now jauntily buoyant, now gravely ceremonial sonata by Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688-1758), the more bravura sonata showpiece by his close contemporary Johann Ernst Galliard (1687-1749), and the lighter-weight but engaging work by the slightly later Frenchman Joseph Bodin de Boismortier (1691-1755) are all characteristic examples of baroquian-vital music-making. And as best as I can tell, only the Boismortier has been recorded before, in this country anyway. What are truly out standing, though (and what I've never heard before, on records or off) are the su perbly songful and spirited Telemann sonata and the quite extraordinarily moving Schutz settings of Song of Solomon verses.

The former comes from the twenty-four Essercizii musici of 1724; the latter from Book I (1629) of the Symphoniae Sacrae. The Schutz vocalists, a bright but somewhat unsteady soprano and a much-too-reticent alto. scarcely do full justice either to No.

16's poignance or to No. 17's jubilance, but in both pieces the three-bassoon obbligatos (all by Thompson dubbing?) are as unusual as they are fascinating.

-R.D.D.

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Von Stade, Blegen, et al.: A Vocal and Musical Delight

by Dale Harris

Columbia here offers us a program of solos and duets that is thoroughly delightful-above all for its intense musicality. Not only have the artists, vocal and instrumental, placed themselves selflessly at the service of the composers, but the choice of material and its ordering bespeak great sensitivity. Except for "Non so none of the music is exactly over familiar, and even the Mozart aria is given new interest by being per formed in the composer's version for mezzo-soprano, violin, and piano.

There is admirable catholicity in the taste that can recognize the quality of Saint-Saens's "Le bonheur est chose legere" and, moreover, evidence of a fine instinct for programming in placing it between "Non so piii" and the Brahms duets. The roughly forty minutes of music on this disc unfolds with commendable variety of style, mood, and texture.

Judith Blegen and Frederica von Stade give great pleasure. They have chosen not a single piece that is be yond their capacity in either vocal stamina or interpretive skill. They command the necessary gifts of nuance and color to bring these songs to life, they clearly understand what the texts are about, and their pronunciation of French, German, and Italian is exemplary. My only reservation is that both artists are sometimes afflicted with excessive vibrato, and on account of this slow, sustained songs like Blegen's "Die Verschworenen" and Von Stade's "Chanson perpetuelle" lose a portion of their beauty. On the other hand, fast numbers like Blegen's "Se geloso a it mio core"-an aria from Alessandro Scarlatti's cantata Endi mione e Cintia, with accompaniment by an instrumental ensemble--and Von Stade's "Non so piu" sound splendid, and in all the duets, whether fast or slow, the voices blend beautifully.

One of the great virtues of this recital is the quality of the accompaniments. Charles Wadsworth, on both piano and harpsichord, is particularly fine. There is some sensitive violin playing from Jaime Laredo (whose identity is mysteriously concealed behind the anagram "Joe del Maria") in the Saint-Saens, and Gerard Schwarz's trumpet is brilliant in the Scarlatti.

There are texts (not very carefully proofread) and translations. The liner notes refer to Schumann's "Botschaft," which of course means "Message," as a "boat song"-an identification that leaves me very puzzled.

JUDITH BLEGEN AND FREDERICA VON STADE: Arias and Duets. Judith Blegen, soprano; Frederica von Slade, mezzo-soprano; Charles Wadsworth, piano and harpsichord. [Thomas Frost, prod.) COLUMBIA M 33307, $6.98.

BRAHMS: Klange II; Klostertraulein; Phanomen; Weg der Liebe I-Il; Walpurgisnacht.

CHAUSSON: Chanson perpetuelle (Von Stade; with "Joe del Maria," violin).

MOZART: Le Nozze di Figaro. Non so pit) (arr. Mozart) (Von Stade; with "Joe del Maria").

Saint-SAINS: Le bonheur est chose 16 gere (Blegen; with "Joe del Maria").

SCARLATTI: Endimione a Cintia: Vaga Cintia .. Se ge loso 6 it mio core (Blegen; with chamber ensemble).

Schubert: Die Verschworenen (Blegen; with Gervase de Peyer, clarinet).

SCHUMANN: Botschaft; Das Gluck.

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( High Fidelity magazine, Jul 1975)

Also see:

Re-climbing Everest (remastering recordings of the old Everest label) (Jan. 1990)

Classical recordings (Oct. 1977)

WHY BEETHOVEN? (Jan. 1970)

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