Classical Records [High Fidelity, Mar. 1977]

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----- Samuel Barber

reviewed by:

ROYAL S. BROWN; ABRAM CHIPMAN; R. D. DARRELL PETER C. DAVIS SHIRLEY FLEMING ALFRED FRANKENSTEIN KENNETH FURIE HARRIS GOLDSMITH DAVID HAMILTON DALE S. HARRIS PHILIP-TART PAUL HENRY LANG RCBERT LONG IRVING LOWENS ROGER- C. MARSH ROGER P. MORGAN

JEREMY NOBLE; CONRAD L. OSBORNE ANDREW PORTER H. C. ROBBINS LANDON HAROLT A. RODGERS PATRICK I. SMITHSONIAN THIEMANN SOMMER

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BACH Flute Works. Paula Robison, flute; Kenneth Cooper, harpsichord; Timothy Eddy, cello. [Seymour Solomon, prod.] VANGUARD VSD 71215/6, $13.96 (two discs).

Sonatas: for Solo Flute, S 1013: for Flute and Harpsichord (4), S. 1020, 1030-32 for Flute and Continuo (3). S. 1033-35.

Comparison: Rampal, Veyron-Lacroix. Savall; RCA CAL 3-5820

One of the fastest-rising young musical stars in this country, Paula Robison boasts distinctive solo-virtuoso and chamber-ensemble talents that have been demanding better discographic representation for some time-a demand now admirably met by Vanguard's set of the eight basic Bach solo-flute works. And here, in full measure, is eloquent proof, not only of Robison's technical expertise, but also--and more uniquely-of her markedly individual interpretative personality. Her sensitively vari colored tonal qualities are vividly captured in gleamingly pure recording, which favors the flute over the deft but more modest harpsichord (or harpsichord/cello continuo) parts, but not at the cost of any textural clarity.

A must for every Robison fan, this set faces for others the strongest possible com petition from the July 1975 Rampal/RCA three-disc album. For the latter includes not only the present eight works, but three additional ones for practically the same cost. And it is no less well recorded, in a slightly more open acoustical ambience and with generally less reticent collaboration, that of the tonally softer-focused gambist in particular. But if even Robison can't quite match the well-nigh flawless bravura of Rampal (who can?), she succeeds just where the superhuman Frenchman is weakest: in projecting a sense of personal involvement and relish. Objectively, Rampal must be the preferred choice, but in music, or any other art, objectivity isn't always the determining factor.

R.D.D.

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Bach: Works for Violin and Harpsichord. For an essay review, see page 90.

BAKER: La Chat qui Oche.GOULD: Symphonette No. 2. Linda Anderson, soprano ; Jamey Aebersold, alto and tenor saxophones; Dan Haerle, piano and electric piano; John Clayton, bass and electric bass; Charlie Craig, drums; Louisville Orchestra, Jorge Mester, cond. [Andrew Kazdin, prod.] LOUISVILLE LS 751, $6.95 ( Louisville First Edition Recordings, 333 W. Broadway, Louisville, Ky. 40202).

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The opening few minutes of David Baker's Le Chat qui Oche (The Fishing Cat), named after a tiny Parisian street, should bowl over just about any listener who turns on to a big jazz sound, particularly since producer Andrew Kazdin and his crew obviously went overboard to get whopping sonics. Indeed, the decibel count for most of this work might best be read on the Richter scale, because of both the music and the high recording levels. But this relentless loudness takes its toll pretty quickly, as Baker does not seem to be working, in this five-movement piece, on much more than a catalog of the various jazz idioms that he knows so well as a scholar on the subject.

Rather than third-stream jazz, as he calls this 1975 composition, Le Chat qui Oche struck me as little more than big (too big) sound jazz. The vocalizing soprano adds a nice, rather cinematic effect here and there.

It is most rewarding, on the other hand, finally to have a complete recording of Morton Gould's 1939 Symphonette No. 2. I have always liked the rather caustic irony that lurks behind even the jauntiest Gould melody or instrumental effect, and nothing exemplifies this tendency better than the deceptive wispiness of the famous "Pavane" second movement. (Note also the acid string punctuation that pops up in the first.) The Louisville Orchestra's performance of the work lacks a certain bite, but it is good enough; and, again, the sound is brilliant. The Gould alone makes this disc worthwhile, and the Baker has a definite demonstration-disc value.

R.S.B.

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Explanation of symbols:

Classical

Recorded tape

Open Reel

8-Track Cartridge

Cassette

Budget

Historical

Reissue

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BARBER: Symphony No. 1, Op. 9. Essays for Orchestra: No. 1, Op. 12; No. 2, Op. 17. Night Flight, Op. 19a. London Symphony Orchestra, David Measham, cond. [Robert Angles, prod.] UNICORN RHS 342, $7.98 (distributed by HNH Distributors).

BARBER: Symphony No. 1, Op. 9. MAYER: Octagon. William Masselos, piano; Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Kenneth Schermerhorn, cond. [Marc J. Aubort and Joanna Nickrenz, prod.] TURNABOUT TV-S 34564, $3.98 (OS-encoded disc).

BARBER: Sonata for Cello and Piano, in C minor, Op. 6. DIAMOND: Sonata for Cello and Piano. Harry Clark, cello; Sande Schuldmann, piano. [Daniel Nimetz, prod.] MUSICAL HERITAGE MHS 3378, $3.50 plus 95l postage (Musical Heritage Society, MHS Building, Oakhurst, N.J. 07755).

Barber's First Symphony (1935-37, revised

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BACH Flute Works. Paula Robison, flute; Kenneth Cooper, harpsichord; Timothy Eddy, cello. [ Seymour Solomon, prod.] VANGUARD VSD 71215/6, $13.96 (two discs).

Sonatas: for Solo Flute, S 1013: for Flute and Harpsichord (4), S. 1020, 1030-32 for Flute and Continuo (3). S. 1033-35.

Comparison: Rampal, Veyron-Lacroix. Savall RCA CAL 3-5820

One of the fastest-rising young musical stars in this country, Paula Robison boasts distinctive solo-virtuoso and chamber-ensemble talents that have been demanding better discographic representation for some time-a demand now admirably met by Vanguard's set of the eight basic Bach solo-flute works. And here, in full measure, is eloquent proof, not only of Robison's technical expertise, but also--and more uniquely--of her markedly individual interpretative personality. Her sensitively vari colored tonal qualities are vividly captured in gleamingly pure recording, which favors the flute over the deft but more modest harpsichord (or harpsichord/cello continuo) parts, but not at the cost of any textural clarity.

And it is no less well recorded, in a slightly more open acoustical ambience and with generally less reticent collaboration, that of the tonally softer-focused gambist in par ticular. But if even Robison can't quite match the well-nigh flawless bravura of Rampal (who can?), she succeeds just where the superhuman Frenchman is weakest: in projecting a sense of personal involvement and relish. Objectively, Rampal must be the preferred choice, but in music, or any other art, objectivity isn't al ways the determining factor.

R.D.D.

Sam Works for Violin and Harpsichord.

For an essay review, see page 90.

BAKER: La Chat qui Oche.

GOULD: Symphonette No. 2. Linda Anderson, soprano; Jamey Aebersold, alto and tenor saxophones; Dan Haerle, piano and electric piano; John Clayton, bass and electric bass; Charlie Craig, drums; Louisville Orchestra, Jorge Mester, cond. [Andrew Kazdin, prod.] LOUISVILLE LS 751, $6.95 ( Louisville First Edition Recordings, 333 W. Broadway, Louisville, Ky. 40202).

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Explanation of symbols

Classical

Recorded tape

Open Reel

8-Track Cartridge

Cassette

Budget

Historical Reissue

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R.S.B.

BARBER: Symphony No. 1, Op. 9. Essays for Orchestra: No. 1, Op. 12; No. 2, Op. 17.

Night Flight, Op. 19a. London Symphony Orchestra, David Measham, cond. [Robert Angles, prod.] UNICORN RHS 342, $7.98 (distributed by HNH Distributors).

BARBER: Symphony No. 1, Op. 9.

MAYER: Octagon.* William Masselos, piano"; Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Kenneth Schermerhorn, cond. [Marc J. Au bort and Joanna Nickrenz, prod.] TURNABOUT TV-S 34564, $3.98 (OS-encoded disc).

Barber's First Symphony (1935-37, revised 1942) is a beautifully unified, four-movement-in-one work with an almost Shakespearean dramatic pacing. Both here and in the shorter First Essay for Orchestra (1938), his sense of affective timing is perfect -in the latter a short, gloomy motive (recalling the mood of the famous Adagio for Strings) is stated and eventually replaced by a sharp, typically steely Barber scherzo, only to be brought back in a final, climactic surge whose effect is chilling.

I am surprised that these two works have not received more attention on disc; the in tense but much more extroverted Second Essay (1942) has proven more popular, per haps because it is less depressing than the First. Unfortunately, neither performance of the symphony fills the need for a good modern version -the Hanson rendition (Mercury SRI 75012). by far the best, is in rechanneled stereo, although the sound is decent enough. The Measham/London Symphony performance is slack, eliciting little feeling of continuity or dramatic co herency. Measham fares better in the Second Essay, but Night Flight, the reworked slow movement of the composer's repudiated (but not unrecorded) Second Symphony (1944), all but falls apart at the seams, and I am not especially impressed by the playing of the First Essay, one of my favorite contemporary works. Schermerhorn and the Milwaukee Symphony are much more successful in maintaining the symphony's tensions, but the playing is not all that good, and the recorded sound, par ticularly in the strings, is considerably duller than Unicorn's clean but rather depthless reproduction.

The early (1932) cello sonata shows Barber's more mellowly lyrical side, with a re markable theme in rising minor sixths opening the work and a number of haunting melodies and intriguing figures as it pro gresses. In strong contrast, David Dia mond's 1938 sonata, which here receives its first (and most welcome) recording, is a knottier piece, with immense rhythmic vi tality but little melodic or harmonic drive.

Both works are technically well played by the Clark-Schuldmann duo, though I am not partial to Harry Clark's reedy cello tone. The Diamond gets a vigorous, well- paced interpretation, but the Barber is on the ponderous side. Musical Heritage's very present sound reproduction is a strong plus.

Finally, William Mayer's 1971 Octagon, the filler for Schermerhorn's Barber sym phony, is an eight -movement (naturally) piece for piano and orchestra, a modern istic, rather brittle showpiece stressing so nority (both chordal and instrumental) and allowing the listener to feast on bravura an tics from both soloist and orchestra. Noth ing reaches very deeply, either intellec tually or emotionally, but it is exciting music brilliantly performed by William Masselos and Schermerhorn, with much better engineering than in the Barber. R.S.B.

BEETHOVEN: Sonatas for Piano: No. 18, in E flat, Op. 31, No. 3; No. 23, in F minor, Op. 57 (Appassionata). Lazar Berman, piano. [Ste ven Epstein, prod.] COLUMBIA M 34218. $6.98. Tape: No MT 34218, $7.98; A! MA 34218, $7.98

BEETHOVEN: Sonata for Piano, No. 23, in F minor, Op. 57 (Appassionata). Lien: Sonata for Piano, in B minor. Lazar Berman. piano. SAGA 5430, $6.98 [originally released in England as SAGA XID 5019, 1958] (distributed by CMS Records).

The Columbia disc was taped last spring while Berman was making his first U.S. tour; the Saga was taped in 1958 following an obscure recital (sponsored by Saga) in the little room of London's Royal Festival Hall. Berman, of course, remade the Liszt sonata too-a 1974 Melodiya product re leased domestically as Columbia M 33927.

If you want the Liszt, the newer version is the one you should get. It is more strongly integrated than the refined but rather small-scaled and episodic Saga (and more suit ably coupled with more Liszt). If it is Beethoven you are seeking, you may do well to bypass both discs.

The two Appassionata performances are quite different, and-as with the Liszt-al most every advantage is with the later one.

In the finale, Berman now observes the important direction to play "the second part twice," and he is always respectful of ac cents and other markings, though he never convinces me that he really understands all their implications. Dry and methodical though his playing may be, it is leagues ahead of the provincial early effort, which reduces the sonata to a haphazardly assembled series of salon vignettes.

Columbia's overside Op. 31, No. 3, falls midway between the almost studentish ac count that Berman gave (on a horrible "house" piano) at the Ninety-second Street YMHA and the extroverted, quite exciting one from his debut at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. The pianism is tastefully fleet (but not really notable for finely graded control), while the interpretation sounds oddly constrained and not particularly, or characteristically, Beethovenian.

And in this sonata Berman bypasses the first-movement repeat, thereby upsetting the structural symmetry.

Black marks for Columbia's engineering and pressing. In many ways, the admittedly too plummy, recessive British sound of nineteen years ago is more agreeable than the tight, brittle, colorless "modern" reproduction. The sound on the Melodiya Liszt sonata-to say nothing of Berman's Deutsche Grammophon records-is strikingly superior. H.G.

BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 6, in F. Op. 68

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Critics Choice

The best classical records reviewed in recent months

Symphony No. 6, in F. Op. 68

BACH: Concerto Reconstructions (ed. Hogwood). Marriner. ARGO ZRG 820/1, Dec.

BACH: Harpsichord(s)/String Concertos. Leppard. PHILIPS 6747 194 (3), Dec.

BACH: Italian Concerto; B minor Partita. Kipnis. ANGEL S 36096, Jan.

BARTOK: Bluebeard's Castle. Troyanos, Nimsgern; Boulez. COLUMBIA M 34217, Feb.

GLUCK: Operatic Arias. Baker; Leppard. PHILIPS 9500 023, Jan.

HANDEL: Organ Concertos (16). Rogg, Armand. CONNOISSEUR SOCIETY CSQ2 2115 (2) and 211 6 (2), Jan.

HAYDN: Piano Works. McCabe. LONDON STEREO TREASURY STS 15343/5 (3), Jan.

HAYDN: Symphonies Nos. 99, 100. Bernstein. COLUMBIA M 34126, Feb.

HAYDN: Trios H. XV:14/15. Beaux Arts Trio. PHILIPS 9500 034, Jan.

JANACEK: Choral Works. Veselka. SUPRAPHON 1 12 1486, Dec.

Liszt: Concerto No. 1. TCHAIKOVSKY: Concerto No. 1. Gutierrez, Previn. ANGEL S 37177, Feb.

Liszt: Concerto No. 1; Totentanz. Kiss, Ferencsik. HUNGAROTON SLPX 11792, Feb.

Lim: Concertos Nos. 1, 2. Berman, Giu ini. DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 2530 770, Feb.

MAHLER: Das Lied von der Erde. Baker, King; Haitink. PHILIPS 6500 831, Jan.

Mozart: Quartets Nos. 20-23. Juilliard Ot. COLUMBIA MG 33976 (2), Feb.

Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition: B flat Scherzo; Turkish March. Beroff. ANGEL S x/223, Dec.

Orff: Carmina Burana. Kegel. PHILIPS 9500 040, Dec.

RACHMANINOFF: Isle of the Dead; Symphonic Dances. Previn. ANGEL S 37158, Jan.

Rossini: Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra. Caballe, Masterson, Carreras; Masini. PHILIPS 6703 067 (3), Feb.

SCHUMANN: Sonata (Concerto Without Orchestra). SCRIM'S: Sonata No. 5. Horowitz. RCA RED SEAL ARL 1-1766, Jan.

SHOSTAKOVICH: Quartets Nos. 8, 15. Fitzwilliam Qt.L’OISEAU-LYRE DSLO 11, Feb.

STAMITZ, J.: Clarinet Concerto; Symphonies (3). Hacker, Hogwood. OISEAU-LYRE DSLO 505, Feb.

STRAVINSKY: Le Sacre du printemps. Monteux. LONDON STEREO TREASURY STS 15318, Feb.

STRAVINSKY: Le Sacre du printemps. Abbado. DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 2530 635, Feb.

WAGNER: Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg. Fischer-Dieskau, Ligendza, Domingo; Jochum.

DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 2713 011 (5), Feb.

DAVID MUNROW: Art of Courtly Love. SERAPHIM SIC 6092 (3), Feb.

DAVID MUNROW: Instruments of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. ANGEL SBZ 3810 (2), Feb.

ARTURO TOSCANINI: And the Philadelphia Orchestra. RCA RED SEAL CRM 5-1900 (5), Jan.

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-------- Karl Bohm-his first integral cycle of Brahms symphonies

... (Pastoral). Hungarian State Orchestra, Janos Ferencsik, cond. [Istvan Juhasz, prod.] HUNGAROTON SLPX 11790, $6.98.

This Pastoral is excellent in every way fully the equal of the recent distinguished Seventh from these forces (SLPX 11791, December 1976).

Ferencsik belongs to the sadly dwindling band of conductors who interpret Beethoven with a maximum of understanding and a minimum of fuss. There is nothing either eccentric or meretriciously "traditional" about this performance. The basic rhythmic pulse is rock-solid in each movement, neither too fast nor too slow; there are no coy little tempo adjustments like the all too familiar ritardandos on the bassoon figurations at bar 236 of the first movement or the bothersome underlining of the climax at bar 146 of the finale. And the Hungarian State Orchestra compensates for a slight lack of polish with the most responsive, mellow, expressive playing.

In sum, then, a thoroughly bucolic interpretation that is certain to stand up to time.

The recording is splendid too. Ferencsik takes the scherzo repeat, but not the one in the first movement. H.G.

BRAHMS: Sonatas for Violin and Piano: No. 1, in G, Op. 78; No. 3, in D minor, Op. 108. Miklos Szenthelyi, violin; Andras Schiff, piano. [Janos Matyas, prod.] HUNGAROTON SLPX 11731, $6.98.

These admirably musical young Hungarians fare better in the more extroverted D minor Sonata, in which fervor and introspection are more easily balanced. Some times the playing is understated to the point of matter-of-factness, but the general sensitivity and purity of intent are quite touching.

In the G major Sonata, more elegance and supple mobility are needed to keep the arching line aloft, and the severe problems of balance and projection have not been satisfactorily solved. At the beginning of the first Allegro ma non troppo, for in stance, Szenthelyi seems to be employing the long urtext bowing, but he simply can not command enough sonority to project the opening phrases intact. At other points pianist Schiff covers his colleague instead of merely surrounding him. And I suspect that the recorded balance accurately reproduces what was presented to the micro phones. H.G.

BRAHMS: Symphonies (4). Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Karl Bohm, cond. [Werner Mayer, prod.] DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 2711 017, $31.92 (four discs, manual sequence).

Symphonies: No. 1, In C minor, Op. 68; No. 2. in D, Op. 73; No. 3, in F, Op. 90; No. 4, in E minor, Op. 98.

Bohm has recorded all the Brahms sym phonies before, but this is his first integral cycle. His approach is an individual one, not calculated to appeal to all tastes: broad and deliberate, but free of extraneous gestures. Rather the inner security of his rhythmic sense and the natural musicality of his phrases "lock in" the hearer's attention.

These performances have a chamber music texture at least partly traceable to DG's bright, almost weightless recording, in which the winds (including the amiable, slightly quavery Vienna oboe) shine effortlessly through the strings.

The new First is broader in the first movement, less steady elsewhere than Bohm's 1960 Berlin recording for DG. The outstanding feature is the third-movement trio, which has a serene, almost clucking, contentment. The finale is a little finicky, and this is the one place the Vienna strings turn almost whiny.

I recall Bohm's mono Berlin Second for DG (once issued here on Decca) as a dull and stodgy affair. Here, although he takes all the time in the world (especially in the slow movement), the entire score glows with a radiant tragic intensity and massive metrical solidity. If told that the conductor was Pablo Casals, I wouldn't doubt it!

I've always been fond of Bohm's earlier Vienna Third for Decca / London (available as Vox STPL 513 300, re-channeled)--a firm, generous-hearted, and sweeping rendition.

The remake is a bit casual in its resolute simplicity, and the individual profile of the movements is underplayed. The high strings sound more acerbic here than in the rest of the set.

The Fourth hasn't been in &ohm's discography since a prewar Dresden set for HMV. which I remember as modestly and firmly authoritative. Here too is a reading of exemplary cumulative strength. In both the first and second movements there are exceptionally gentle pianissimos, yet the carefully scaled climaxes, when they come, go full throttle. Pacing is conservative, with a welcome funereal dignity in the slow movement. A wryly puckish scherzo leads to a finale neither rigidly monolithic nor indulgently sectionalized. Instead, each variation of the glorious passacaglia receives just the right contouring in a spontaneous and smooth way. A Fourth of such integrity and dignity joins the top group of all the recordings we have had.

A.C.

BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 8, in C minor (ed. Haas). Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan, cond. [Michel Glotz, Hans Hirsch, and Magdalene Padberg, prod.] DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 2707 085, $15.96 (two discs, manual sequence).

Comparisons: Karajan/Berlin Phil. EMI SXDW 3024 Haitink Concertgebouw Phi. 6700 020 Karajan's 1958 Angel

Bruckner Eighth (SB 3576, deleted, but recently reissued in the British HMV Concert Classics series) was turgidly conducted and soggily recorded, and he has not altered the basic grand scale of his conception. I am a bit more swayed now by the portentous weight of his opening Allegro moderato, in which every grandiloquent gesture is wrung out. And the measured pace of the scherzo is no intrinsic impediment, as Szell demonstrated in his tensile recording of the Nowak edition of the symphony (Columbia M2 30070).

But the sticky legato with which Karajan's violas and cellos phrase the main tune vitiates any positive effect. Though the Adagio is rushed in spots (most cruelly in the ineffably tender closing pages), the finale becomes more and more ponderous as it progresses, till the music seems to be undergoing a mudpack treatment.

The new recording does improve on its predecessor in some welcome respects. The bite and intensity of the playing often turns into demonic surge and thrust what was formerly effete, and Karajan's control over dynamics, when he chooses to exercise it, is consummate. He does so in most of the symphony's first half (as in the pizzicato crescendo at bars 128-33 of the scherzo); later, however, he becomes less attentive the passage at bars 50-60 of the scherzo, for example, is loud and crude.

The engineering has much to do with the difference between the Karajan recordings.

In place of EMI's homogeneous weight and cavernous blending, DG provides a sharply focused perspective, crisp and clear and of seemingly limitless power. The strings bounce, the brasses bite. But Philips' engineering for Haitink--the only other conductor on current recordings who uses the Haas edition of the Eighth-is at least as well balanced internally, albeit somewhat more reticent and damped over-all, and the Concertgebouw's playing is fully as impressive as the Berlin Philharmonic's. More over, Haitink avoids Karajan's mannerisms in the finale, which is given with real force and meaningful integration. He is also more tender and flowing in the Adagio, and many will prefer his lithe and bubbling account of the scherzo.

Although the Nowak edition of the Eighth. which follows Bruckner's revised score of 1890, seems to be the current favorite, I remain loyal to Haas, who incorporated the basic 1890 revisions but restored several brief passages from the original score of 1887 that he felt Bruckner had cut against his own better judgment. Incredibly, DG bills this recording as the "version of 1887." (The latter has been published-in 1973 by the Bruckner Society-but not re corded.)

A.C.

DELIUS: Fennimore and Gerda. Fennimore. Gerda Elisabeth Soderstrom (s) Erik Retstrup Robert Tear (I) Niels Lyhne Brian Rayner Cook (b) (plus numerous smaller roles) Danish Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra, Meredith Davies, cond. [David Mottley, prod.] ANGEL SBLX 3835, $14.98 (two SQ-encoded discs, automatic sequence).

It is fitting that the long-awaited disc debut of Delius' final opera, though recorded by a British conductor and principal singers un der the auspices of the Delius Trust, should have taken place in Scandinavia. The com poser's libretto is based on Niels Lyhne, a Danish novel by Jens Peter Jacobsen. and the ambience and scenery of the Northland pervade the tragic story. Indeed, Delius' imagination seems more in tune with the backdrop of fiord, farmland, river, and the warm hearth on a bleak winter's night than with the human relationships of the characters.

The psychodynamics of the libretto are ambiguous. Fennimore is a woman who has apparently loved both the writer Niels and his longtime friend, the painter Erik. Both men become creatively blocked once they are involved with her, for reasons that are taken for granted rather than explored in depth. Following Erik's drunken, accidental (?) death and Fennimore's bitter dismissal of Niels, with whom she had recently cuckolded Erik, Niels retreats to a pastoral life to happily wed the teeny-bopper Gerda.

Sir Thomas Beecham never forgave Delius for thus watering down the novel's tragic ending, where even Gerda is eventually destroyed: indeed, his biography of the composer portrays the years culminating in the 1910 completion of Fennimore and Gerda as ones stifled by petty bureaucratic details attendant upon his growing commercial successes. And the music explores the relationships between the women and the men with a disturbing lack of enduring passion and depth. In terms of the most effective focus of both libretto and music, the work could well have been called Niels and Erik. But that would have forced Delius to face unflinchingly what the words only hint at in double entendres. One waits in vain for illumination of the characters' sexual conflicts, or for any sense of grief, heartbreak, or loss when Niels and Fennimore part. Delius the escapist turns, as so often, to the passive absorption of nature.

The orchestral fabric of this ninety-minute work moves in a stream of atmospheric painting that is Delian sorcery at its fullest.

There is little evident motive development but gleaming wisps of color and harmony that evoke the grotesquerie, childlike bliss, and constant longing for far-off nature that are so much a part of the composer's special world. For me, the outstanding moments are Fennimore's serenade to the joys of unfettered freedom (in the first of the op era's eleven scenes), the wordless tenor voice (Anthony Rolfe Johnson in this recording) coming across the water in the second, the autumnal interlude between the fifth and sixth, the icy and mocking orchestral accompaniment (with fragments of Eventyr) to Fennimore's discovery of Erik's death, and of course the music flanking the tenth scene (Niels's contented discovery of the farmer's life), which for concert purposes has been consolidated into "the" Fennimore and Gerda Intermezzo. (Even Beecham softened his disapproval of the score for those five minutes of it.) The performance is consistently clean, sensitive, and atmospheric. The Danish Radio Symphony has the idiom superbly in grained-non-English orchestras can play Delius. Conductor Meredith Davies is more successful here than in his rather choppy reading of A Village Romeo and Juliet (An gel SBLX 3784, May 1973). Elisabeth Saderstrom handles both title roles splendidly (granting the premise of one performer doubling such different characters), and Brian Rayner Cook is a thoughtful and warmly articulate Niels. Robert Tear's Erik.

though, is less ardent and tormented than Max Worthley's in a BBC production that has circulated in the underground. The supporting cast (of mostly walk-on parts) does its work conscientiously.

Angel's pressings are quiet enough but somewhat lacking in brightness. The album includes a succinct but thorough assessment of the work by Eric Fenby, the complete text, and a splendid Edvard Munch drawing evidently done for the cover of the original vocal score. A.G.

DIAMOND: Sonata for Cello and Piano-See Barber: Symphony No. 1.

DvoAAK: Symphony No. 9, in E minor, Op. 95 (From the New World). New Philharmonia Orchestra, Riccardo Muti, cond. [John Mordler, prod.] ANGEL S 37230, $6.98 (SQ-encoded disc). Tape: Se 4X8 37230, $7.98;. 8X 37230, $7.98.

MENDELSSOHN: Symphony No. 3, in A mi nor, Op. 56 (Scotch); Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage Overture, Op. 27. New Philharmonia Orchestra, Riccardo Muti, cond. [John Mordler, prod.] ANGEL S 37168, $6.98 (SQ-encoded disc).

TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 1, in G minor, Op. 13 ( Winter Dreams). New Philharmonia Orchestra, Riccardo Muti, cond. [John Mordler, prod.] ANGEL S 37114, $6.98 (SQ-encoded disc).

Riccardo Muti’s first symphonic records do not satisfy the high anticipation aroused by his vault to international celebrity and by his appreciable contribution to a fine re corded Aida (Angel SCLX 3815, February 1975). Moreover, I find it difficult properly to apportion blame among conductor, orchestra, and engineering.

Muti's approach to the orchestra bears a resemblance to that of Eugene Ormandy, with whose blessing he has been named principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra: Attacks and releases, though together in good ensemble, are smooth and gentle; much of the time the strings use a wide vibrato, sounding quite lush in slower and more expressive pas sages. (This might have been more impressive still were the string complement more numerous. It sounds rather anemic to me, especially when pitted against an aggressive wind band in tutti climaxes. Again, though, the fault may be less the orchestra's than the engineering's, about which more below.) Interpretively, Muti is rather bland in all three of these composers. He makes the best impression in the Tchaikovsky First Symphony, but even here the excellent and quite different readings of Michael Tilson Thomas (DG 2530 078) and Leonard Bernstein (Columbia M 30482) demonstrate how effectively a strong interpretive profile can improve this weak score. Similarly, a number of recordings of the Mendelssohn Scotch Symphony-for example Peter Maag's (Stereo Treasury STS 15091), Otto Klemperer's (Angel S 35880), and Herbert von Karajan's (DG 2530 126)-enliven and enlighten this superbly Romantic score much more effectively. Both here and in the Dvorak New World, Muti fails to impart real energy and impulse to the music; in both symphonies, his best work comes in the slow movements.

I do not mean to imply that Muti lacks rhythmic security; within the parameters of his inclination to languor, he has full control of the music. Yet he seems to rely for overall effect on the sensuous aspect of the orchestra, and here both the orchestra and the recording let him down. Although the sound is well balanced in frequency range and as free of actual distortion as any record I know, there is an acoustic distortion that I find hard to describe. With two different cartridges, through headphones as well as speakers, the quality I hear might best be termed "furry"-slightly blurred, lacking in clarity and immediacy. Even with headphones, the stereo effect is weak, the over-all sound peculiarly centered, with a great deal of right-channel information in the left and vice versa. There is enough evidence of European EMI issues--in the form of foreign reviews and firsthand reports of direct comparisons--to suggest that some of the problem arises on this side of the Atlantic. and there is also increasing reason to believe that SQ encoding contributes to this lack of definition in two-channel playback.

The failure to reproduce Muti's first symphonic recordings with anything like state of-the-art technology is all the more frustrating because it makes it impossible to judge fairly a young conductor who may have a great future. For that matter, is blurred reproduction of a seemingly anemic orchestra the ideal way to promote a career? P.H.

James Levine--Relishing Mahler's challenge

Gottschalk: Four-Hand Piano Works. Eugene List with Cary Lewis and Joseph Werner, piano. [Joanna Nickrenz, prod.] VANGUARD VSD 71218, $6.98.

Souvenirs d'Andalousie, Op. 22'; La Gallina, Op. 53', Orfa. Op. 71'; Marche de Nuit, Op. 17'; Printemps d'amour, Op. 40*; The Union, Op. 48' (arr. List); Radieuse, Op. 72; Reponds-moi, Op. 50'; Tremolo, Op. 58.; L'Etincelle, Op. 80'; Ses yeux, Op. 66'; La Jota aragones & Op. 14 (arr. Savant).

It was back in 1956 when Eugene List re corded the first major Gottschalk piano program, one that many Gottschalk connoisseurs. myself included, still consider unsurpassed in intoxicating verve by the many later-some of them more virtuosic recorded performances. (That original pro gram is currently available as Vanguard SRV 485; also, re-edited but still in mono, as part of a Gottschalk miscellany on Vanguard SRV 723/4.) Since then, however, List has returned to the fabulous pioneer of a truly American music only once, in the un even 1972 "Gottschalk Festival" collection (Turnabout TV-S 34440/2), in which the best things for piano were four pieces in their original four-hand editions.

Now, at last, to the delight of both Gottschalk and List aficionados, the pianist is hack with one of his 1972 partners (Cary Lewis) and one new one (Joseph Werner) in the same four originals (La Gallina, Radi euse, Reponds-moi, and Ses yeux), augmented by seven more four-hand arrangements (several by the composer himself) and List's two-piano arrangement of The Union. Most of these, whatever their present format, are more or less familiar either from their original solo versions or from solo arrangements of the four-hand originals. But Orfa, Printemps d'amour, and Tremolo are surely firsts. (L'Etincelle is a new title to discs, but it proves to be the same as La Scintella, recorded earlier by both Mandel and Rigai.) As usual with Gottschalk's music, the big showpieces (The Union, Iota aragonesa, Souvenirs d'Andalousie, Tremolo) are dazzlingly effective for all their rodomon tade; the salon mazurkas, valse, polka, and programmatic patrol Marche de Nuit are amusing lavender-and-old-lace antiques; while the examples of authentic Latin American-style pioneering (La Galling and Reponds-moi) are incomparably delec table. List and his alternating partners wisely eschew camping-up even the most old-fashioned pieces (except, perhaps, in The Union), playing with contagious high spirits and considerable grace--but never with quite the same magic of the List of some twenty years ago.

Despite the glittering brilliance of the close-up recording, the over-all sonics seem somewhat lightweight. Or is this an inten tional attempt to simulate the lighter tonal qualities of the pianos Gottschalk must have played himself? In any case, I would have welcomed throughout the more sub stantial sonority and impact of the two-pi ano Union performance. These are only mi nor flaws, though, in a release indispensable to everyone who treasures the pioneering List/Vanguard recital. Both programs radiate unique appeals and promise unique rewards to everyone inter ested in genuinely American music.

R.D.D.

Gould: Symphonette No. 2-See Baker: Le Chat qui peche.

LISZT: Sonata for Piano, in B minor-See Beethoven: Sonata for Piano, No. 23.

Mahler: Symphony No. 3, in D minor. Mari lyn Home, mezzo-soprano; Glen Ellyn Chil dren's Chorus, Chicago Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, James Levine, cond. [Thomas Z. Shepard and Jay David Saks, prod.] RCA RED SEAL ARL 2-1757, $15.98 (two discs, automatic sequence). Tape: ARK 2-1757, $15.95; ARS 2-1757, $15.95.

Comparisons: Forrester. Haitink/Concertgebouw Phi. 802 711/2 Lipton, Bernstein/N.Y. Phil. Col. M2S 675 Procter. Horenstein/London Sym. None. HB 73023 "A symphony should be the whole world," one of Mahler's most enduring aphorisms, applies nowhere more forcefully than to this hour-and-a-half behemoth, ranging among metaphysical demonology, human spirituality, and bucolic nature worship.

Small wonder that no single recording has encompassed the score.

James Levine obviously responds to the challenge of the immense (half-hour-plus), surrealistic first movement. He relishes sudden expansions and contractions of vol ume with astoundingly perceptive accu racy and effectiveness (e.g., the gruff octave drops passed between low brass and string basses at fig. 42 of the Universal score), and, despite occasional inconsistencies, the over-all transparency of detail in this recording is second to none. Certainly the all-important uprush of cellos and basses first occurring at fig. 3, so feeble in Horen stein's recording, is imperiously forceful here as it has never been before.

Levine's attention to larger contourings is impressive too. He is uncommonly skillful, for example, at gauging his tempo modifications to allow for Mahler's frequent successive slowdowns or accelerations (cf. the rit., pesante, and wieder zurdckhaltend at fig. 17). He also glides marvelously from the wild climax of the development into the percussion section's march bringing back the opening horn calls--a phenomenally well-calculated diminuendo and ritard. In certain expressive details, however, Levine seems almost embarrassed to "let go." The trombonist eight bars after fig. 60 does not observe the portamento in his lamenting solo, and in the carnival-like outburst at fig. 44 the winds make a straitlaced sound com pared with the uproarious, but always virtuosic, noises produced by the New York Philharmonic under Bernstein or the Concertgebouw under Haitink.

Levine stalks somewhat intrepidly, unbendingly, through the brilliant, Van Gogh-like miniature second movement, a stark contrast to Bernstein's over-expressive Viennese ripeness-but one extreme doesn't justify another. Horenstein shapes the movement with enormous grace and flair, despite an unpleasant-toned first oboe. Haitink too maintains a sensible pace, with proper weight and flexibility and playing that is all agility, refinement, and poetry.

In the third movement, Levine takes Mahler's "without haste" marking more literally than any other conductor on records, which makes it difficult to impart much of a "Iustig" ("merry") quality to the woodwind passage at fig. 19, although the brass anti phons in the coda are very neatly articulated at this deliberate tempo. Bernstein starts out ponderously but quickens after each of the trio-like posthorn solos. Haitink is moderate, and I like his performance for the golden fullness of the horns after fig. 15 and the startling brazenness of the trumpet fanfare after fig. 17. Over-all, however. I prefer a faster basic tempo, as taken by Leinsdorf (RCA, deleted) and Kondrashin (Melodiya S 0383/6).

The third movement poses another problem: What instrument do you use for the posthorn solos? In the RCA notes, lack Diether argues that a Mozart-type posthorn can't play the notes and that Mahler didn't have access to one anyhow. I am impressed by the sound of the instrument played by William Lang on the two London Symphony recordings--called a posthorn on Solti's (London CSA 2223), where it is too closely miked, and a flugelhorn on Horenstein's, where it sounds fine and is probably correctly identified. The Abravanel recording (Vanguard Cardinal VCS 10072/3) claims to use a posthorn, but to my ears it sounds like a trumpet. Levine-like Haitink and Bernstein --among others--does use a trumpet, and it's certainly effective enough.

In the fourth-movement Nietzsche song, RCA's Marilyn Horne surpasses the harsh and wobbly singing of Martha Lipton (with Bernstein), but I would turn to Norma Procter (with Horenstein) for the song's immobilized anguish, to Maureen Forrester (with Haitink) and Valentina Levko (with Kondrashin, in Russian) for its warm passion.

Levine sustains enormous breadth and intensity, with superbly shaded playing, marred by a sudden level change a bar before fig. 8.

I am always bothered by the near-universal side break between the two vocal movements: the fifth-movement alto-and-chorus song should burst in joyously on the dying cadence of the gloomy song that precedes it. (Only the Kubelik performance, DG 2707 036. and the anonymous one in the Everest Mahler box, both of which fit the whole first movement on one side, avoid this break.) Levine's performance is as joyous as one could want, and I particularly like the crispness and bite of Margaret Hillis' Chicago Symphony Chorus.

Levine's finale. the slowest on records, is tender, passionate, and noteworthy for its distinguishing of the three basic pulses. My only complaint is that he seems so intent on maintaining his audaciously broad pace that he doesn't simultaneously shape a spontaneously flowing lyric phrase. Still, only Bernstein's finale is as noble, and it lacks Levine's control. Haitink is a bit casual, though not so ridiculously rushed as Solti. Horenstein is ardent. warm, and flowing. but some will insist on greater weight.

In sum, I would rank Levine's Third with those of Haitink. Bernstein, and Horenstein, each boasting unduplicated qualities.

RCA's engineering lacks something in sheer panache, and, at the low recording level, my copy had some rather pronounced surface swish. Diether's liner notes are, as al ways, most substantial. A.C.

MASSENET: Le Cid (abridged). Cnimene L Infante Rodrigue Don Arias The King St. Jacques Don Dregue Comte de Gormas Don Alonzo L Envoye Maure Grace Bumbry (s) Eleanor Bergquist (s) Placido Domingo (t) Clinton Ingram (t) Jake Gardner (b) John Adams (b) Paul Plishka (bs) Arnold Voketaitis (bs) Theodore Hodges (bs) Peter Lightfoot (bs) Byrne Camp Chorale, Opera Orchestra of New York, Eve (Dueler, cond. [Thomas Frost and Steven Epstein, prod.].

COLUMBIA M3 34211, $20.98 (three discs, automatic sequence; based on the concert performance of March 8, 1976).

In recent years Eve Queler and the Opera Orchestra of New York have enabled New Yorkers to hear numerous works they are unlikely to encounter in local theaters, but the compromises that seem reasonable for such concert performances do not suffice for a recording.

Take the question of cuts. Obviously it is unreasonable to impose upon a concert audience the whole of Le Cid, whose enormous length is largely occasioned by the demands of nineteenth-century theatrical spectacle. But a recording is. among other things, a musical document. In addition, far from improving what, for all its fascination and skill, is hardly a master piece, cutting damages the work's proportions. In this abridgment, the final three scenes are simply too frenetic to serve as the climax and resolution of the courtly drama. According to the Heugel vocal score, only Act I is absolutely complete. In Act III: the cuts are: 25 bars of Rodrigue's role (pp. 107-8). 32 bars of duet between Rodrigue and Gormas (115-18), 65 bars of chorus (135-41), 31 bars of ensemble (181-83), 6 further bars of chorus (191-93).

In Act III: the 3 bars of orchestral postlude to Chimene's aria. "Pleurez, mes yeux" (236), 52 bars of chorus (264-69), the Rapsodie Mauresque for orchestra (271-79), 25 bars of ensemble (286-90). In Act IV: 139 bars of ensemble (311-12, 316-25), 55 bars of orchestral music (330-34), 34 bars of ensemble (342-44).

Sometime I should like to hear the score Massenet composed. Sometime, too, I should like to hear it sung in the language of the libretto; by and large, the French heard here is execrable. Grace Bumbry and Elea nor Bergquist manage well enough, but Placido Domingo is somewhat careless and the rest are simply insufficient. The Comte de Gormas says "crime" where he ought to say "ame"; the king pronounces "ces appels" as if it were "cessappels"; Don Diegue gets many critical vowels hopelessly wrong. la the latter case, it is clear that Paul Plishka has not been well enough coached in textual matters-he makes hash of a line like "Une Petit jamais fait, si je I'eusse pu faire!" from Act II.

Even so, Plishka is a good singer. Most of those heard here are not. Apart from Bumbry, Domingo, and Plishka (and possibly Bergquist and Arnold Voketaitis), they sound plainly inadequate, even amateurish. Bergquist is better than that, but even so she is pallid and thin-voiced. And Voke taitis, in a role created by Pol Plangon, one of the greatest basses chantants of the nine teenth century, is rough in sound and ungainly in technique. Plishka, in the role created by Edouard de Reszke, produces some noble tone but as yet lacks elegance and the kind of vocal finish that would en able him to deal with the technical difficulties the role abounds in, like the sudden drop of a tenth in Act U on "deshonneur" (p. 197).

Bumbry is an un-winning Chimene, harsh in timbre, monochromatic, lacking in grace and femininity as well as in tonal steadiness at anything below mf. At her best in declamatory passages, she seems, even in those, unidiomatic and at odds with the music. At the end of Act II she unwisely interpolates what might have been intended as a C sharp but sounds more like a scream.

She, Plishka, and Domingo all take unwritten high notes, the latter most damagingly at the end of "O Souverain, O Juge, O Pere" in Act III--an artistic outrage, a rewriting and misrepresentation of the music: In stead of the gradual diminuendo Massenet specified for a heavenly choir and St. James (of whom the hero is avouched a comforting vision on the eve of battle), somebody has cobbled into the score a fortissimo climax sung by the choir and, above them, Domingo letting fly with a mighty high B-after which he reverts to the original hushed conclusion: "La vision s'efface!" Otherwise Domingo, in this recording of a role he has had no stage experience in, is generalized, as one might expect. Vocally he is thrilling in the higher, louder passages and less assured in the others. The chorus sounds as if it could have used more rehearsal time and more personnel. The orchestra does well. There is some beautiful solo playing, especially the long clarinet obbligato before Chimene's Act III aria.

As for the largely unfamiliar score, one can see that the heroic world of Corneille (the seventeenth-century playwright on whose tragedy the libretto was based), with its ritualized conflict between love and duty, made little appeal to the composer's deepest feelings. There are some fine pages here-the Infante's invocation to the spring; Chimene's aria; a great deal of Rodrigue's music; the entire vision scene-but too much that is merely utilitarian.

The recording is variable-no doubt be cause of the need for retakes-but at no point is it good enough by today's standards. There is a libretto, abridged in accordance with what is actually heard, but nothing about the music or the edition proffered under the guise of a complete recording. A misbegotten venture.

D.S.H.

MAYER: Octagon-See Barber: Symphony No. 1 Mendelssohn: Sonata for Cello and Piano, No. 2, in D, Op. 58. Schubert: Sonata for Arpeggione and Piano, in A minor, D. 821. Lynn Harrell, cello; James Levine, piano. [Peter Dellheim, prod.) RCA RED SEAL ARL 1 1568, $7.98. Tape: 60 ARK 1-1568, $7.95; .6. ARS 1-1 568, $7.95.

Neither work is from its composer's top drawer, but the Mendelssohn sonata, requiring a more extroverted kind of bravura, fares better here. The intermezzo is quite crisp, and the chorale-influenced third movement is, thank heavens, purged of its saccharine excesses. But the first movement lacks energy: The tempo is a shade slow, the piano's ostinato chords are inflexibly hammered out, and the cello line never soars. No match for Feuermann and Rupp on Victrola VIC 1476.

The Schubert is even more problematic.

On the arpeggione, the hybrid instrument fretted like a guitar but bowed like a gamba-for which it was written (and so recorded on Archiv 2533 175), the sonata is a mere piece d'occasion. Recast as a cello piece, it becomes a horribly difficult virtuoso vehicle that has eluded such luminaries as Feuermann (Seraphim 60117 technically brilliant but musically joyless) and Rostropovich (London CS 6649-dis figured by an attempt to give this gracious material an emotional weight it doesn't possess).

The Harrell/Levine performance is reasonably paced, technically able, and yet, on the whole, disappointing. Harrell's sound has an equalized consistency without much textural or coloristic differentiation, and he always seems to insert a slithery shift just where it will detract from the shape of a phrase or the impetus of a line. Levine plays with clean efficiency, showing a bit more temperament than his partner.

The sound is clear, resonant, and well balanced. H.G.

MENDELSSOHN: Symphony No. 3; Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage Overture-See Dvorak Symphony No. 9

MEYERBEER: Le Prophete. For an essay re view, see page 87.

ORNSTEIN: Piano Works. Michael Sellers, piano. [Giveon Cornfield, prod.] ORION ORS 75194, $6.98.

Wild Men's Dance; Three Moods; Melancholy Landscape; Chant of the Hindou Priests; A la chinoise; Ten Poems.

This record helps fix that musical maverick, Leo Ornstein, only now emerging from some forty years of obscurity. From his piano quintet (Composers Recordings SD 339, May 1976) and the orchestral Nocturne and Dance of the Fates (Louisville LS 754, De cember 1976), one might place him as a watered-down Rachmaninoff or Bloch or a Scriabin-like hocus-pocus artist. But these piano works, composed during the second decade of the century, reveal a dominant, innovative, unruly personality, capable of drawing incredibly angry and volcanic sounds from the piano.

The brief Wild Men's Dance is an effectively brusque and insistent example of the musical primitivisms then in vogue. The Three Moods ("Anger," "Grief," and "Joy") are almost repertory pieces, having been previously recorded by William Westney (on the same disc as the piano quintet). Michael Sellers blasts away at "Anger" even more recklessly than Westney, though it could be argued that the latter's more firmly accented interpretation makes more sense. Melancholy Landscape and Dance of the Hindou Priests are bleak and mysterious miniatures, effective and evocative, which I find less true of A la chinoise.

The entire second side is taken up by Ten Poems, pieces whose brute force and hypnotic menace can well bring on the heebie-jeebies when heard late at night in a dark room. Unfortunately the jacket blurb tells us nothing about these pieces except that Martha Graham choreographed them and Waldo Frank wrote about them.

Sellers plays in a dry, propulsive style, seemingly un-cowed by the ferocious technical demands. (Ornstein was known as a phenomenal keyboard virtuoso himself.) If your taste in piano reproduction runs to the velvety, best forget this one-it's for hardened ears.

A.C.

Puccini: Mass in A. Kari Lovaas, soprano; Werner Hollweg, tenor; Barry McDaniel, baritone; West German Radio Chorus, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Eliahu Inbal, cond. PHILIPS 9500 009, $7.98.

Comparison: Corboz / Gulbenkian Foundation RCA FRL 1-5890

Hard on the heels of the Erato/RCA recording (March 1976) of Puccini's youthful Mass comes another and better performance.

First performed in 1880, when the composer was twenty-two, the Mass is an attractive, tuneful, uninspiring piece of work, essentially a graduation exercise. There is hardly a passage that, with other words, would not pass with ease in a secular context; in the tenor solo "Gratias agimus tibi" of the Gloria, for example, one hears unmistakably adumbrated the passionate accents of Puccini's forthcoming sensual heroes.

Werner Hollweg would not, perhaps, be one's choice for an ideal Des Grieux or Rodolfo, but apart' from some momentary un steadiness he sings out with conviction and the right kind of forthrightness; he is better, certainly, than the fairly bloodless William Johns on RCA. Kari Lovaas is satisfactory in "Qui tollis peccata," and Barry McDaniel is solid and reliable throughout, though his tone is not exactly ingratiating.

The orchestra and chorus are very capable, and Eliahu Inbal gives the right kind of operatic impetus to the proceedings. No text. Excellent recording, flawless pressing.

D.S.H.

PURCELL: Theater Music, Vol. 1. Academy of Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood, harpsichord and cond. [Peter Wadland and Ray mond Ware, prod.] L'OISEAU-LYRE DSLO 504, $7.98.

Abdelazer (with Joy Roberts, soprano); Distressed Inno cence; The Married Beau; The Gordian Knot Untied.

The English did not take to opera, that "popish importation," with the alacrity of the rest of Europe, but they liked to enliven their plays with incidental music. This recording offers a little anthology of primarily instrumental numbers composed by Purcell for four plays. Each suite begins with a French overture in Lully's style (the French influence is felt everywhere), followed by minuets, airs, hornpipes, and other dance forms. All of it is pleasant--and on Side 2 better than that--yet it does not take long before a certain similarity makes one's attention wander.

There was once an Academy of Ancient Music in London dedicated to the performance of "old" music, presided over by Christopher Pepusch (of Beggar's Opera fame), a learned man who today would be called a musicologist. The new Academy of Ancient Music is also directed by an able and learned man, Christopher Hogwood, and its members perform skillfully, even virtuosically, on "authentic" instruments.

There is, however, a degree of dullness in the playing, for the moods are unchanged and the pace is too steady, lacking those barely imperceptible tempo changes that lend life to a performance. (To their credit, however, our Academicians eschew the exaggerated final allargandos that have been regarded as de rigueur for old music since the nineteenth century.) The sound is wanting in color; the dynamic scheme is overly restrained.

Most enjoyable are the opening sections of the French overtures, whose broad pathos comes across. For the rest, even Pur cell's lesser compositions surely have more sensuousness and élan than we hear here.

P.H.L.

RACHMANINOFF: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, No. 3, in D minor, Op. 30. Alicia de Larrocha, piano; London Symphony Orches tra, Andre Previn, cond. [Michael Woolcock, prod.] LONDON CS 6977, $6.98. Tape: si CS5 6977, $7.95.

Comparisons: Ashkenazy, Ormandy Philadelphia RCA ARL 1-1324 Mogilevsky. Kondrashin/ Moscow Phil. Any. SR 40226

De Larrocha is a bit overmatched by this monster concerto. In many places she is simply unable to cut through the thunderous tuttis as do Ashkenazy and Mogilevsky. In addition, strangely, there is a problem of digital incisiveness; in whirlwind passages the fingerwork doesn't sparkle, and without knife-edged articulation such writing fails to make its impact.

There is also a questionable habit of slowing down for lyrical episodes, which puts even greater strain on the coherence of this structurally diffuse work.

Otherwise, De Larrocha's reading is very lyrical and musical, somewhat reminiscent of Moura Lympany's ancient London recording. Unlike Lympagy, however, De Larrocha plays the score uncut, and I also welcome her uncommon choice of the more modest of Rachmaninoff's two cadenzas for the first movement. Previn's leadership is sympathetic to the idiom in its sweet, low-key way, and he gets much better recorded sound this time than he did with Ashkenazy in their 1972 set of the Rach maninoff concertos.

The choice remains between Ashkenazy / Ormandy and Mogilevsky/Kondrashin, with the versions of Horowitz and the com poser retaining their interest. H.G.

REINAGLE: Sonatas for Piano: No. 1, in D; No. 2, in E; No. 3, in C. Jack Winerock, piano. [James Rich, prod.] Musical HERITAGE MHS 3359, $3.50 plus 950 postage (Musical Heritage Society, Musical Heritage Society Building, Oakhurst, N.J. 07755).

One of the big guns of American music in the eighteenth century was English-born Alexander Reinagle (1756-1809). Although he was born in Portsmouth, he received his musical education in Scotland under the guidance of Raynor Taylor (1747-1825), who also later emigrated to the States. Reinagle arrived in New York in 1786, calling himself a "member of the Society of Musicians in London," but he achieved small success and shortly moved to Philadelphia, where his talents were more keenly appreciated and where he soon became a leading figure in the musical life of the town.

He was a composer of some small talent. In 1904, thanks in great measure to the per spicacity and enthusiasm of Oscar G. Sonneck, pioneer historian of American music and first chief of the Library of Congress music division, the Library received as a gift two volumes of manuscript music containing four piano sonatas and two sets of variations, all composed by Reinagle and previously unknown. The donor was Louis Johnson Davis, whose grandmother was Reinagle's second wife: there was no question of the authenticity of the music.

For technical and musicological reasons, the sonatas are not very well known even to specialists in early American music. It is therefore a pleasure to report that pianist Jack Winerock of the University of Kansas has made available here the sound of Reinagle's first three sonatas as recorded on a grand piano made around 1827 by John Broadwood & Sons of London, a well-pre served instrument in the collection of the department of musical instruments of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Furthermore, the piano has been left in essentially un-restored shape, so that the listener can get a pretty accurate idea of just how the sonatas sounded on a superior instrument built just a few decades after they were composed.

This is not to say, however, that the use ...

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---- Frans Bruggen (left) and Gustav Leonhardt

Seon: Old Friends on a New Label

by R. D. Darrell

FOUNDED IN 1971, the Hamburg, Germany. Seon catalog of musical "documents and masterworks" has been unknown to most American discophiles. But there are many old friends among its largely Dutch artists, led by the internationally famous twin stars of combined musicology and virtuosity: Gustav Leonhardt and Frans Bruggen. Previously associated with Telefunken's Das alte Werk series, they have been led to the new label by Seon's guiding genius. Wolf Erickson, the former director of Das alte Werk.

It is the brand-new ABC Classics label of ABC Records that does American connoisseurs an invaluable service by bringing us the productions of this challenger to the DG Archie and Telefunken Das alte Werk domination of the inexhaustible realms of fifteenth- to eighteenth-century music performed in the authentic traditions and on actual or replica period instruments.

And the arresting first ABC Classics/ Seon release list-four album sets, six singles, all with scholarly tri lingual notes and texts (priced at $6.98 per disc)-effectively testifies to the new series' adherence to the older ones' high artistic and technological standards and adventuresome repertory.

Witness the first major representations of two hitherto "unknown" masters, Antoine Forqueray and Thomas Stoltzer. Forqueray (1671-1745) was a child prodigy gambist/composer in the court of Louis XIV whose vivid musical portraits of contemporaries were posthumously rescored by his harpsichordist son.

On ABCL 67009, Leonhardt plays a dozen of these (La Rameau, La Le clair, La Sylva, etc.) with bold power and panache on a magnificently sonorous Rubio replica of a pertinent-period Pascal Taskin instrument.

Stoltzer (c. 1480-1526) proves to be one of those Janus-like giants who face both the past and the future.

Historically noted for his large-scale German-psalm settings of Biblical translations by Luther himself. Stoltzer impresses me even more by his earlier Missa duplex per totum annum and several shorter a cappella works on ABCL 67003/2 (two discs).

And there are exceptionally fascinating, pungent medieval timbres and pioneering variation-form experiments in four of his instrumental-only Tonorum melodiae. The Munich Capella Antigua sings and plays magisterially under the direction of Konrad Ruhland, in the expansive ambience of a baroque-era Bavarian church.

Of course not all historically significant music is of immediate interest to non-specialist home listeners.

And even the finest musicologists may miscalculate at times-as in three programs that, for me, promise more than they deliver.

John Blow's Ode on the Death of Henry Purcell, a musical eulogy for his pupil and friend, has needed stereo recording, while his big collection of secular solo and part songs never has been as well represented on discs as his anthems and organ works. But either British historians have overrated Blow (1649-1708) or I'm insensitive enough to be unutterably bored despite all the earnestly persuasive efforts made on his behalf by a distinguished group of singers and the Leonhardt Consort on ABCL 67004.

It makes excellent sense to combine Mozart's first two, relatively neglected, violin concertos with the mini-concertos encapsulated in his early serenades (ABCL 67010/2, two discs). But the probable fact that Mozart learned to fiddle on a baroque violin doesn't necessarily make it aesthetically "right" now. I object still more to both soloist Jaap Schroder's and conductor Bruggen's lapsing into such wholly inappropriate mannerisms as romantically surging "expressiveness" and accentual over-italicizations.

No admirer of Leonhardt's protean gifts, and of his many admirable Bach recordings in particular, will want to miss his authoritative Musical Offering (ABCL 67007). It well may be a lapse from my own purist ideals that for once he leaves me more respectful than deeply moved.

For while I accept in theory the correctness of playing the Offering's six-part ricercare as a harpsichord solo, this perhaps greatest of all Bach fugues always demands (for me) the lucidity and breadth of the Edwin Fischer string-orchestra arrangement in which I first encountered it.

This bias aside, however, the present over-all performance, skillfully played as it is, lacks the infectious zest and sense of personal involvement of the less vividly recorded 1964 Bilgram/Richter version (Archiv 198 320), one that also presents both three- and six-part ricercares as harpsichord solos.

It's when musicological purism is fired by infectious interpretative fervor that the presumed dead past comes gloriously alive again-as it does so variously and excitingly in the remaining five ABC Classics/ Seon programs.

Leonhardt's less severe, more animated and engaging alter ego reap pears in "Baroque Organs of the Al pine Countries" (ABCL 67008/2, two discs). a fascinating musical travelogue through the Alpine Italian, Swiss, and Austrian regions to hear the restored Renaissance- and baroque-era organs of Churburg Castle, churches in Compatsch and Muri, and abbeys in Wilton, Wilhering. and Stams. The delectably provocative tonal qualities of these fabulous (mostly unrecorded) instruments are an audiophile's treasure house. Leonhardt's selections as well as his registrations are musically re warding too: Besides Eberlin, Fro berger, Krebs, Pachelbel, and Pasquini, there are more obscure names, such as Von Kerll, Muffat, Storace, and Zachau. And nothing-least of all the acoustical ambiences-is lost in the fine on-location recording.

Schroder also returns, now as first violinist of the Quartetto Esterhazy, to prove that baroque strings are far better suited to Haydn's Sun quartets than to Mozart concertos of about the same time. Unlike the same quartets played on Strads, etc., which have been revamped, these sound darker, reedier, but entrancingly more endearing.

Other lutenists before Eugen Dombois have recorded Bach's S. 998 Prelude, Fugue. and Allegro and some Weiss suites, if not the present L'Inficfele. But the improvisatory fantasias of David Kellner (c. 1670-1748) are unfamiliar. And I've never heard more virile lute per formances. If you've deemed the lute a weak-voiced or even effete-voiced instrument, "The Baroque Lute, Vol. 1" (ABCL 67006) should jolt you out of your error! If Christmas music for you means only the romanticized mawkishness of "Silent Night" and similar nineteenth-century favorites-to say nothing of the still more decadent pop favorites of our own commercialized day-don't fail to cleanse your ears and mind with the gloriously fresh and honest "Christmas Music of the 15th and 16th Centuries" (ABCL 67002), again featuring the Munich Capella Antigua. Ruhland resurrects a wide variety of precious tonal jewels for both unaccompanied and accompanied (by contemporary instruments) small chorus. And if the Munich ensemble performs more soberly than some similar American ones, it sings, plays, and is recorded with magnificently eloquent authority.

Finally, there's my personal Delectable Mountain of the series, the three-disc set of Handel woodwind sonatas (ABCL 67005/3): from Op. 11, four for recorder, two for flute, and one for oboe; Iwo of the " Halle" flute sonatas; one oboe and two recorder sonatas from manuscript collections; plus isolated movements. Some have been recorded before, but usually on modern instruments and seldom if ever as zestfully and vividly as they are by Bruggen, oboist Bruce Haynes, and harpsichordist/organist Bob van Asperen (with bassoon or cello reinforcement). And these performances are unique in that all the woodwinds used were made by the Stanesby father and son who flourished in Handel's time and were much esteemed by him. What could be a more quintessentially Handelian experience than to hear his sonatas just as they must have sounded to the composer himself? Anyone who is skeptical about the personal appeal and rewards of old music and old instruments, or about the quality of this series, will do well to try out a convenient, ultra-low priced sampler: "ABC Classics/ Seon: The First Release" (ABCL 67001), which includes one or two se lections or movements from each of the regular programs. It also pro vides a fair index to the over-all recording and processing standards of the series.

+++++++++++++++++++

.... of the Broadwood is a totally positive factor in this recording, especially since the instrument leaves quite a bit to be desired by way of pitch stability and mechanical reliability. Its many imperfections (called "trivial" in the jacket notes. but sounding anything but trivial) interfere considerably with even the most sympathetic listener's appreciation of these slight sonatas, so clearly influenced by the music of Carl Phil ipp Emanuel Bach.

Nevertheless, Winerock's playing is musical, and there are no other recordings of any of Reinagle's music available, to the best of my knowledge. I'd recommend it for its documentary value until something bet ter comes along. I.L.

Rosman Ballet Music. Monte Carlo Opera Orchestra, Antonio de Almeida, cond. PHILIPS 6780 027, $15.96 (two discs). Le Siege de Corinthe; Noise; Guillaume Tell; Otello.

The record jacket calls this "the" ballet mu sic of Rossini; the insufficiently informative liner notes speak only of "highlights." Just how much more Rossini may have com posed, for one operatic production or an other, I'm afraid I don't know, and I shall be delighted if some reader better versed in the labyrinthine complexities of Rossini-for schung will write and tell me.

What we have here, at any rate, is the obligatory ballet music he provided for the Paris productions of four of his operas. Of these only Tell, of course, was actually conceived for the Opera from the start, and perhaps this explains why its ballet music or at least the pas de six and the pas de trois-seems to be of an altogether higher order than the rest.

Unfortunately it also receives the least affectionate performance on this record, or perhaps it is just that the music itself shows up the deficiencies of Almeida and his orchestra the more clearly. It was here that I found myself longing for the wit and insouciance of a Beecham, a Constant Lambert, or a Desormiere to spring those simple rhythms just enough to bring out the supple elegance of the melodies they support and propel.

In a way, though, the Tell ballet music is the least important item in the set, since it is covered by Angel's magnificent complete recording. This is not the case with the bal let music Rossini provided for Le Siege de Corinthe, as his Maometto U became in its final (1826) Paris version. The composite Italian version used by Schippers for his recording omits the dances, so this new version of them can usefully serve as an appendix to it-always provided that you can find a French vocal score to show you where to insert them. Paris productions of Mose in Egitto (1827) and Otello (1844) were also provided with the obligatory dance music, more appropriately in the latter case than in the former. (I cannot imagine how the little hunting number that concludes the Moise ballet was supposed to take place be side the Red Sea!) Perhaps it is unfair to wish that this mu sic were performed here with greater finesse, since Rossini himself could hardly have expected anything better of the or chestra at the Opera in his day. All the same, music as insubstantial as this demands playing of the utmost stylishness if it is to survive without its visual accompaniment, and Almeida takes an altogether too square and un-nuanced line with it for my taste. Not quite as valuable an issue, then, as his previous album of Verdi's ballet music, but worth having for anyone interested in getting a more complete picture of Rossini's operas than the usual run of scores or performances will provide. J.N.

Schubert: Sonata for Arpeggione and Piano-See Mendelssohn: Sonata for Cello and Piano, No. 2.

SCHUMANN: Quintet for Piano and Strings, in E flat, Op. 44, Quartet for Piano and Strings, in E flat, Op. 47. Beaux Arts Trio; Dolt Bettelheim, violin; Samuel Rhodes, viola. PHILIPS 9500 065, $7.98.

SCHUMANN: Quintet for Piano and Strings, in E flat, Op. 44; Quartet for Piano and Strings, in E flat, Op. 47. Thomas Rajna, piano; Alberni Quartet. [Simon Lawman, prod.] CRD 1024, $7.98 (distributed by HNH Distributors).

Schumann's Op. 44 Piano Quintet has never had difficulty attracting an audience (not to mention "star" soloists), but at least with the general public its frequent disc companion, the Op. 47 Piano Quartet, while equally impassioned and large in scale, full of virtuosic opportunities, has fared less well.

Both these new couplings feature a low keyed "team" spirit that keeps the scale on the smallish side, emotionally civilized rather than torrential. Given this approach, I prefer the Philips disc from virtually every standpoint. The performances by the augmented Beaux Arts Trio are more elegantly nuanced, more subtly organized, more imaginative. Though CRD's instrumental balance is sound and considerate enough, the Philips performers give evidence of far greater analytical preparation, putting their efforts on a higher plane of perception.

Note, for instance, the way the subordinate figurations in the piano part are made a structural component at the beginning of the quintet, or how the swirling string parts lilt with beguiling grace in the third movement of the quartet when the lovely cello theme returns. Again at the end of the quartet the Philips team prepares the harmonic climax with greater commitment and stress.

For all that, I find the Beaux Arts performances disappointingly genteel along side more fully energized, heroic recordings: for the quintet, the Gabrilowitsch/ Flonzaley (reissued in 1973 in RCA VCM 7103, now unfortunately deleted) and Serkin/Budapest (Columbia MS 7266 or M2S 734): for the quartet, the lovely Horszowski/Schneider/Katims/Miller version for Columbia (long overdue for reissue).

H.G.

SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphonies: No. 7, in C, Op. 60 ( Leningrad); No. 9, in E flat, Op. 70. Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Vaclav Neumann, cond. [Jan Vrana and Pavel Kuhn, prod.] SUPRAPHON 1 10 1771/2, $13.96 (two discs, manual sequence).

This album contains the first and last of Shostakovich's three wartime symphonies.

The Seventh, composed mostly in the second half of 1941 following the German in vasion of Russia, is basically an affirmation of Soviet heroism, with two fairly bombastic outer movements surrounding two inner movements of surprising mellowness and subtlety (the third contains one of the composer's longest and most beautiful melodic inventions). The 1945 Ninth, originally intended to follow the unrelentingly tragic Eighth with a reaffirmation of spirit complete with chorus and soloists, turned out to be a short piece of musical theater of the absurd in which even the most serious pas sages have a rather grotesque flavor.

Both performances by Vaclav Neumann and the excellent Czech Philharmonic are marked by a slightly cold precision (along with some rhythmic unsteadiness) and excellent instrumental balance and definition. Neumann does not indulge in any interpretive excesses, thus coming up with renditions that are about as neutrally straightforward and inoffensive as any on disc. He does show indifference to certain musical niceties, however. In the Seventh Symphony's finale, for instance, he is apparently so concerned with not pulling out all the stops until the end (an admirable ambition) that he sloughs over such sequences as the 7/4 episode, in which the dramatic pizzicato slaps are avoided.

The recorded sound, featuring excellent stereo separation and producing some gorgeous brass sonorities, is quite impressive, but my copy is marred by poor surfaces. All in all, this album has an appeal to Shostakovich enthusiasts, but my first recommendations remain Bernstein for the Seventh (Columbia M2S 722) and Weller for the Ninth (London CS 6787).

R.S.B.

Strauss, J. U: "Ewig junger Walz erkonig." Various performers. EMI ODEON 1O 147 30226/7, $15.96 (two discs, mono) [recorded 1906-50] (distributed by Peters International).

Electrola's sesquicentennial package for the "eternally young Waltz King" includes enough celebrated items not recently (or not ever) on LP that a mere listing of con tents will define its attractiveness for devo tees of this genre. Not everything turns out to sound as well as it reads on the labels, but let's break it down by categories.

Waltzes: Blue Danube (VPO, Karajan, 1946), Vienna Woods (German Opera House, Schonherr, 1940), Voices of Spring (LPO, Beecham, 1939), Artist's Life (VPO. Kleiber, 1929), Emperor (VPO, Furtwangler, 1950).

All save the Beecham were variously abridged to fit the 78 discs, though none so much as the set's one outright curio, an antediluvian (1906) traversal of Wine, Women, and Song by the "Kapelle des 'Hofball-Musikdirektors' Johann Strauss 3., Wien," under-we are assured-the personal direction of this nephew of the Mas ter. The playing is pretty scruffy, and the scratchy original disc skips at one point, but there is a certain Schwung. Among the others, I much admire the Furtwangler, the style (but not the execution) of the Kleiber, and the execution (if not the style) of the Beecham.

Polkas, etc.: Tritsch-Tratsch (VPO, Kara jan, 1946), Perpetuum mobile (VPO, Krauss, 1929), Leichtes Blut (VPO, Knappertsbusch, 1940), Neue Pizzicato Polka (VPO, Bohm, 1949), and a pastiche "Intermezzo" con cocted for 1001 Nights by one E. Reiterer (Saxon State, Bohm, 1938). Surprisingly, the Knappertsbusch is quite lively, the 1949 Bohm rather logy.

Fledermaus: Overture (Berlin State, Walter, 1929), Alfred's opening song (Herbert Ernst Groh, 1935), Adele's Laughing Song (Schumann, 1927), Rosalinde's Czardas (Ivogun, 1932), and an abridged Act U finale (Tauber, Lehmann, Branzell, et al., 1928). I don't know what Groh is doing in this com pany, but the rest of these are deservedly famous. It's particularly good to have Tauber's voicing of the "BrOderlein" solo back again.

Zigeunerbaron: Barinkay's entrance (Schmidt, 1932), Zsupan's couplets (Kunz, 1949), Saffi's Gypsy Song (Cebotari, 1948), and the Nightingale Duet (Berger and Kull mann, 1933). This is a less distinguished se lection, with Schmidt landing on a perilous high C and Cebotari sounding rather strained near the tragic end of her life.

Nacht in Venedig: half of the Annina/ Caramello duet from Act U (Schone and Wittrisch, 1930), the Lagunenwalzer (Kunz, 1949), and the Duke's "Treu sein." The last of these is conducted by Korngold, whose version is used, but the singing is sluggish and self-indulgent. The others are ingratiat ing enough.

From other vocal works, there's a characterful soliloquy from Wiener Blut (Wittrisch, 1932), a lengthy duet from the same posthumous mélange (Vera Schwarz and Groh, 1932-he's stiff, she's blowsy), the in evitable and still beguiling Nun's Chorus from Benatzky's Casanova pastiche (Frind, 1928), and-inexplicably-Groh once again, singing "Nur fur Natur" from Der lustige Krieg. It beats me why he should get three tracks.

Of course, as with all such collections, each of us knows he could have done this better. I miss Lehmann's "Mein Herr, was ditichten sie von mir" and Berger's "Spiel ich die Unschuld" from Fledermaus, not to mention the Zigeunerbaron finales from the Tauber/Lehmann/Branzell session. I'm sure you can think of some others. Still, for study of the style as practiced between 1925 and 1950, there's plenty of material here, pretty well dubbed (though the Ivogun track has been de-clicked in a noticeable way).

The rather supine notes by Max SchOn herr are offered in an execrable, sometimes incoherent translation. The sources of the material are well documented, however, and there is a generous portfolio of photos, including minor luminaries such as Clemens Schmalstisch and Frieder Weiss mann, in case you've ever wondered what they look like. D.H.

TCHAIKOVSKY: Swan Lake, Op. 20. London Symphony Orchestra, Andre Previn, cond. [Christopher Bishop, prod.] ANGEL SCLX 3834, $21.98 (three SQ-encoded discs, automatic sequence) Tape: 4X3S 3834, $23.98.

Comparisons: Rozhdestvensky/Moscow Radio Sym. Mel. Ang. SRC 4106 Fistoulari/Netherlands Radio Phil. Lon. SPC 21101/3.

This version of Swan Lake is textually the same as that first heard on Angel's still available Soviet set featuring the Moscow Radio Symphony under Rozhdestvensky.

With the 1974 Fistoulari/London Phase-4 recording, these are the only current ones that contain all the music heard at the work's original Moscow presentation in 1877. (In April 1970, when the Rozhdestvensky set was issued here, R. D. Darrell set forth with admirable clarity the con tents of what then passed for "complete" versions, concluding that only Rozhdestvensky's and an earlier Soviet recording, conducted by Yuri Fayer, deserved the designation.) There will always be something problematical about this often played score, since it has come down to us, not from the original production, but from the production given in St. Petersburg in 1895, two years after the composer's death. For this latter version, the conductor Riccardo Drigo, himself a ballet composer (e.g., Les Millions d'Arlequin, St. Petersburg, 1900), made certain changes in Tchaikovsky's score at the behest of Marius Petipa, who supervised the entire production and also choreographed Acts I and III, while leaving Acts II and IV, the lakeside sequences, to his assistant, Lev Ivanov. Briefly, the changes are: those of sequence and omission (e.g., the Grand pas de deux from Act UI was eliminated from the score completely; in its place was heard the pas de deux, formerly in Act I, now popularly known as the Black Swan pas de deux); and those of addition (a polka, probably composed by Drigo, was inserted into Act III, together with one of Tchaikovsky's piano pieces from Op. 72, orchestrated by Drigo, and two more of his arrangements from Op. 72 were also added to Act IV).

All of the "complete" recorded versions of Swan Lake follow the sequence of the original production (more or less;

Tchaikovsky himself made changes up to at least the fifth performance), restore what was eliminated in 1895 (this includes, not only the missing pas de deux, but a very attractive "Danse russe," which begins with a long, unaccompanied violin solo), and omit the numbers added by Drigo (though-nothing being simple in connection with Swan Lake-Fistoulari includes one of them, in Act Ill).

Of these three versions I have no hesitation in recommending the Previn. With Darrell I agree that Fistoulari is "crotchety." though I find Rozhdestvensky far less agreeable, much coarser and push ier, than he did. Previn, who has at his command a first-rate orchestra (with excellent soloists like violinist Ida Haendel and cel list Douglas Cummings), is closer to the essential sensibility of this music: graceful, lyrical, and elegiac. Though here and there Previn's tempos do not accord with what the stage action might ideally require, I find him on the whole very convincing, and much of what he does, especially in Act UI, is brilliant.

The recording is excellent, the pressings less so. The notes by the usually first-rate Noel Godwin are not as clear as they might be and certainly contain nothing as valuable as those by James Lyons in the Rozhdestvensky set. Moreover, Godwin's synopsis, "based on the published score and the original production," does not agree with the (correct) listing of the musical numbers as given elsewhere in the booklet. And beware of misprints. The photo captions are a festival of misspellings (Birgit Heil for Birgit Keil, Noelle Pontoise for Noella Pontois and so forth).

D.S.H.

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 1--See Dvorak: Symphony No. 9.

VIVALDI: Gloria; Credo; Beatus vir; Lauda Jerusalem. Maria Zempleni, Melinda Lugosi, and Katalin Szokefalvi Nagy, sopranos; Klara Takacs, mezzo; Budapest Madrigal Chorus, Ferenc Liszt Chamber Orchestra, Ferenc Szekeres, cond. [Istvan Juhasz, prod.] HUNGAROTON SLPX 11695, $6.98.

The Gloria and Credo (independent works, not parts of a Mass) are now relatively familiar, but the two psalm settings-of Nos. 111 (Beatus vir) and 147 (Lauda Jerusalem)--are less known.

The ritornel construction of Beat us vir is that of the concerto, but the alternation among ritornels of mezzo-soprano solo, duet, and polyphonic chorus creates an at tractive variety. Though this is an interesting and well-composed work-how modern Vivaldi's broad unison passages sound-it does not reach the propulsive splendor of the Gloria. But Lauda Jerusalem is a sparkling baroque jewel, full of excitement, drama, and virtuosity, the coloraturas of the soloists contrasted by the crisp syllabic chorus, while the orchestra races about them. There are two choruses and two orchestras in the old Venetian poly-choral tradition, and though the spatial division is not clearly discernible on recordings, the tossing of the musical sub stance from here to there is in evidence.

This is preferable to the antiphonal tricks employed by recording engineers that usually exaggerate the situation.

The performances are superb. Ferenc Szekeres maintains an ideal balance be tween voices and instruments, carefully husbanding the full weight of the orchestra for Vivaldi's typically explosive tuttis. His tempos are excellent, and the dynamic variety tastefully convincing. About the only complaint I have concerns a minor but annoying habit of hesitating for a split second between the penultimate and the final chord. Sopranos Katalin Szokefalvi Nagy, Melinda Lugosi, and Maria Zempleni and the rich-voiced alto Klara Takacs are all first-class artists-secure, true of pitch, remarkable in articulation and breath control, even in the fastest coloratura passages.

The little orchestra too is first-rate, but the glory of the recording is the chorus, its sterling qualities supported by a flawless recording of the choral sound. The recording engineer, Endre Racially, proves that true choral sound, that rarity in phono graph recordings, can be achieved.

I regret to add that the vocal texts are once more missing. P.H.L.

WAGNER: Rienzi. For an essay review, see page 91.

WEBERN: Works for String Quartet--See Recitals and Miscellany: Alban Berg Quartet.

Recitals and Misc

LEON BATES: American Piano Works. Leon Bates, piano. [Giveon and Marion Cornfield, prod.] ORION ORS 76237, $6.98.

MacDowell: Sonata No. 4. Op. 59. (Keltic). Barber: Excursions, Op. 20. Excursions: Sonata No. 3.

The debut recording of the youthful-black pianist Leon Bates (made possible in part by a grant from the Philadelphia Foundation) turns out to be more interesting than usual.

The real surprise is the pianist's performance of Edward MacDowell's last piano sonata, a work that virtually never appears on concert programs these days. The so-called Keith' Sonata, dedicated to Edvard Grieg (who was decidedly flattered by the gesture). is anything but easy to project intelligently. It sprawls; it rambles; but occasionally it is genuinely eloquent. Perhaps its formidable Romanticism explains why nobody plays it in recital, especially when of considerably slighter stature receive much attention. But nobody except Marjorie Mitchell has even attempted to record it, and she is absolutely no match for Bates, either technically or interpretively. The Keltic Sonata is a much bet ter piece than its reputation, and so far the Bates recording stands as the definitive one.

Also included on the disc are a neatly shaped performance of Samuel Barber's Excursions and a strong performance of George Walker's Sonata No. 3, written on commission for Bates and first performed by him in a recital at the Kennedy Center in Washington in January 1976. Walker is without question a very gifted composer, but I do not find this sonata as challenging or as imaginative in conception as his two earlier ones. But the record is worth acquiring for the MacDowell alone, as well as to make Bates's acquaintance. I.L.

ALBAN BERG QUARTET: Works for String Quartet. Alban Berg Quartet. TELEFUNKEN 6 41994, $7.98.

Five Movements, Op. 5: Six Bagatelles. Op. 9: Quartet Op. 28.

-RAMATI: Quartet No. 1 ( Mobile). : Quartet No. 3.

Comparisons--Webern: LaSalle Ot in DG 2720 029

Otto Italian Phi. 6500 105.

There's no question but that this young quartet can execute the Webern pieces just as expertly as its older colleagues. For a novelty, the group seems inclined to push the dynamics closer to the loud end of the range than is usually heard in this music, and I don't believe this is just a function of closer miking-the quality of the sounds produced is actually more violent. At times, this is exciting: The leader really digs into the high D (three octaves above middle C) near the end of Op. 28's first movement that Webern has marked fortissimo-weight where weight is really needed.

But much of the time I am less persuaded, especially in the Op. 9 pieces, which develop more energy than their brevity can comfortably contain. The second of the Op. 5 pieces, for example, is imbalanced be cause the last section doesn't come down to the triple piano indicated-a serious matter when only two phrases in the entire piece are marked as loud as piano. These are fine distinctions indeed--but then the music it self is based entirely on fine distinctions.

In general, I still find the LaSalle Quartet to give the most scrupulous-and therefore the most clarifying-accounts of this music, although there are some striking details in the Quartetto Italiano's less consistent versions as well. Since DG has not yet issued a single-disc version of the LaSalle's Webern in this country (it still comes only as part of its admirable Schoenberg-Berg-Webern omnibus), couplings may well influence your choice: LaSalle includes Webern's 1905 quartet as well as the three canonical works, while the Italians add to that the Slow Movement of the same year.

And the Alban Berg Quartet offers works written especially for it by the Israeli com poser Roman Haubenstock-Ramati (b. 1919) and the Austrian Erich Urbanner (b. 1936). The "mobile" aspect of Hauben stock-Ramati's First Quartet is not, as one might expect from plastic-art analogies, the sequence of movements, but rather the choice among possible realizations of each movement within a fixed sequence ABCDCBA-thus involving multiple versions of three of the movements within a particular performance. Except for the quiet central movement, these are not very distinctive-a fairly standard repertory of contemporary string sounds in violent juxtapositions. Although Urbanner's Third Quartet, an eight-minute single movement, has some indeterminate details, it is com posed along almost classical lines: although the "new sounds" he uses do not always mesh with some surprisingly traditional material, the course of the musical thought is clear and sometimes striking. The performances are brilliant and convincing.

D.H.

Jose CARRERAS: Operatic Recital. Jose Carreras, tenor; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Roberto Benzi, cond. PHILIPS 9500 203, $7.98.

BELLINI: Adelson e Salvini: Ecco, signor, la sposa. Owe mit Maria di Rohan: Nel fragor della testa .. Alma soave e cara. DONIZETTI: il Duca d'Alba: Inosser vato .. Angelo casto e bel. MaocAzoktin: Il Giuramento: La dea di tutti i cor . Bella adorata incogn.ta; Compluta e omai Fu celeste. Ponchieli : IlFigliuol prodigo: Il padre! . . Tenda natal. VERDI: I Lombardi alla prima cro ciata: La mia letizia infondere. Jerusalem: L'infamie O. mes amis. mos freres. Luisa Miller Oh! Cede negar po tessi Quandc le sere al placido. Un Ballo in maschera: Forse la soglia attinse ... Ma se m'e forza perderti. La Forza del destino: La vitae inferno . . . O to cne in seno.

Jose Carreras' first solo record gives hope of wonderful things. The sheer sound of the voice, firm, full, elastic, and sensuous, is frankly irresistible. The evenness of his scale over a span of about an octave and a half-that is, from the bottom of the staff to high B (he seems to have no C)--is a pleasure in itself. So are his vowels and his easy negotiation of consonants. A technically tricky passage like the opening phrases of the Forza aria, with its wide upward and wider downward intervals, gives him no problems nor, since his management of the breath is so accomplished, does the long, broad phrasing required in the passage "come se fosse I'ultima ora del nostro amor," toward the end of the Ballo aria.

Here, however, reservations obtrude. The Ballo passage, marked con slancio, re quires a lengthy crescendo to a high B flat and a lengthy diminuendo leading to a phrase marked leggier and a shorter crescendo-diminuendo, ending pianissimo.

None of this is very evident in Carreras' performance. The kind of shading and musical subtlety, the attention to dynamic variations, all the niceties that bring music to dramatic life, are at present beyond him.

Whether they will ever be within his grasp is questionable, given the pressures of worldwide success such as he already en joys. Without those refinements, however, he will never be able to realize his promise.

Technically he is well equipped, though he relies a great deal on the intrusive aspirate to get him from one note to another, and there is a general want of elegance, which is particularly noticeable in such music as "Fu celeste" from Mercadante's Il Giuramento and the Luisa Miller aria.

Still, there is a lot of sheer sound to enjoy here, and in the choice of music encouraging evidence of an adventurous musical taste. In this particular Philips has regrettably failed Carreras by providing no texts. Satisfactory accompaniments. Excellent recording and the usual flawless pressing.

D.S.H.

THE CRADLE OF HARMONY: William Sidney Mount's Violin and Fiddle Music. For an essay review, see page 89.

EDUARD MELKUS ENEMBLE: Rococo Dance Music. [Andreas Holschneider, prod.] ARCHIV 2533 303, $7.98.

Few releases as highly specialized as this one, featuring rare miniatures drawn from unpublished manuscript sources, can match its appeals. For openers, it will be wanted by every owner of Melkus' samplings of Biedemeier and Viennese classical period dance repertories (Archiv 2533 134 and 2533 182). And it should prove to be in valuable both to musicologists and historically minded balletomanes for its illuminating representations of French, Austrian, and German dances dating from around the third quarter of the eighteenth century, played here on actual or replica instruments of the time and in tempos based on rehearsals with dancers expert in the steps of the time. (This attempt at historical authenticity enlists the aid of Eva Campianu, who also contributes detailed notes on eighteenth-century dances to augment Melkus' own musical annotations and the usual Archiv data on sources, personnel, and the instruments used.) Of course C. P. E. Bach and Rameau aficionados will welcome these expertly played and cleanly recorded (appropri ately, in Vienna's Palais Schonburg) versions of the former's Wq. 190 polonaises and Wq. 189 minuets, and seven dances from the latter's lyric tragedy Zoroastre of 1749. I doubt that there exists any nonscho lar fan of Josef Starzer (1726-87); I have come across his name before only as the ac tual composer of some of the pieces in the Divertimento No. 5, K. 187, usually credited to Mozart. But the onetime fame of this Viennese violinist and ballet composer is sure to be resuscitated for everyone who hears the ten dances drawn from his Diane et Endimione, Roger et Bradamante, and Cli Orazi e gli curiazi, all of which date from the early 1770s. Small-scaled as these little pieces may be (only one runs as long as three minutes), they bear the distinctive hallmark of a highly original and imaginative musical personality. Starzer's rediscovery is likely to delight layman-listeners even more keenly than musicologists.

R.D.D.

CLAUDIA Muzio: Edison Diamond Discs, Vol. 2. Claudia Muzio, soprano; orchestral accompaniment except where noted. [James Gladstone, reissue prod.] ODYSSEY Y 33793, $3.98 (mono) [recorded 1920-21].

Catalani: Ebben? Ne andro lontana. Gamma: Andrea Chenier: La mamma morta. Gown: Salvator Rosa: Mia piccirella.

LEONCAVALLO: I Pagliacci: Ballatella. Puccini: La Boheme: Si, mi chiamano Mimi. TCHAIKOVSKY: Yevgeny Onegin: Letter Scene (excerpt; in Italian). VERDI: Il Trovatore: Tacea la notte; D'amor sull'ali rosee. Bachelet: Chore nuit. CmoNm: The Maiden's Wish, Op. 74, No. 1 (in French). Maschenowl: Eternamente (with Albert Spalding, violin; Robert Gayler, piano). Soreo: Crisantemi.

This, like Odyssey's previous Muzio collection (Y 32676), is required listening for any one interested in the expressive possibilities of the human voice.

From the start of her career Muzio knew how to move as well as delight the listener.

In these 78s, made when she was just over thirty, her very timbre-full of half-lights, delicate shadings, nuances of coloration bespeaks pathos and vulnerability. She sounds like someone who has felt the brunt of experience. Her piano singing, especially when the music does not take her too high, is at one and the same time exquisite and powerful: Through it we seem to be privi leged sharers of intensely private feelings.

(Her attempts at lightheartedness are not usually very successful. Here "Mia piccirella" from Gomes' Salvator Rosa sounds heavy and unsmiling.) By the time of Muzio's final 78s (the Columbias, made in 1934-35) her voice had darkened and be come less volatile, but the unique characteristics of this great singer were no less in evidence and the vividness and sincerity were even more pronounced.

Edison caught her midway in her career, when voice and expressivity were in a state of equilibrium. (So, actually, do her Patties, forty-one in all, made in New York a couple of years earlier. The records she made for HMV in Milan in 1911 are appealing but immature.) With this LP, Odyssey has now is sued twenty-three of her thirty-three published Edison sides. Most are wonderful, all are characteristic. The Trovatore excerpts, for example, reveal that Muzio had no trill and lacked security at the top. But the molding of "Tacea la notte," the sense of an unbroken, sensitively articulated musical line, is unforgettable, and so in "D'amor sull'ali rosee" is the wonderful dark and tragic coloration of the tone. "La mamma morta" is another revelatory performance, just to hear Muzio enunciate "Vivi ancora! lo son la vita!" is worth the price of this record. Some of the material here (in par ticular the songs) is weak; all the operatic material, except for the Pagliacci Ballatella and "Mia piccirella," is endlessly fascinating, especially the excerpts from Boheme and Wally, not least for her way with the text. (In the Bachelet and Chopin songs, incidentally, her French is excellent.) The sound is naturally primitive, but perfectly acceptable. There are texts-not al ways the same as Muzio's--and translations. For Muzio lovers, I might point out that a selection of her late Columbias is available on Seraphim 60111 and among the material on OASI's six Muzio LPs are songs by Refice and excerpts from his opera Ce cilia (OASI 576), a large number of her Path& (566, 568, 564), and her first two Milan recordings (526). D.S.H.

FREDERICA VON STADE: Mozart and Rossini Arias. Frederica von Stade, mezzo-soprano; Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Edo de Waart, cond. PHILIPS 9500 098, $7.98.

Mozart: Le None di Figaro: Non so pin; Voi the sapete.

Don Giovanni: Vedrai, carino. La Clemenza di Tito: Parto, parto; Ecco it punto .

. Non pin di lion. Rome: U Barbiere di Siviglia: Una voce poco fa. Otello: Assisa a' pie d'un sauce. La Cenerentola: Nacqui all'attanno.

After the promise evinced by Von Stade's first solo recital ("French Operatic Arias," Columbia M 34206, February 1977), this one comes as a great disappointment. None of these performances is really satisfactory; all sound, at least to my ears, dreadfully precious. Every character-the ebullient Cenerentola and the despairing Vitellia (La Clemenza di Tito), the ingratiating Zerlina and the plaintive Desdemona-js realized in the same fashion: by a vocal delivery that wants firmness and line, by phrasing that is excessively arch and mannered, and by enunciation that lacks accuracy (especially in the matter of doubled consonants), vivid ness, or even meaning.

As an example of several of Von Stade's faults I would point to "Vedrai, carino," where Zerlina, talking of the remedy she has for Masetto's ailment (he has been beaten up by Don Giovanni), calls it a natural cure, "e naturale"-a phrase that, ironi cally enough, Von Stade sings as artificially as possible, half of it being distorted, half swallowed. Actually, she does a lot of phrase-swallowing in this recital, another particularly inappropriate example being, of all things,-salice" (willow), the key word at the opening of Desdemona's Willow Song.

Of course, a good deal of the vocalism here is technically accomplished (a certain amount of the fioriture, for instance) and, except momentarily in "Non so there is none of that singing above pitch she tends to be guilty of in the opera house. But, even so, she does not manage her breath as well as she might, and at the ends of phrases the voice often runs out. A more important deficiency is appropriateness of style and manner or, put another way, musical understanding. Von Stade sounds on this occasion as if she needs good, firm coaching.

In the opera house her physical attractive ness and the warmth of her personality add a great deal that is clearly untranslatable to records alone. And what on earth is she singing Zerlina's music for? "Vedrai, carino" is much too high for her (and "Non piu di fiori" is too low).

Not recommended--even though the accompaniments are good, the recording is excellent, and the pressing superb, and there are texts and translations.

D.S.H.

(High Fidelity, Mar. 1977)

Also see:

Do We Overestimate Beethoven?