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Record Reviews
The late Karl Bohm: Committed Schumann, affectionate Schubert.
ADAMS: Shaker Loops; Phrygian Gates'. Ridge Quartet; Dan Smiley, violin; Judi yaba, cello; Gary Lowendtay, double bass. Mack McCray, piano.' 1750 ARCH RECORDS S 1784, $7.98 (1750 Arch Records, 1750 Arch St., Berkeley, Calif. 94709).
John Adams, a thirty-four-year-old composer born, raised, and trained in New England, but who has worked in San Francisco since 1972, might be conveniently classified among the minimalists.
Yet to describe his music as purely minimal would be as inaccurate as to call it lushly Romantic. The works here contain elements of both these seemingly antithetical aesthetics, combined with surprising success.
Shaker Loops, scored for string quartet with supplementary violin, cello, and bass, is built of continuously repeated motifs (hence the "loops") as signed to each instrument. They are of unequal lengths, so as the work progresses through its four connected but very different movements, the relation ships between the seven instrumental B Budget H Historical R Reissue A Audiophile (digital, direct-to-disc, etc.) lines are in constant flux. To provide further variety, a conductor (presumably Adams in this performance) signals changes in each part.
Naturally, the motifs are not gorgeously soaring melodies, although the cello line in the third movement, "Loops and Verses," does approach the lyrical at its climax. There's the key word; where so many minimalist composers are con tent to explore the phase relationships between a series of short melodic cells as they unfold over half an hour or more, Adams injects a few revolutionary and Romantic notions-things like dynamic contrast, intensification of colors, and manipulation of emotions. In the end, Shaker Loops emerges as a highly charged stream of dramatic energy.
Phrygian Gates, a solo piano work that the composer justifiably describes as "a broad monolithic arch," shares many of Shaker Loops' more colorful and expressive qualities and is nearly as forceful. In this piece, performed with virtuosic assurance by Mack McCray, Adams makes his way around the circle of fifths, exploring each key in the Lydian and Phrygian modes; the former-for those who have forgotten their early music-theory exercises-is light and sensual, the latter more brash and heroic.
These works represent a significant step forward for the minimalist school.
----------------Reviewed by:
John Canarina Scott Cantrell Kenneth Cooper R. D. Darrell Kenneth Furie Harris Goldsmith David Hamilton Dale S. Harris R. Derrick Henry Nicholas Kenyon Allan K o2inn Paul Henry Lang Irving Lawns Karen Manson James R. Oestreich Conrad L. Osborne Andrew Porter Patrick J. Smith Paul A. Snook Susan T. Sommer
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They show that, even with materials short on melodic and harmonic complexity (although the harmonies of Phrygian Gates become rather thick at times).
the experiment need not end in a stagnant trance. These are pieces with strong profiles and the power to move; I await with interest more from Adams. A.K.
ALAIN, J.: Organ Works (complete). Marie-Claire Alain. organ of Saint Christophe Basilica. Belfort ( France). MUSICAL HERITAGE SOCIETY MHS 804254. $23.25 ($14.85 to members) (three discs) (add $1.60 for shipping: Musical Heritage Society, 14 Park Rd., Tinton Falls, N.J. 07724). Wolfgang Rubsam. organ of Marien statt Abbey ( West Germany). DA CAMERA SM 93264, 93265'. 93266'. $9.98 each (distributed by German News Co.. 220 E. 86th St.. New York. N.Y. 10028).
Andante': Aria*: Ballade en mode phrvgien': Berceuse sur deux notes qui cornent-: Choral cistercien pour une elevation': Choral dorien"; Choral phrvgien Climat': Deux danses a Agni Yavishta; Fantaisies (2) : Grave*: Intermezzo': Le Jardin suspendu'; Lamento:: Litanies: Monodic*: Petite piece: Postlude pour ('office de Com plies': Prelude et Fugue': Preludes profanes (2)'; Suite: Trois danses': Variations sur "Lucis Creator"; Variations sur un theme de Clement Jannequin.
Jehan Alain's wartime death in 1940 cost the world an enormously promising young composer at the very threshold of artistic maturity. Even in his tragically short life of twenty-nine years, however, he had produced a significant body of music, and his organ works are among the most original composed anywhere between the two wars. Of the same generation as Messiaen and Durufle, he was trained by Dupre, Dukas, and Roger Ducasse and incorporated into his own music a fascinating array of influences: the rhythms and harmonies of jazz and African music, the French organ literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Eastern modes, whole-tone scales, and contemporary experiments with poly-rhythms and poly-modality.
Above all, his music is animated by a profound and subtle sense of rhythm and colored by a richly imaginative use
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Critics' Choice
The most noteworthy releases reviewed recently.
BOLCOM, COPLAND, RZEWSK I:
Rags, Blues, Ballads. Jacobs. NONESUCH D 79006, Aug.
BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. I. Pollini; Vienna Philharmonic, Bohm. DG 2531 294. Sept.
BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 2. Bishop-Kovacevich; London Symphony, C. Davis. PHILIPS 9500 682, Sept.
BRIAN: Symphonies Nos. 10, 21. Loughran, Pinkett. UNICORN UNS 265. Aug.
CARTER: A Symphony of Three Or chestras; A Mirror on Which to Dwell. Boulez; Davenny Wyner, Fitz. CBS M 35171, Aug.
CHOPIN, SCHUMANN: Cello-Piano Works. Rostropovich, Argerich. DG 2531 201, Aug.
DELIUS: The Magic Fountain. Pring, Mitchinson; BBC Concert Orchestra, Del Mar. ARABESQUE 8121-2L (2), July.
FREDERICK THE GREAT: Symphonies (4). Munich Pro Arte, Redel. PHILIPS 9502 057, July.
GOUNOD: Mireille. Freni, Vanzo, Van Dam, Plasson. ANGEL SZCX 3905 (3), June.
GRIEG: Piano Works (complete), Vols.1-14. Knardahl. Bis LP 104/17 (14), Aug.
JANACEK: From the House of the Dead. Zahradnieek, Zitek; Vienna Philharmonic, Mackerras. LONDON LDR 10036(2). July.
MOZART: La Finta giardiniera. Conwell, Moser; Salzburg Mozarteum, Hager.
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 2740 234 (4), July.
MOZART: Sinfonia concertante, K.297b; Idomeneo Ballet Music. Orpheus. NONESUCH D 79009, July.
POULENC: Songs (complete). Ameling, Gedda, Senechal, Souzay, Parker, Baldwin.
EMI FRANCE 2C 165-16231/5 (5). May.
PUNTO: Horn Concertos (4). Tuckwell, Marriner. ANGEL. SZ 37781, Aug.
RAVEL: Orchestral and Vocal Works. Denize; Philharmonique de Lille, Casadesus. HARMONIA MUNDI FRANCE HM 10.064, July.
SCHUBERT: Piano Trios (2). Les Mustciens. HARMONIA MUNDI FRANCE HM 1047/8 (2), Sept.
SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 7; Age of Gold Suite. London Philharmonic, Haitink. LONDON LDR 10015 (2), Sept.
VERDI: Un Ballo in maschera. Milanov, Bjoerling, Panizza. MET 8 (3). June.
DENNIS BRAIN: Unreleased Perform ances. ARABESQUE 8071, May. LE CHANSONNIER CORDIFORME.
Consort of Musicke, Rooley. OISEAU-LYRE D 186D4 (4), July.
DECAMERON: Monodic Ballatas. La mandier. ASTREE AS 56. Sept.
THE MANNHEIM SCHOOL. Camerata Bern, Furl. ARCHIV 2723 068 (3). June.
THE WALTZ PROJECT. Moran, Cobb. Feinberg, Mikhashoff. NONESUCH D 79011. Sept.
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... of timbres and textures. It is suffused, too, with a compelling paradox-"a very real, almost instinctive sense of despair," writes the composer's sister Marie-
Claire, "tempered by a fierce sense of humor, able to laugh at itself." Or is it humor tempered by despair? In any case, the best works have that indefinable melange of power and vulnerable humanity that marks creations of genius, and we are fortunate in deed to have two such fine recordings of the complete works for organ. Having helped edit these pieces, Marie-Claire Alain has a special claim to them, and her interpretations radiate an affection and an intensity that I have rarely noted in her playing. Her delicate rubato in the Variations sur un theme de Clement Jan nequin is as warming as her demonic insistence in Litanies and the Trois danses is chilling. She is well served, too, by a sizable Schwenkedel organ (1971) whose eclectic "neoclassicism" would have ap pealed strongly to her brother's sensi bilities.
The composer might have been stimulated even more by the occasion ally bizarre colors of the 1970 Rieger organ at Marienstatt, with its division of Spanish reeds (heard to powerful effect at the end of the Trois danses). And could he have resisted these stunning perfor mances by Wolfgang Riibsam, himself a protege of Marie-Claire Alain? Robsam has-as I have noted elsewhere-the most remarkable sense of rhythm and its sub tleties, and in such powerful fare as this the effect can be intense indeed. Where Mme Alain's beginning of the Lucis Creator Variations is merely matter-of fact, Rubsam's sings, and in the Janne quin Variations his more pronounced rhythmic flexibility better emphasizes the music's wistfulness. In the sterner stuff, on the other hand, he drives home the relentless ostinatos with brutal snap.
Each of these collections makes strong claims to attention, and each is very well recorded. Alas, the MHS pressings are besmirched by annoying snaps and crackles, and the text editor should be fed to an organ blower for the whole sale mutilation of the excellent notes that accompanied the original French Erato issue. Gone are all the superb (and enormously helpful) analyses of the individual pieces, and virtually nothing is said about the organ. Anyone with a more than casual interest in this music and Mme Alain's interpretations should seek out the Erato album. s.c.
BACH: Brandenburg Concertos, S. 1046-51. Lucerne Festival Strings, Rudolf Baumgartner, cond. [Oskar Waldeck and Kurt Hahn, prod.] EURODISC 300086, $19.96 (SQ encoded; two discs, manual sequence). Tape: 500 086, $19.96 (two cassettes). (Distributed by Tioch Productions, Inc., 65 W. 55th St., Suite 9E, New York, N.Y. 10019.) Here's a set that takes me back. When I first came to music-very late, obviously--it was the Archly recording by Rudolf Baumgartner's Lucerne Festival Strings (now on DG Privilege 2535 142/3) that introduced me to the Brandenburgs, and for that matter, to all of Bach.
One doesn't soon forget such favors.
Of course, it's a different group now from the one twenty years ago. Some bizarre commentary accompanying a re cent Denon recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons (OX 7174-ND) observes that all members are in their twenties and proceeds to proclaim it a virtue: "Younger players are more flexible in their own musicality and more willing to bend themselves in the hands of a master conductor. It is naturally much more difficult to treat veteran players like a piece of purely white paper, which is then colored at will by the taste of the conductor." Or not colored, as in that recording.
For the Bach. Baumgartner has at least mustered soloists of genuine stature, and the playing does have personality, if not always force. The only veteran of the Archly set-aside from the conductor himself, who also played most of the violin solos there--is the fine flutist Aurele Nicolet, and he gets even more work here: In perhaps the most questionable decision in the interpretation.
Baumgartner now takes "flauto dolce" in the Second Concerto to indicate a trans verse flute rather than a recorder (or simply feels that the flute better stands off the modern trumpet); to the extent the choice proves unconvincing, however, it is not the fault of Nicolet's playing. In a more welcome change from the earlier set, Josef Suk does use a violino piccolo in the First; he plays it with vigor and finesse, as he does the violin elsewhere and the viola in the Sixth. (In fact, the playing by all hands in the Sixth is generally the best and most characterful in the set, with some wonderfully gutty and pungent sounds emerging from the low strings.) Also notable among the soloists are oboist Maurice Bourgue and trumpeter Guy Touvron; and harpsichordist Christiane Jaccottet ends a somewhat segmented cadenza in the first movement of the Fifth with breath taking abandon.
In general. the approach here is lighter and tither than in the Archiv set, though there are few radical changes
from an interpretation that was far from revolutionary even in its time. Tempos have picked up a bit, with notable excep tions. Yet while some of the stodginess has dissipated, a needless gentility occa sionally creeps in. Still, if they don't offer the manifold delights of performances such as those led by Gustav Leonhardt (Pro Arte 2PAX 2001), Albert Fuller (Smithsonian N 3016), and Raymond Leppard (Philips 6747 166), these are solid, honest readings that may well serve the neophyte as kindly as the earlier versions served me.
Moreover, the set's value is considerably enhanced by the inclusion of full scores from the New Bach Edition.
Though it is doubtless bad grace to use Eurodisc's generosity as a club to beat it with, the very inclusion of the scores, in numerical sequence, makes the order of presentation on the discs all the more puzzling. If there are to be side breaks within works anyway, as there are here in the Second and Fifth (in the sequence 1, 2, 6, 3, 5, 4), then why not follow Bach's order and accept the single break necessary in the Fifth? Processing and presentation are otherwise fine but for undistinguished surfaces, with minor problems throughout, and a dismal English translation of Karl Schumann's notes. J.R.O.
BACH: Partitas for Keyboard (6), S. 825-30. Joao Carlos Martins, piano. [Heiner Stadler, prod.] ARABESQUE 6501-3, $26.94 (digital recording; three discs). Tape: 7501-3, $29.94 (three cassettes).
BACH: Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II, S. 870-93. Betty Oberacker, piano. [Harold L. Powell, prod.]
KLAVIER KS 567, $17.96 (two discs, automatic sequence) (Klavier Records, 10520 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood, Calif. 91601).
BACH: Well-Tempered Clavier (excerpts). Wilhelm Kempff, piano. [Rudolf Werner*. Hanno Rinke'. and Cord Garben'.prod.]
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 2530 807/ 2531 299', $10.98 each. Tape: 3300 807*/3301 299', $10.98 each cassette.
Book I: Preludes and Fugues: No. 1, in C, S. 846; No. 2, in C minor, S. 847'; No. 3, in C sharp, S. 848*; No. 4, in C sharp minor, S. 849'; No. 5, in D, S. 850*; No. 6, in D minor, S. 851*; No. 7, in E flat, S. 852*; No. 8, in E flat minor, S. 853*; No. 9, in E, S. 854'; No. 10, in E minor, S. 855'; No. 11, in F, S. 856'; No. 12, in F minor, S. 857'; No. 13, in F sharp. S. 858'; No. 14, in F sharp minor, S. 859'; No. 15, in G, S. 860*; No. 16, in G minor, S. 86I*; No. 17, in A flat, S. 862'; No. 21, in B flat, S. 866*; No. 22, in B flat minor, S. 867'.
Book II: Preludes and Fugues: No. 3, in C sharp, S. 872'; No. 6, in D minor, S. 875'; No. 7, in E flat. S. 876'; No. 15, in G, S. 884'; No. 24, in B minor, S. 893'.
Joao Carlos Martins is an unusual pianist. He plays Bach with a hard, weighty touch, at slow tempos, as if acutely conscious of the spiritual import in every note. He has an individual vision of the composer that he is at pains to convey in each nuance of his performance: Bach is a transcendental, prophetic composer. Martins introduces this recording of the partitas with a sleeve note in which he suggests that Bach was "doubtless in search of a modern piano"; that the partitas "create a bridge between the suite form ... and the grand sonata"; and that the six works may be viewed as expressing certain characteristics of "a man in his greatness, in the totality of his human emotions"-thus, for example, "the Third Partita shows the Pulsating Bach, the Fourth ... the Dramatic and Romantic Bach. . ." Regrettably these ideas, such as they are, lead Martins to pay less than full attention to the music as Bach wrote Martins' eccentric treatment goes against, rather than with, Bach's music.
it. Whether a particular partita is thought to pulsate or not, it still consists of a sequence of dance movements prefaced by a prelude. The Fourth, for example, starts with a French Overture; Martins resolutely underdots the rhythms, with out even the sustained chords that Bach writes. His Allemande detaches all the upbeats, so that they sound like isolated notes. His Courante is slow and intense, without a suggestion of dance movement. His Aria is bitingly hard, without a sense of line. And so on. The magnificent Toccata that begins the Sixth Partita is treated pianissimo, espressivo, like a Brahms intermezzo (of which, Martins may believe, the piece is prophetic). The Fifth's opening sounds so quirky as to be hilarious. Its Sarabande is destroyed be cause he does not observe the rhythms of the ornaments. The whole point of the Minuet is contradicted because he broadens the tempo in crucial bars so that Bach's cross-rhythm witticisms are lost. The Passepied bears no relation to one. The Gigue cuts through the piano violently like a laser beam.
Martins' playing veers between this kind of brittle staccato and a hazy, Correction: The photograph of British composer Havergal Brian, that appeared on page 56 of our August issue was taken by Jon R. Skinner. Mr. Skinner's credit was inadvertently omitted, emotional legato. There is little sense of phrasing, no impression of continuity.
His sense of rhythm is so perverse as to make some sections meaningless: The first chord of the Second Partita's Sinfonia is quite detached from the piece that follows, and the overture's last chord is suddenly if against the preceding pp; the Sarabande almost seems to come to a standstill. All this is the more unfortunate since it is clear that Martins has weighed the import of every passage and is playing each note as he means to; there is no failure of technique. Some times he hits just the right tempo, as in the Courante of the First Partita, and the music flows; but then the Minuet of the same partita is absurdly deliberate, with inconsistent echoes.
It may be argued that Martins has every right to reinterpret this music as he feels it. Of course. But I am not convinced that his wildly eccentric treatment is convincing even on its own terms; every thing in it goes against, rather than with, Bach's music. This set is announced as the launching of "The Bach Tri-centennial Recording Project." Let us hope that the mission is aborted at this point, or that alternative astronauts can be found.
It is not, I hasten to add, that I dislike Bach on the piano. On the contrary; any keyboard instrument, played with a sensitive musicianship, can be a vehicle for Bach's inspiration. To turn from Martins to Betty Oberacker's recording of Book II of the Well-Tempered Clavier is like balm to the senses. Here is a natural, supple pianist, with an unforced, easy response to the music. There is nothing revelatory in her performances.
She suffers from some of the frequent faults of Bach pianists: an excess of pert finger staccato, a tendency to play fast movements too fast and slow movements too slow; and a certain lack of rhythmic tension. But her account of these preludes and fugues is delightful.
Dance rhythms are respected, long phrases are carried through, suspensions and resolutions-the basis of the expressive harmonic movement--are beautifully molded. Even when the conception of the movement is not one I share, Oberacker usually makes out a good case for it. Sometimes there is excessive rubato, such as in the upbeats in Prelude No. 22; and there are too many long final rallentandos, as in Prelude No. 24.
But the firm, bouncing Prelude No. 5 is just right, and time after time the fugues succeed in being coherent, without ever resorting to the violent, artificial accentuation of leading voices so beloved of a certain other lady Bach pianist.
Wilhelm Kempff's two single-disc selections from the "Forty-eight" make a strange collection: One disc, from 1976, rearranges twelve of the Book I preludes and fugues; the other, from 1980, offers .six more pieces from Book I (with no duplication) and five from Book II. To any one who admires Kempff's pianism these volumes may be recommended, for the playing is full of love for the mu sic. But I find it dour, without much light and shade. He tries to make the lightest preludes and fugues deeply significant; and even he has a problem turning the G major Prelude and Fugue from Book II into a profound spiritual testament. The old Germanic notion of Bach as the Fifth Evangelist dies hard. N.K.
BARTOK: Forty-four Duos for Two Violins. Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman, violins. [Suvi Raj Grubb, prod.] ANGEL SZ 37540, $9.98.
PROKOFIEV: Sonata for Two Violins, in C, Op. 56.
MOSZKOWSKI: Suite for Two Violins and Piano, in G minor, Op. 71.
SHOSTAKOVICH: Three Duets. Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman, violins; Samuel Sanders, piano'. [Christopher Bishop and Suvi Raj Grubb, prod.] ANGEL SZ 37668, $9.98.
Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman, continuing their exploration of the limited repertory of music for two violins, offer an interesting catch of twentieth century music in these two discs. Bartok wrote his forty-four duos in 1931 for pedagogical purposes, as studies for young violinists; and like his better known Mikrokosmos for piano, they are arranged in order of increasing difficulty. This makes for an odd concert work, which gets not only more difficult, but also more interesting as it proceeds.
Yet this is delightful music, much of it based on folk sources that have been completely integrated within Bartok's own mature style; and at least in small doses, the duos provide fascinating listening. Perlman and Zukerman play them with remarkable vigor and intensity-indeed, so much so that one some times has a sense of musical overkill, of a disparity between the unpretentious simplicity of the music and the expansive scale of its rendering.
Prokofiev's sonata for two violins is a four-movement work of extended length that handles the two-violin ensemble with great skill and virtuosity. He wrote it in 1932 in Paris, where he had been living for some ten years (he re turned to his native Russia in 1936), in his own special version of the style of international neoclassicism then so prevalent. Rhythmically vigorous and formally tight, it bristles with energy and produces a surprisingly full textural effect from its limited instrumental re sources. It is beautifully played here, with sensitivity, warmth, and authority.
The two other works, both of which The Emperor, one of the grandest entertainments ever, marks a turning point include piano almost entirely as an accompaniment, are considerably less ambitious. The Shostakovich is a real curiosity. Consisting of arrangements of three very brief excerpts from the com poser's film and ballet music, the three duets are little more than fluff: wholly conventional tonal music in a distinctly popular style that seems to have nothing whatever to do with his concert music.
The suite by Moritz Moszkowski is one of those turn-of-the-century salon pieces that are pleasant enough but have little real substance. The composer, a Polish-German musician of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, knew how to write prettily effective tunes, but not how to develop them. He extends his material mainly by repetition, and the effect wears thin with time. Alas, the work runs twenty minutes. R.P.M.
BEETHOVEN: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, No. 5, in E flat, Op. 73 (Emperor). A Rudolf Serkin, piano; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. [Robert Woods, prod.] TELARC DG 10065, $17.98 (digital).
If the history of the keyboard concerto in the eighteenth century is a battle for pianistic domination of the orchestra, Beethoven's last piano concerto represents the turning point: The two adversaries have been created equal in persuasive power, and therefore a dramatic confrontation between them has been made credible. There is an inescapable parallel between this confrontation and one Beethoven experienced in reality.
During the spring and summer months of 1809, while the concerto was being composed, the French armies threatened, invaded, and occupied Vienna, and many of his friends and patrons left town. He staunchly refused to do so, and though his house was in the direct line of cannon fire, he spent, according to Ries, only a few days "in a cellar at his brother Caspar's, covering his head with pillows so as not to hear the cannon." He in fact met a life-threatening danger with spirited courage and won a personal victory against a political foe.
Amazingly, the concerto, one of the grandest entertainments ever, expresses confrontation in the most flamboyant, high-spirited, rambunctious fashion, softened only by a lightly expressive embellished Lied as its centerpiece. What fear there is in the work occurs in the first-movement development section (briefly recalled by the timpani rolls in the coda of the Rondo). The head-on meeting of the minds at the climax of the development (measures 301-07) is moving (perhaps was even more so on the instruments of Beethoven's time) because one side possesses the physical, the other side the intellectual, moral, personal, or emotional advantage.
I am not certain that Rudolf Serkin and Seiji Ozawa, the most recent aspirants to the Emperor's throne, would agree with these views of Beethoven's work. A more sober, abstract approach prevails here, one in which the artists seem to be involved in careful analysis.
The mighty Boston Symphony plays superbly (especially the radiant horns), and the intonation is unusually fine; one definitely does not hear a light, buoyant, classical sound. Serkin delivers his well known dedicated yet muscular performance of a score he first recorded with Bruno Walter and the New York Philharmonic in 1941. Time and Ozawa's genial partnership have mellowed the famous Serkin angularity and rendered it somewhat more poetic than expected. Still, there is an impersonal, almost icy nobility in his characterization, a "distant, magisterial aloof ness," which Harris Goldsmith, in his fine liner notes, attributes to Beethoven.
The Adagio especially reflects this view.
The long Alberti figure in the piano toward the end of the movement, for ex ample, is played in an uninflected, un yielding manner, even ignoring Beethoven's syncopated slurs. An atmosphere of twentieth-century loneliness and alienation is intensified by Ozawa's decision to follow the autograph and omit the familiar pizzicato at measure 80 that crucial point where the piano figuration ends and the tonic B (retrospectively C flat) drops to B flat; the first edition prints the pizzicato at the change of harmony, conceivably conveying Beethoven's change of mind.
It is difficult to tell how accurately the musicians' work has been represented by the digital recording; the piano tone is a little hollow, the orchestra a little bottom-heavy. There does not seem to have been a lot of dial manipulation.
The balance between piano and orchestra sounds quite natural, except where some pianistic ornamental filigree assumes undue prominence. The occasion of WQXR's taped New York broadcast of the concert performance of January 27, 1981 (the day after the recording was completed) presented an interesting perspective. The Rondo at the concert had unmistakable fire and excitement that I felt only here and there on the disc. I assumed this was due to varying adrenalin
levels. But in the first two movements of the broadcast performance, I had the distinct impression that I was hearing the same interpretation with more pleasure and less distraction. The piano did not sound hollow, nor the orchestra bottom-
heavy: the balance was even more natural. That Alberti figure at the end of the Adagio came through much more sensi tively, suggesting the possibility that one recording process had captured the nuances and the other had not. The "stunning improvement in recorded sound," as Telarc so modestly puts it, is perhaps vet to come. tc.c.
BEETHOVEN: Concertos for Piano and Orchestra (5); Andante favori; Polonaise; Op. 89. For a review, see page 67.
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 4, in E minor, Op. 98 A Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Carlos Kleiber, cond. [Hans Weber and Hans Hirsch, prod.' DEUTSCHE G RAMMOPHON 2532 003, $12.98 (digital recording). Tape: 3302 003, $12.98 (cassette).
Deutsche Grammophon offers the first digital recording of a Brahms sym phony-his last, and in the opinion of many, his best. Carlos Kleiber's inter pretation is worthy of attention and sure to raise some eyebrows.
From the very opening bars, a sil very clarity of texture that arises more from the conductor's novel concept than from the engineering technology (impressive as that is) is partnered by a taut intensity-a sharp punctiliousness of pacing and accent. The first-movement tempo. though not terribly fast, carries urgency and stimulation. Arturo Toscanini, you are thinking? Not really. Kleiber, in fact, inserts a few Luftpausen and gear shifts that call to mind Bruno Walter's early BBC Symphony recording (Turnabout THS 65169) and-like Otto Klemperer- tempers his forward thrust with a certain sectionalized rigor. (The drum taps at the end, though, are rendered pretty much in tempo, and that is similar to Toscanini's 1951 reading on RCA Victrola VIC 6400 and German RCA).
The second movement, as Kleiber examines it, unfolds with an arrow-straight deliberation. While the bass line is solid and supportive, the autumnal nostalgia is treated rather austerely. One has the decided impression that Kleiber holds his instrumentalists on a tight leash; when they show expressiveness, it is the conductor's stylized emotion rather than an effusion coming spontaneously from the players themselves. But there is nothing mechanical or cold about the playing, over-controlled though some will find it.
Kleiber sets a middle-of-the-road pace for the Allegro giocoso, and there is a hint (but just a hint) of that idiosyncratic fractional delay I recall hearing from Walter (in his two earlier readings), Klemperer, and Victor de Submit. The triangle sounds properly coloristic, not like an overzealous telephone.
The final passacaglia begins with stern symmetry but slackens a bit as it approaches its lyrical middle phase.
More seriously, the undue haste of the final bars weakens the cumulative grandeur achieved there by Felix Weingartner, Toscanini, Antonio Pedrotti, and several others.
By any standards, this is a highly distinguished interpretation. efficiently played by the Vienna Philharmonic and keenly registered in DG's slightly chilly digital sound. In many ways, it's a wonderful. illuminating performance, yet I don't think I could love it, as I do those of Toscanini, Weingartner, Pedrotti. and Edward van Beinum. Those Fourths make you think of Brahms, the granitic architect; this one keeps you just a shade too aware of Kleiber, the finicky perfectionist. H.G.
HAIEFF: Sonata for Cello and Piano-See Ornstein: Quartet for Strings, No. 3.
MAHLER: Symphony No. 10, in F sharp. For a review, see page 61.
MENDELSSOHN: Sym phony No. 4, in A, Op. 90 (Italian)-See Schumann: Sym phonies.
MOSZKOWSKI: Suite for Two Violins and Piano, Op. 71-See Bartók: Duos for Two Violins (44).
ORNSTEIN: Quartet No. 3. New Boston 12089, $6.98. for Strings, Quartet. SERENUS SRS ORNSTEIN: Six Preludes. HAIEFF: Sonata for Cello and Piano. Italo Babini, cello; 'Elizabeth Sawyer Parisot, piano. SERENUS SRS 12090, $6.98.
Leo Ornstein used to get fleeting recognition in music appreciation books as an "age of steel" piano virtuoso and a rival to Prokofiev during that master's enfant terrible stage. But until a few years ago, nobody bothered to find out what had become of him.
As it turns out, Ornstein-who dropped out of sight around 1930-is alive and well and living in Texas. More important, his composing has continued unabated throughout these five decades;
in fact, at age eighty-eight, he is still writing like a house afire. There is a vast stockpile of unpublished Ornstein, and to judge from the works recorded here (and those reviewed by Abram Chipman a few years back), it warrants investigation.
The String Quartet No. 3 dates from 1976, the set of preludes from 1931. Both are works of real substance. The quartet at times reminds me of Hindemith-a wreathing, savage, vital piece of writing that makes all sorts of demands on the string players. The performance, by the New Boston Quartet (Daniel Stepner and Sophie Vilker, violins; Ronald Car bone, viola; and Lynn Nowels, cello), is excellent, insofar as I can judge without a score. Certainly the playing has lustrous tone and evident intensity.
The cello-piano pieces are, of course, more modest in scope, but a few of them are overwhelming in their motoric energy and frightening moto per petuo technical demands for both instruments. Here, one finds some of the inevitable Prokofiev and even more of vintage Bloch (cf. his piano quintet and suite for viola and piano).
Less important but attractive all the same is the 1963 Sonata for Cello and Piano by Alexei Haieff, a Siberian-born (1914) Russian émigré. It is excellently succinct and well proportioned, with at tractive Romantic themes and a Kabalevskian idiom pickled in neoclassic vinegar, a la Stravinsky's Duo concertante. halo Babini, the Detroit Sym phony's principal cellist, has a suave, ac curate technique and a lustrous, compact tone; Elizabeth Sawyer Parisot is a responsive partner, with an attractive palette at her disposal.
Both of these brief offerings receive superb performances (again, no scores), and Serenus provides agreeably spacious sound. H.G.
PROKOFIEV: Sonata for Two Violins, Op. 56-See Bartok: Duos for Two Violins (44).
SCHUBERT: Symphony No. 5, in B flat, D. 485-See Schumann: Symphonies.
SCHUMANN: Symphonies (4). Philadelphia Orchestra, James Levine, cond. [Jay David Saks, prod.] RCA RED SEAL ARL 3-3907, $29.94 (three discs, manual sequence). Tape: CRK 2-3908, $21.96 (two cassettes). Symphonies: No. 1, in B flat, Op. 38 (Spring); No. 2, in C, Op. 61; No. 3, in E flat, Op. 97 (Rhenish); No. 4, in D minor, Op. 120.
SCHUMANN: Symphony No. 4, in D minor, Op. 120.
MENDELSSOHN: Symphony No. 4, in A, Op. 90 (Italian). A Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Klaus Tennstedt, cond. [John Willan, prod.] ANGEL DS 37760, $10.98 (digital recording). Tape: 4ZS 37760, $9.98 (cassette).
SCHUMANN: Symphony No. 4, in D minor, Op. 120. SCHUBERT: Symphony No. 5, in B flat, D. 485. Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Karl Bohm, cond. [Werner Mayer, prod.] DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 2531 279, $10.98. Tape: 3301 279, $10.98 (cassette).
Pace many distinguished and/or famous conductors, James Levine's set gives the lie to the myth that Schumann was an inept orchestrator. Without altering the scoring in any way, Levine demonstrates that, when played lightly, with grace and elegance, the symphonies sound perfectly well, with a rare transparency of texture. So many conductors perform them with a heavy and muddy hand, as if they were second-rate Brahms. Here they emerge as first-rate Schumann, for which no apologies need be made.
Interpretively, Levine conducts straightforward, classically oriented performances, with little of the heaving about that more overtly Romantic conductors impose on Schumann. Tempos are well chosen, though perhaps a bit moderate in the Spring Symphony, where the chugging quality of some of the string writing is emphasized as a result. In that work's finale, he stresses "grazioso" rather than "animato." avoiding the common pitfall of trying to make the piece sound more exciting than it is. Here its relationship to Kreisleriana is quite evident. Unfortunately, the first movement's important triangle part is barely audible, even in loud passages.
The high point of the set is the beautiful performance of the Second Sym phony. After a wonderfully introspective opening, the animated Allegro fairly crackles with excitement. The Scherzo is perfectly paced, with a slight acceleration in the coda, a la Szell. In the Adagio, Levine observes the 2/4 marking and properly confines the "molto adagio" to the last two bars. While this movement may be a precursor of a Mahler adagio, it is not itself the Mahler adagio many conductors make of it; here it flows sweetly rather than crawling laboriously. The finale is suitably vigorous and majestic.
Yet Levine, I think has misinterpret ed the timpani part in measures 392-93 and in the last bar of the finale (and like Tennstedt, in measure 16 of the Fourth's finale), just as most conductors misinterpret Beethoven's similarly written timpani part in the Consecration of the House Overture. In spite of its appearance, the roll is meant to be sustained for the duration of the chord. (An entire article could be written on Beethoven's and Schumann's timpani parts.) The Rhenish, most difficult of the cycle for sustaining interest, receives a thoroughly absorbing reading, grace fully propulsive in the outer movements, warmly unsentimental in the inner three.
In the Fourth Symphony, the one disappointment of the set, Levine adopts a fiercer approach, not always to the work's advantage. There is little of the geniality and grace found elsewhere, qualities that would be equally appropriate for this more dramatic, minor-key work. The trombones, perfectly balanced before, are often too loud, especially in chordal passages. Levine's very fussy treatment of the finale's second theme calls all the more attention to it self since such mannerisms appear no where in the rest of the cycle.
Most sets of the Schumann sym phonies include an overture or two. As with their Brahms series, Levine and RCA offer no extras. An entire disc de voted to the Spring Symphony is certainly an extravagant use of vinyl, the more so as the side break occurs after the second movement, which is meant to lead directly into the Scherzo. The com poser's intentions are thereby defeated.
The recording is extremely clear, with a somewhat dry acoustic and--except for those trombones-a natural balance of instruments and sections. I don't know whether the full Philadelphia string section was used, but the sound lacks the opulence associated with this orchestra; the first violins, in particular, often sound thin in the upper register.
It's as though the microphones were picking up only the first few stands. This may reflect Levine's lighter approach to the music, and the playing is certainly beautiful; still, I would not have minded an occasional reminder that this is, in fact, The Philadelphia Orchestra. All re peats are observed, and the set is enhanced by Michael Steinberg's excellent notes. Reservations aside, I recommend this album as a most refreshingly musical view of Schumann's glorious sym phonies, problematic no longer.
Karl Bohm's Fourth, with two re peats fewer than Levine's, lasts a good two minutes longer. While the slower tempos and greater weight of the performance sometimes impart a feeling of stolidity, Bohm's obvious commitment to the work makes it an enjoyable experience. His orchestral revisions are very few and extremely minor. In the first movement he ignores the alternation of forte and piano in bars 101-14 and 175-88, keeping these passages piano throughout. He does eliminate the worrisome violin upbeat to the fortissimo chord just before the final presto; that upbeat (which Levine and Tennstedt play) usually gives the impression of an imprecisely attacked chord. Bohm is also one of the few conductors (Cantelli and Masur also come to mind) to play the finale's Schneller episode at anything like the proper tempo, which is twice as fast as the music preceding. Schumann's original 1841 version makes it quite clear that he wanted this effect; in the revised 1851 version, which has much of the same music barred differently, his intention becomes less obvious.
Klaus Tennstedt's Fourth is the most successful of the three in presenting the work as a unified whole. Save for intermittently overloud horns, it resembles Levine's reading of the first three sym phonies in style and spirit. Orchestral re visions are limited to the occasional lowering of the double bass part an extra octave. Like Levine, Tennstedt introduces rubato into the finale's second subject-but successfully, as the entire movement is more moderately paced All repeats are observed, save for that in the finale. This is a distinguished addition to Tennstedt's Schumann cycle.
In the second movement of the Fourth, all three conductors differentiate the triplets from the simultaneous dotted rhythm at the end of the main theme, as do most others. In his re cent book, Erich Leinsdorf has demonstrated that Schumann. even in 1851, followed baroque notational practices. The dotted rhythm is meant to agree with the triplets, an interpretation also adopted by George Szell.
Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony is becoming a popular coupling forth Schumann Fourth; Tennstedt gives it lithe, impetuous reading, taking the final Saltarello at a breathtaking pace. Ten points off, however, for his failure to ob serve the first-movement repeat. The first ending contains twenty-three bars of lovely music based on an idea that does not occur again until the coda, where it makes no sense if it has not been hear before. Apart from that, this is a truly winning performance, beautifully an transparently recorded.
Has anyone written a more charming symphony than Schubert's Fifth Bohm gives it a leisurely, warmly affectionate reading. If he lingers a bit over the slow movement, who can blame him?
-J.C
SHOSTAKOVICH: Three Duets-See Bartók: Duos for Two Violins (44).Recitals and Miscellany SONGS BY LE GROUPE DES SIX. Carole Bogard. soprano; John Moriarty. piano. CAMBRIDGE 2777, $6.98.
AURIC: Cinq Chansons de Lise Hirtz; Printemps.
DUREY: Les trois Poemes de Pe trone. HONEGGER: Clotilde; Le Delphinium; Les Cloches. MILHAUD: Trois Poemes de Jean Cocteau; L'Aurore. POULENC: Hier. Chanson bretonne. La petite Servante. Poemes de Ronsard: Attributs; Le Tombeau: Air champetre. TAILLEFERRE: Six Chansons francaises.
It's an intriguing idea to devote a record to songs written by Les Six, that group of French composers who are united only by a name and two sentences in the history books. In fact, although their music was dissimilar, this selection does have a certain stylistic consistency in keeping with the lighter tone of the French melodie. (Most of these songs were writ ten in the '20s and early '30s.) The three examples by Arthur Honegger are the most tied to the past, in terms of pianistic tone-wash painting of the Duparc or Saint-Satins school, but Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, and Georges Auric all display the characteristic dry-point amalgam of wit, feline grace, and insouciance that is the trademark of the group. Louis Durey's understated settings of some sensuous Petronius love poems are very effective in exploiting the tension be tween words and music. The Six French Songs of Germaine Tailleferre, not par ticularly memorable, make up the only weak group.
Carole Bogard sings these songs with a pleasant and evocative soprano, good French diction, and a measure of pertness. but she needs more forward ness in her enunciation (the words have a habit of slipping back into her throat) and more individualistic daring in her performances in order to avoid a same ness from song to song. John Moriarty's piano playing is excellent and (when in dicated, as in Auric) extremely witty.
Texts and translations are included. P.J.S
Theater and Film
ALTERED STATES. Original motion-picture soundtrack recording. Composed by John Corigliano; conducted by Christopher Keene. RCA ABL 1-3983, $9.98. Tape: ABK 1-3983, $9.98 (cassette).
EAST OF EDEN: Original television soundtrack recording. Composed by Lee Holdridge. [Tom Catalano, prod.] ELEKTRA 5E 520, $8.98.
THE STUNT MAN. Original motion-picture soundtrack recording. Composed and produced by Dominic Frontiere. 20TH CENTURY-FOX T 626, $8.98. Tape: C 626. $8.98 (cassette).
THE ELEPHANT MAN. Original motion-picture soundtrack recording. Composed by John Morris. National Philharmonic Orchestra, John Morris. cond. and prod. PACIFIC ARTS PAC 8-143, $8.98. Tape: PRC 8-143, $8.98 (cassette).
THE COMPETITION: Original motion-picture soundtrack recording. Composed, conducted, and produced by Lalo Schifrin. MCA 5185, $8.98. Tape: C 5185, $8.98 (cassette).
This grab-bag of recent soundtracks illustrates the high technical standards and stylistic flexibility of today's film composers. Although none of these scores is as musically distinctive or compelling as the best work of the established masters-past or present-all de serve recognition for the appropriateness and sophistication of their various solutions to increasingly complex and diversified problems.
The music for Altered States is significant on several counts: It marks the cinematic debut of John Corigliano, one of America's most widely acclaimed young "serious" composers. Reflecting the current swing to an unselfconscious and omnivorous eclecticism, it skillfully employs a gamut of modes, from electronically amplified sounds, through distorted quotations, a la Ives, of everyday themes (in this case, the hymn "Rock of Ages"), to a serenely Brahmsian passage for piano trio. In its flamboyant mix of nightmarish dissonance, ominous low rumblings. Neo-primitive Sacre-like ostinatos, and a gently diatonic love theme, the score provides a graphic counterpart to Ken Russell's phantasmagoric fusion of neuro-psychopathic horror film, anthropological science fiction, and humanistic uplift.
Now and then this hodgepodge of fashionable odds and ends seems meretricious, yet there's no gainsaying its enormous facility and pure theatricality.
Performance and sonics show a like assurance and eclat, but given the scope of the enterprise, RCA would have done well to provide at least some analytical notes.
Lee Holdridge, another youthful, neo-Romantic, classically oriented musician, has-unlike Corigliano-eagerly embraced all kinds of commercial work in order to maintain a foothold in the industry-thus his pallid score for Jonathan Livingston Seagull and his collaborations with pop stars like Neil Diamond and John Denver. Certainly, none of his previous work has shown him capable of the sustained power, range, and subtlety of his flowingly versatile score for the lengthy though impeccably faithful tele vision adaptation of John Steinbeck's most universal novel, East of Eden.
Working in a basically tonal American idiom of open harmonies and double-gaited meters-with occasional, discreet dollops of chromatic dissonance at climactic moments--Holdridge has produced an evocative musical narrative that beautifully highlights the various emotional textures and intricacies of Steinbeck's fatalistic family saga of puritanical self-denial in collision with the amoral life-force in a paradoxically pastoral setting. The main theme-for some reason, nowhere heard in its full-dress version in this otherwise generous fifty-minute compilation-is a broad, benedictory hymn-like motif that permeates the entire score and recalls Leonard Rosenman's principal chorale tune for the much more intensely concentrated 1950s film treatment of the book's final section by director Elia Kazan and scenarist Paul Osborne.
But Holdridge's music, in keeping with the more leisurely and perhaps more literal approach of the teleplay, eschews the contorted atonalism of Rosenman's classic score. It supplies instead a running undercurrent to the panoramic action, including touchingly recurrent allusions to the same old cotillion ditty "Put Your Little Foot Right Out"--that Alex North used so effectively in his masterful Streetcar Named Desire. Not since Morton Gould's Holocaust has television drama called forth such a distinguished score as Holdridge's East of Eden.
As a protege of Alfred Newman back in the late '50s, Dominic Frontiere-originally an accordionist-made two lavish and voluptuous background-music albums for Columbia. Over the past two decades, his checkered career as a film and television composer has seldom escaped the limbo of second-rate assignments. But his raffish, emphatic, and intermittently Weillish music for the succes d'estime Stunt Man shows him in a new light. For the chaotic, carnival-like atmosphere surrounding a film being shot on location by an eccentric and temperamental director and employing the services of an improvisatory stunt man who is actually a fugitive from the law, Frontiere has concocted an earthy, defiantly accented, devil-may-care score--a West Coast American counter part to Nino Rota's Neapolitan populist writing for Fellini's quasi-surreal extravaganzas. The several themes-including a song, "Bits and Pieces," energetically declaimed by Dusty Springfield--are deployed in a variety of contexts with considerable panache: the sequencing on the disc is disconcertingly un-chronological, however, with the main title at the end of Side 11. Nonetheless, this is an interesting and colorful score, well worth investigating.
For most of his visible career. John Morris has served valiantly as Mel Brooks's in-house composer; in this capacity. he has provided much rollicking special material, such as the outrageous Marlene Dietrich parody perpetrated by Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles. But in his score for a very different kind of Brooks production, The Elephant Man, he comes to the fore as a composer of sober, sensitive dramatic music in the vein of another Englishman. John Barry. For this difficult subject Morris strikes a delicate balance among dignity. pathos. and reticence. His simple, repetitive themes yield much affecting music. Yet why the producers chose to include Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings rather than Morris' perfectly adequate equivalents is a mystery. In any case, the production and engineering by Pacific Arts are exceptional.
Now that Henry Mancini. Francis Lai, and Michel Legrand have receded a hit. Lalo Schifrin has the pop sound track field almost to himself. Though he has demonstrated his capacity for more serious writing in such underrated scores as Rollercoaster and The Amityville Horror, in The Competition he returns to his original milieu and his familiar qualities of tasteful finesse and amiable under statement. In fact, it's amazing how much musical mileage he gets out of this vapid and unlikely romantic trifle about a pair of classical pianists.
Disregarding the truncated and therefore unnecessary excerpts from Beethoven and Prokofiev piano concertos (relegated to the final tracks on each side). this record contains a fair share of pretty tunes, polite jazz, and even a touch of Renaissance wind music.
The main title theme is a wistful. Hamlischy ballad entitled "People Alone," again sung by Springfield. There is an occasional undercurrent of tension, with another main title buried deep on the second side. Not an important score by any means, but still a creditable and un pretentious job by a true professional.
P.A.S.
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The Correct "New" Verdi
Last month, to accompany Denis Vaughan's article "Exploring the 'New' Verdi Sound," we printed score reproductions of a passage from Falstaff intended to highlight the editorial changes made from Verdi's manuscript in the first printed edition. As interested readers have no doubt discovered, the second page of manuscript was given incorrectly. Here is the passage, correctly represented in both scores.
------ In manuscript facsimile. the Act 11 passage that depicts
the word "angelo" in a "wafting chiaroscuro- of phrasing
and articulation. Instruments represented are, top to bottom, violins
I and II, violas, flutes. oboes, clarinet in C. bassoons. cellos, and
double basses. Characters represented are Mrs. Quickly (soprano clef),
who sings the phrase. and Falstaff
REPRINTED COURTESY OF DOVER PUBLICATIONS. INC 1980
-----------The same passage, in the Ricordi score published in 1893, the year of the work's premiere. Editorial changes tend to homogenize phrasing and articulation.
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The Tape Deck
Critiques of new open-reel and cassette releases
by R. D. Darrell
HiTech or LoPrice
Digitally recorded cassettes now proffer consistently sweeter highs and warmer acoustics than they did at first; yet several current ones impressed me as near ideal technologically even before I realized what they have in common: 3M-sys tem digitalism. Music, performances, and manufacturers are all different, but uniformly, the recorded sonics are sheer aural delights.
Grandest of these is Wagner's Parsifal. the first multichannel digital opera recording, in Herbert von Karajan's 1980 Salzburg Easter Festival production (Deutsche Grammophon five-cassette Prestige Box 3382 002, $64.90). Here the conductor surprises friends and enemies alike, both by his personal eloquence and by sharing stardom with veteran Kurt Moll (Gurnemanz) and discovery Dunja Vejzovic (Kundry). And never has this sumptuous score been re-created with more glowing radiance! The blockbuster is one of two 3M digitals in RCA's boxed chromium audiophile series ($15.98 each): Orff's Carmina burana in a performance by the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under Eduardo Mata (ATK I 3925) that for once minimizes kitsch and reveals in the work an unsuspected "classical" stature. The best earlier versions remain more spectacular, but Mata's magisterial control and the exceptionally attractive solo and choral vocalism will confound this work's most virulent de tractors. RCA's other example, the ac claimed debut of gifted young Dylana Jenson with Eugene Ormandy's Philadelphians in the Sibelius violin concerto and Saint-Satins Introduction and Rondo capriccioso (ATK 1-3972), excels in elegant virtuosity and tonal refinement but where are the wild bardic sweep and icy furies of the Sibelius masterpiece? A fourth 3M digital cassette proves what can be done with ferric tape, in Nonesuch's two early C.P.E. Bach Harpsichord Concertos, Wq. 8 and 18 (D1 79015, $11.98). Malcolm Hamilton's magically delicate yet bright-toned harpsichord is deftly disentangled (without the spotlighting once necessary) from the lusty Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, under Gerard Schwarz's unflaggingly zestful direction.
Other, unspecified. digital systems also can be mightily effective, however.
especially that used in recording the first Angel musicassette I've received in a long time-one that doesn't even ac knowledge (in its ferric-tape edition) its digital origin. But this Vivaldi Four Sea sons (4XS 37755, $9.98, no notes) is one of the strongest yet sonically. The superbly vital performance co-stars Yehudi Menuhin, playing better than I've heard him do in recent years, and the Gstaad Camerata Lysy, in an arresting American record debut.
Another ferric digital tape, the first Pro Arte example to come my way, is more praiseworthy for its brilliant sound than for its stolid trumpet-organ performances of short baroque pieces.
mostly transcriptions, by Wolfgang Basch and Wolfgang Rilbsam (PCD 103, $12.98). And even the improved digitalism and chromium taping of the 1980 "New Year's Concert in Vienna" (DG 3302 002, $12.98) can't make Lorin Maazel's mannered, however idiomatic, Vienna Philharmonic performances as exciting as earlier Boskovsky examples.
Musicmasters, the new retail label of the Musical Heritage Society. offers super-chrome musicassettes list-priced at $8.98 (brief notes supplied, complete ones on request). My first examples, distinguished by first-rate processing and characteristic MHS programmatic catholicity, are deluxe productions of two programs I've praised earlier in mail-or der ferric-tape and disc editions: the rollicking ragtime of William Bolcom and William Albright (MMC 40002) and the entrancing solo debut of flutist Carol Wincenc (MMC 40004). Appearing for the first time is one of the most virtuosic guitar recitals I've ever heard: Eliot Fisk's truly bravura performance of Ponce's La Folia Variations, coupled with a Latin-American miscellany that is less substantial musically ( M MC 40008).
Economy-minded tape collectors aren't entirely forgotten in all the premium-price high-tech hoopla. Having considered the bargains last month, I'll proceed to the budget ($5.98) category. I've had nothing lately from the extensive Odyssey. RCA Gold Label, Seraphim, or London Stereo Treasury catalogs. but three other lines have sent appetizingly varied new cassette releases.
Nonesuch's latest releases draw upon various sources: From the short lived Sonar catalog comes a shrewd reissue of a wonderful chamber music recording by the Raphael Trio-Dvorak's Piano Trio. Op. 65 (N5 71397), now exhilarating, now poignant; from British Enigma, Walton's First Symphony, in an uninhibitedly passionate 1978 recording by Vernon Handley and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (N5 71394); and from British RCA, the vibrantly infectious 1979 "La Mantovana" program (N5 71392) of early-baroque airs and dances, zestfully sung and played by tenor Paul Elliott and James Tyler's Early Music Group. All that's lacking are notes and texts.
Quintessence normally provides full notes, but not (inexplicably) for its invaluable Dvorak/Czech Philharmonic historical reissues (2P4C 2711, $11.96) combining the 1960 Suk/Ancerl violin concerto and Romance with the memorable 1952 mono Rostropovich/Talich cello concerto, plus Vaclav Talich's still paradigmatic early-stereo recording of the Carnival Overture. (Both programs are also available separately.) Then, from undated but probably fairly recent Seon masters come two of the Odeon Trio's fascinating Brahms series, also in progress from Musical Heritage Society.
The Op. 87 Piano Trio and the viola version of the clarinet trio (P4C 7191) are both good. straightforward recorded performances, but far more novel is the delectable early Piano Trio in A (P4C 7186). This work, unearthed only in 1924. may seem of debatable authenticity in its gracefully salonish first two movements. But its glowingly nostalgic Lento and robust final Presto are surely the real Johannes McCoy! Everest continues to delight (with reissued treasures) and exasperate (no notes; often even no selection titles). Still the processing continues to improve.
Collectors who missed some original Everest early-stereo triumphs, such as the Copland/London Symphony Billy the Kid and Statements, Stokowski/ Houston Brahms Third Symphony. and Sanroma/Steinberg Rhapsody in Blue and Steinberg/Pittsburgh Symphony American in Paris, should welcome their now slightly faded return in 3015, 3030, and 3067, respectively. HF
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Also see:
Two Digital Mahler Tenths, Reviewed by Derrick Henry --Deryck Cooke's final completion of what may be Mahler's greatest symphony.
Historic Beethoven Piano Concertos, Reviewed by Harris Goldsmith--Arabesque's revival of Schnabel's first cycle.