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Levine in Philadelphia. When James Levine taped the Mahler Fifth Sym phony (the fourth installment in his Mahler cycle) and the Schumann Second for RCA in January, he became only the fourth conductor other than music director Eugene Ormandy to record with the Philadelphia Orchestra since the war. (A smattering of recordings were made by Leopold Stokowski in 1960, Charles Munch in 1963, and William Smith in 1968.) The sessions were held in Philadelphia's Scottish Rite Cathedral. Previn in Pittsburgh and Chicago. Andre Previn took up his new post as music director of the Pittsburgh Sym phony in style: In addition to beginning the taping of eight television concerts for PBS, in January the orchestra made its first recordings in eight years, for EMI. Two records will result-the Goldmark violin concerto and Sara sate's Zigeunerweisen with Itzhak Perlman, and the Sibelius Second Symphony. (Perlman's regular producer, Suvi Raj Grubb, supervised the sessions, the orchestra's first in its cur rent home, Heinz Hall.) After Pittsburgh, Previn guest-conducted in Chicago, where he also recorded the Shostakovich Fourth and Fifth Sym phonies with his regular producer, Christopher Bishop. By a rather neat turnabout, Previn's earlier Shostakovich Fifth, for RCA in 1965, was his first recording with the London Symphony (of which he would become principal conductor within three years) and helped launch his spectacular British career. Despite an abortive attempt to force him out in 1975, Previn's ties to the LSO re main firm, and recent recordings include Mendelssohn's complete (really complete, that is) Midsummer Night's Dream incidental music. Davis in Boston and Amsterdam. Colin Davis has been pursuing sym phony cycles in two of his current favorite recording locales: With the Boston Symphony, he has added the Sibelius Third and Fourth Sym phonies (and The Swan of Tuonela) to the previously recorded First, Fifth, and Seventh; with Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra, he has re corded the Dvorak Seventh and Eighth Symphonies. Maazel (and Columbia) in Cleveland. ... As previously reported, Lorin Maazel, no longer under exclusive contract to Decca / London, looms large in CBS's plans, but until recently he had been unable to use his own orchestra, which remained contractually tied to Decca/London. In January, however, Columbia took advantage of that contract's expiration (while a new one was being negotiated) to record Maazel and the Cleveland in Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique and Strauss's Ein Heidenleben.... and on direct-cut discs. After the Columbia sessions, Maazel and the Cleveland Orchestra proceeded to a more unusual project: a direct-cut disc recording of orchestral chest nuts-Berlioz' Corsaire overture and "Rakoczy March," the "Farandole" from Bizet's L'Arlesienne, the final dance from Falla's Three-Cornered Hat, and the Polonaise from Tchaikovsky's Yevgeny Onegin-produced by Robert Woods of Cleveland's Advent Recording Corporation (not to be confused with the audio manufacturer). The resulting LP, to be distributed by Discwasher, Inc., will be manufactured in a new American pressing plant that, according to Woods, "will use special equipment, production techniques, and quality-control procedures which have heretofore been utilized only by the best European manufacturers." Glen Glancy of Phonopress, Inc., of Burbank, California, will supervise disc mastering and ultimate manufacture. Advent's discs will sell for $15 each on a new label, Telarc (from the Latin tel and the company acronym). Elsewhere on the direct-disc front, Crystal Clear Records (225 Kearney St., San Francisco, Calif. 94108), which released "Direct Disco" last year, has announced two new discs (issued at 45 rpm): "San Francisco Ltd.," a pop collection with lead vocals by Terry Garthwaite; and a part-'jazz, part-classical program by guitar ist Laurindo Almeida. Porgy and Bess in New York. RCA has recorded the production of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess that moved last year from the Houston Grand Opera to Broadway. (And for once, the opera-vs.-musical question moved from mere aesthetics into economics; after much persuasion, the unions involved decided that Porgy is an opera after all-the recording cost at Broadway-musical rates would have been prohibitive.) The title roles are taken by Donnie Ray Albert and Clamma Dale, with Andrew Smith as Crown, Larry Marshall as Sportin' Life, Wilma Shakesnider as Serena, Carol Bryce as Maria, and Betty Lane as Clara. The conductor is John DeMain. Berman in London. Lazar Berman has made two new records for CBS in London. With Claudio Abbado and the London Symphony he taped the Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto (produced by Steven Epstein, from New York), while three overlapping sessions produced an encore-type recital of works by Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Khachaturian, Liszt, and others. Vanguard's veterans. Vanguard has pressed two distinguished musical senior citizens into the studios for major recording projects. Pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski, now in his eighties, has recorded Book I of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, while violinist Alexander Schneider is participating in a promised chamber music series begun with the Brahms Third Piano Quartet, also featuring pianist Stephanie Brown, violist Walter Trampler, and cellist Leslie Parnas. For P.D.Q. Bach fans, Prof. Peter Schickele and his cohorts have yet another record in the works-made with an invited audience shortly after the professor's annual New York Christmas extravaganza. King's Bach. Philip Ledger has made his first large-scale recording as choir master of Cambridge's all-male King's College Choir, conducting the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in Bach's Christmas Oratorio for EMI. Under Ledger's predecessor, David Willcocks, chorus and orchestra had recorded Handel's Messiah and Haydn's Creation, neither released domestically. Unlike Creation, done in English translation, the Christmas Oratorio is in German, and unlike Messiah, whose soprano solos were sung by the choral trebles in unison, the new recording uses female soloists. The solo quartet comprises Elly Ameling (her third Christmas Oratorio), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (his second), Janet Baker, and Robert Tear. Bernstein postscript. Further to last month's report on Leonard Bernstein's new free-lance activities: Two ambitious Deutsche Grammophon projects are scheduled to begin this fall. Spanning twenty-one discs will be a Beethoven series, mostly with the Vienna Philharmonic. With the Israel Philharmonic. Bernstein will record eight discs' worth of his own works. ------------- (High Fidelity, Apr. 1977) Also see: Boulez' IRCAM Amnesia in Nibelheim Recordings Before Edison; Leonard Marcus; Unearthing a surprising abundance
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