Reviewed by: RICHARD FREED, DAVID HALL, GEORGE JELLINEK, IGOR KIPNIS, PAUL
KRESH, ERIC SALZMAN
J. S. BACH (trans. Hess, Busoni, Lustner, Liszt, SiloH): jesu, joy of Man's Desiring; Nun komm' der Heiden Heiland; Nun freut each lieben, Christen g'mein; Siciliano in G Minor; Prelude and Fugue in A Minor; Ich ruf' zu dir Herr Jesu Christ; Chaconne in D Minor; Toccata and Fugue in D Minor; Prelude in B Minor. Alexis Weissenberg (piano). ANGEL S 37088 $6.98.
Performance: Appropriate
Recording: Good
The ancient and honorable art of transcription, although recently in disrepute, has generally held a high place in musical culture.
The greatest challenge--taken up by such disparate masters as Liszt, Busoni, Webern, and Stravinsky--is J. S. Bach. Since Bach lived before the age of the pianoforte and since the Romantics worshipped at the shrine of Johann Sebastian, it was natural for them to rethink Bach's keyboard music for the modern concert instrument. And, along with the revival of many aspects of Romanticism, it was inevitable that contemporary pianists would resurrect this fine old genre.
Alexis Weissenberg is certainly a pianist in the line of the old Romantic-intellectuals, and, although he is rarely animated by the tremendous fire and passion that drove his illustrious predecessors (or that they successfully affect ed for the edification of their public), he is capable of a strong measure of grand, severe style well suited to these very imposing transcriptions. Good piano sound. -E.S.
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Monophonic recordings are indicated by the symbol.
The first listing is the one reviewed; other formats, if available, follow it.
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RECORDINGS OF SPECIAL MERIT
BARTOK: Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano; Rhapsody No. 1 for Violin and Piano; Two Roumanian Dances. Denes Zsigmondy (violin); Anneliese Nissen (piano). KLAVIER KS-535 $6.98.
BARTOK: Sonata for Unaccompanied Violin; Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano. Denes Zsigmondy (violin); Anneliese Nissen (piano). KLAVIER KS-542 $6.98.
Performance. Absorbing
Recording: Very good
The two violin/piano sonatas of Bela Bartok were considered barely listenable for many critics during the years following their composition (1921-1922). Their unconventional, frankly experimental effects--barbaric-sounding chords, swooping glissandos, strangely placed pizzicatos-no longer sound terrifying, but these sonatas are still a long way from being ingratiating in the conventional sense. The solo sonata (1944), a late work written by an older, mellower, but not much more com promising Bartok, is more accessible; its slow third movement is almost a Romantic gesture in its winding chromaticism, and its final Presto has a moto perpetuo layout.
All three are highly individual and intensely colorful pieces, and they reward concentrated listening. Bartok, a virtuoso pianist, under stood the violin but struggled against its harmonic limitations. Nonetheless, he seldom allows the piano, a naturally harmonic instrument, to assume the commanding role in the violin-piano sonatas; the rich chordal writing of the violin carries the principal burden. The two instruments, incidentally, rarely complement one another-this is a partnership contrapuntally pursuing independent lines. The performances are exceptionally good.
Hungarian-born Denes Zsigmondy (pupil of Carl Flesch and now Professor of Music at the University of Washington) plays this music with an elegance that bespeaks complete mastery of its difficulties. With all its rhythmic intricacies and strange sound combinations, it is obviously "mainstream" music for him. In the solo sonata, incidentally, he comes remarkably close to the timings indicated by Bart6k (a notoriously fast timer of his own works) without compromising accuracy, articulation, or intonation. The pianist (Mrs. Zsigmondy) collaborates with him in a manner justifying the record liner's high praise of this team of fine musicians.
There are some printing inaccuracies on both the jackets and the labels, but the music and the recording are of a very high caliber. - G J.
BEETHOVEN: String Quartets, Opp. 59, 74, and 95 (see Choosing Sides, page 102) RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 9, in D Minor, Op. 125 ("Choral"). Marita Napier (soprano); Anna Reynolds (contralto); Helge Brilioth (tenor); Karl Ridderbusch (bass); Ambrosian Singers; New Philharmonia Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa cond. PHILIPS 6747 119 two discs. $15.96.
Performance: Radiant
Recording: Realistic
Just fifteen months ago Karl Bohm's Deutsche Grammophon recording of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was welcomed in these pages for the "faultless sense of proportion" with which the veteran conductor "emphasizes the work's straightforward humanity"; it has headed my list of recorded Ninths since then, and I would not have imagined so strong a rival would appear in so short a time.
Seiji Ozawa's new Ninth on Philips is not faultless: it is an imperfect performance of What we are constantly reminded is an imperfect work; but it is also an extraordinarily moving one, generating more of the unforced radiance and spiritual "lift" one used to hope for from this music than any other recording of it known to me.
The solid integrity of Bohm's Ninth is in no way diminished by Ozawa's achievement, and the two approaches in fact have more than a few points in common. Both eschew the ceremonial and monumental connotations frequently attached to the work; neither sees the Ninth as a solemn rite, nor as an outpouring of bacchanalian abandon. Ozawa's tempos, like ...
... Bohm's, are for the most part unhurried but steadily propulsive; his dynamic range is broader and involves some risks, most of them successful. His reading from beginning to end is spectacularly controlled, but very subtly, too: the music is at every point al lowed to breathe naturally. If Ozawa's approach is somewhat less straightforward than Bohm's, it is even more compassionate, more permeated with a sustained and expanding sense of exaltation.
One might complain that, even though there are some exaggerated dynamic contrasts, the first movement shows too little in the way of dramatic conflict-as if Ozawa were too confident of his progress toward the joy-filled finale. All three of the wholly instrumental movements do serve more obviously as preludes here, leading on, not impatiently, but with a grand and serene sense of momentum.
Both the scherzo and the slow movement, though, come about as close to the ideal as I ever expect to hear; in the latter, particularly, Ozawa seems to have found the more effective balance between contemplation and thrust. Along the way, one may note that the drumbeats in the scherzo, while superbly executed, are not recorded with the sharp definition they are given in the Bohm set and that the marvelous horn solo in the slow movement also suffers from a rather mushy acoustic focus; otherwise, the recorded sound is stunningly realistic, and there is little else to complain about.
The women soloists may be less striking than their counterparts in certain other recordings, but they are a good deal more than adequate vocally, and their voices mesh well with Ozawa's concept. The two men are never less than first-rate. Ridderbusch is possibly even more admirable here than he is in the Bohm recording; Brilioth is ideally suited to the demands of this work, and the brisk pacing of his solo section leads most effectively into the ensuing fugato. The "Seid umschlungen" which follows is very majestic, taken about as slowly as possible without allowing the momentum to falter, and the end is credibly exuberant. Balances throughout the long movement are unfailingly excellent, both between the choral and instrumental forces and within each respective ensemble.
But no amount of verbal description can convey the impact of this wonderfully realized Ninth. There is not a bar anywhere that is superficial, bland, or vulgar; the performance has both dignity and exhilaration in abundance, and the balance is achieved not through compromise but through the apparently instinctive response of a great interpreter to a great creator. At a list price of $15.96 and with no other work on the two discs, Ozawa's Ninth is the most expensive version around; it is also, without question, the most inspiriting.
In addition to providing generally superb sound (with the two lapses noted), Philips has at last abandoned the oversize box hereto fore used for its two-disc sets in favor of a more convenient gatefold container, and even the annotation is exceptional: Bernard Jacobson's thoughtful and provocative observations on the work itself instead of the thrice-told tale of the 1824 premiere. -R.F.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
BRAHMS: Piano Quartets (complete). Beaux Arts Trio; Walter Trampler (viola). PHILIPS 6747 068 three discs $23.94.
Performance: Superb
Recording: Perfect
Brahms wrote three quartets for piano and strings. Two of them, Opp. 25 and 26, were written in 1859. The third, the least known of the three, appeared in 1875 as his Op. 60 but is actually a reworked version of an earlier work. It is not without interest, but it pales beside the first two quartets, perhaps the greatest masterpieces for this rather special medium.
The Beaux Arts Trio and violist Walter Trampler-American chamber musicians of the highest achievement, here recording in Europe-are the perfect interpreters of this music. Their playing is warm, full of poetry and strength, and utterly Brahmsian. The only thing missing is Brahms' other great work in this genre: the F Minor Quintet. Next time.
- E.S.
CAGE: Winter Music (see FLYNN) CHOPIN: Piano Sonata No. 2, in Bliat Minor, op. 35 (see LISZT) CHOPIN: Piano Sonata No. 3, in B Minor, Op. 58 (see Best of the Month, page 72) FAURE: Piano Quartet No. 1 (see Choosing Sides, page 102)
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
FLYNN: Wound. CAGE: Winter Music. George Flynn (piano). FINNADAR QD 9006 $6.98.
Performance: Overwhelming
Recording. Excellent
George Flynn's Wound is one of those artistic documents of passion and involvement that is simply overwhelming in its impact. There have been a number of attempts to create the pianistic ne plus ultra in recent years. This may be it, but not because Flynn set out with such an aim. On the contrary, it is because the piece so clearly grows out of his own impulse to say something; the pianistic tour de force is the result, not the cause.
Cage's Winter Music, written in 1957 and dedicated to Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, consists of twenty unbound and unnumbered pages that may be used, in whole or in part, in any number of possible arrangements and interpretations by one to twenty pianists (why not more?). For this recording, Flynn made four separate realizations which are heard here simultaneously, one track per channel in quadraphonic playback, two per channel in stereo. The "divine emptiness" of these random clusters of piano sound is a long way from Wound but equally effective in Flynn's realization
---GEORGE FLYNN: A pianistic tour de force
The CD-4 recorded sound is excellent, and Finnadar has had the courage to cut all the music close to the outer edge of the record rather than spreading the grooves to make a deceptively full-looking side. The result is a considerable improvement in inner-groove sound, especially in quadraphonic playback. -E.S.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
FRANCK: Quintet for Piano and Strings. Samson Francois (piano); Bernede Quartet. CONNOISSEUR SOCIETY CS 2077 $6.98.
Performance: Excellent
Recording: Very good
This is an important recording of a major piece of chamber music. Cesar Franck's piano quintet, one of the earlier works of his maturity, is a fine, impassioned piece, quite com parable to his slightly later and better works.
This recording, originating with Pathe-Marconi and the last ever made by the late Sam son Francois, catches the music's special passion and its romantic sensibility very well indeed. -E.S.
FRANCK: Quintet for Piano and Strings (see Choosing Sides, page 102)
HAYDN: String Quartets, Op. 76, Nos. 1-6 (see Choosing Sides, page 102)
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
HINDEMITH: Mathis der Maler, Symphony. R. STRAUSS: Death and Transfiguration, Op. 24. London Symphony Orchestra, Jascha Horenstein cond. NONESUCH H-71307 $3.96.
Performance: Luminous
Recording: Very good
Jascha Horenstein, who died in April 1973, a month before his seventy-fifth birthday, re corded the Strauss work on this disc in July 1970 and the Hindemith in May 1972; surely neither session was undertaken in a valedictory context, but, as Jack Diether observes in his memoral tribute, these two performances "fittingly and movingly rounded out" the conductor's career on records. (The new Mahler Sixth, also on Nonesuch, was taped in concert with the Stockholm Philharmonic in 1966 and was not originally planned as a commercial release.) Anyone familiar with Horenstein's Vox recording of Death and Transfiguration, made some twenty years ago with the Bamberg Symphony, will know what to expect in this splendid remake: a cogently organized reading, brisker than most but with no sense of undue haste, in which musical values and natural flow are accorded prime consideration. It is a highly dramatic reading, too, yet somehow "un-staged" and spontaneous in its effect, without abrupt shifting of gears from one episode to the next; the piece comes off with majesty, lift, and luminosity Mathis der Maler, new to the Horenstein discography, is also music ideally suited to the late conductor's temperament; it is no surprise at all that this is one of the finest realizations of the work yet recorded. The opening "Angelic Concert" has an otherworldly transparency, and the "Entombment," which Horenstein took more deliberately than most other conductors is exceptionally moving because it seems to be allowed to speak for itself in stead of being fussed over. The concluding "Temptation of St. Anthony" is also a bit slower than usual, and some listeners may feel the tension is too slack here; my own feeling is that the tempo was naturally determined by the weight and breadth of Horenstein's concept, and that it works beautifully.
The London Symphony Orchestra is in great form in both works, giving Horenstein everything he asked for, and Robert Ludwig's mastering for Nonesuch strikes me as at least the equal of what I heard on the Unicorn pressing. Further, these exceptional performances are handsomely packaged and on a low-price label--what more could one ask'' -R.F.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
IVES: String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2. Concord String Quartet. NONESUCH H-71306 $3.98.
Performance: Really into it
Recording: Excellent
Charles Ives' string quartets are a perplexing pair of works that have stymied many ambitious performers. The Concord, a gifted young ensemble with a reasonably liberated attitude about music-making, is the perfect group to get into this music. And get into it they have, even to the extent of studying the original manuscripts and working with John Kirkpatrick, Ives' editor and executor.
The First Quartet, a product of Ives' Yale days and studies with Horatio Parker, is hymn-tune music in the manner of the early symphonies. The Second is one of Ives' first- class eccentricities: "String Quartet for 4 men-who converse, discuss, argue (in re ‘politick'), fight, shake hands, shut up-then walk up the mountain-side to view the firmament." And that is exactly what happens in the music: a conservative second violinist named Rollo plays Andante emasculata, Largo sweetota, and Alla rubato Elman while the others slug it out with Dixie and Columbia the Gem of the Ocean until the classic Ives transcendental finale gets 'em all. The Concord musicians go all out on this stuff and somehow make it work with the fullest Ivesian vigor. It takes a new breed. E.S.
KABALEVSKY: Overture Pathetique in B Minor, Op. 64; Spring, Op. 65; Songs of Morn ing, Spring and Peace, Op. 57; School Years; The Unit of Young Pioneers; Good Night.
Chorus of the Central House for Railway men's Children; V. Mamontova, L. Komaro va (vocal soloists); Symphony Orchestra of the Moscow State Philharmonic, Dmitri Kabalevsky cond. WESTMINSTER GOLD WGC 83038 $3.49.
Performance: Cheerful
Recording: Very good
Dmitri Kabalevsky has been writing music of such broad, old-fashioned appeal for so many years (he is now seventy-one) that he was practically the only prominent Soviet composer not reprimanded by the regime in 1948.
He has always been willing to write his opera and ballet scores on themes acceptable to the establishment, with plenty of folk material and only a little dissonance here and there to spice things up. No wonder he is editor of the official Soviet journal Soviet Music, head of the music department of the Soviet Radio Committee, and secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers! Yet, as you know if your pulse has ever tingled to the sound of the Colas Breugnon overture or The Comedians, Kabalevsky can write music of such scintillating vitality that it is easy to forgive the traditionalism of his style. Here he conducts two of his relatively recent works, an Overture Pathetique-more reminiscent in its vigor of Colas Breugnon than of anything tragic or pathetic except that it's written in a minor key-and his symphonic poem Spring, which is a kind of Debussy Printemps with a Russian accent. Both of these pieces were composed in 1960, and they were new when this record was made in the Soviet Union a year later (it has waited fifteen years for release here), but they blazed no trails then, and they certainly don't do so now, even on their own terms. What makes the record worth acquiring is the series of songs for children on the second side. The Songs of Morning, Spring and Peace glow with musical sunlight and good cheer, and are performed with much freshness and skill by a group of kids who can be count ed on to brighten the darkest day. Two more pretty songs round out the program. P.K.
KAY: Six Dances for String Orchestra (see STILL). KORNGOLD: Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 2; Marchenbilder, Op. 3. Antonin Kubalek (piano). GENESIS GS 1055 $6.98.
Performance: Very good
Recording: Very good
The interest in Erich Wolfgang Korngold aroused by the RCA recordings of his film music continues to have interesting consequences. Within the last year and a half, we have had recordings of Korngold concert works on RCA, Angel, and Orion, and the New York City Opera has produced Die Tote Stadt; now we have a first recording of his earliest piano compositions (a First Sonata, presumably, was discarded by the composer), both written in 1910, the year in which Korngold, at age thirteen (not eleven, as stated in the notes with the disc), became a celebrity with the Vienna Opera production of his pantomime Der Schneemann. Evidently Korngold wrote nothing more for solo piano for fifteen years, and then very little; his thinking, apparently, was not really pianistic. Glenn Gould, who produced this recording for Genesis and ornamented it with a characteristically provocative essay on "Korngold and the Crisis of the Piano Sonata," describes the Second Sonata, an astonishingly mature work, as "the blueprint for what might well have made one of the better symphonic essays of its time." It may be recognized as a blueprint for much else, besides, for the very shape of its themes is fully characteristic of those Korngold was to create for Hollywood more than a quarter-century later. The cyclical reappearance of the big, expressive first-movement theme-altered in the inner movements, back to its original form in the finale's coda-is a further prophecy of his film style, and so, for that matter, is the dramatic, almost pictorial nature of the sonata as a whole. The Murchenbilder (Fairy Pictures) suite comprises brief evocations of six familiar fairy tales and a fairly elaborate epilogue, more or less a la Schumann but with echoes of Strauss as well: Glenn Gould refers to it as "an eclectic circus," which is, he says, "because of its less ambitious design, relatively more successful, instrumentally," than the sonata.
Both works are rich, however, in a late-Romantic sort of inventiveness and high-level craftsmanship, and Antonin Kubalek per forms them very persuasively.
The very thoughtfully produced and well recorded release includes, in addition to the Gould essay, a biographical sketch of Korngold by Tony Thomas (comprehensive and entertaining, despite a minor slip or two), a chronological list of all his published works, several photographs, and a cartoon from a Viennese newspaper showing Korngold as a balding and bespectacled infant seated at the piano in a highchair and surrounded by Siegfried Wagner (benevolently holding the artist's pacifier), Reger, Nikisch, Strauss, and Eugene d'Albert.
--R.F.
LISZT: Gnomenreigen; Etude No. 6, in A Minor, after Paganini (see Best of the Month, page 72)
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
LISZT: Piano Sonata in B Minor. CHOPIN: Piano Sonata No. 2, in B-flat Minor, Op. 35. Tedd Joselson (piano). RCA A RL1-1010 . $6.98, ARS1-1010 $7.98.
Performance: Accent on the lyrical
Recording: Excellent
There may be some who will question throwing a brilliantly gifted pianist in his twenties to the lions, so to speak, by having him record the two major Romantic sonatas that have already been recorded by most of the major virtuosos of the world. It should be noted, though, that this is the only currently avail able disc that pairs these two quintessentially Romantic masterpieces. What's more, his age notwithstanding, young Tedd Joselson con tributes distinctly illuminating interpretative insights in his readings of both sonatas.
Never mind technique; it's all there, so that this pianist can and does concentrate on the business of the music and its essential sub stance and structure. And, thank goodness, Mr. Joselson's musical intelligence is not only in his head, but in his heart as well. Thus, his reading of the Liszt sonata has real coherence, both in its argument- the blend, contrast, and metamorphosis of its basic thematic elements-and in its architectural grandeur: the dazzling fugal episode, the grand reprise of the main theme, and the hushed epilogue, the last eliciting the finest music-making on the entire record.
The much-abused Chopin B-flat Minor Sonata also gets a treatment different from the hell-for-leather one so often encountered.
Joselson brings lyrical elements into proper balance with the purely rhetorical, and he develops a cumulative concept that reaches its peak in the reprise of the Funeral March, the intensity continuing unabated till the very last chord that concludes the terrifying presto finale.
It would be an exaggeration to say that these performances surpass the best of what has been documented heretofore on discs. But it is reasonable, I think, to say that they are remarkable in substance and brilliance for a pianist of any age. What's more, I have the feeling that they will wear well with repeated hearings. They have so far. -D.H.
MOZART: Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622 (see NIELSEN) MOZART: Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581 (see The Basic Repertoire, page 46)
ANTONIN
KUBALEK Persuasive Korngold sonata
TEDD JOSELSON: Illuminating Liszt and Chopin sonatas
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
NIELSEN: Clarinet Concerto, Op. 57. MOZ ART: Clarinet Concerto in A Major (K. 622).
John McCaw (clarinet); New Philharmonia Orchestra, Raymond Leppard cond. UNI CORN UNS 239 $7.98.
Performance: Altogether lovely
Recording: Excellent
Carl Nielsen's quirky and occasionally demonic Clarinet Concerto (1928) can sound nasty and crabbed when not treated well in balance and room sound, particularly in regard to the omnipresent orchestral antagonist, the snare drum. The Stanley Drucker/ Leonard Bernstein/New York Philharmonic performance of the late 1960's, still available on Columbia, is a highly charged and wonder fully potent realization of the piece, but this 1971 British Unicorn disc offers a more modestly scaled, more lyrical, though in some ways tauter reading, which reveals still more rewarding aspects of this fascinating music.
John McCaw, a Frederick Thurston pupil and first-desk clarinet of the New Philharmonia, is a wonderful player who can command just the right tonal incisiveness or melting sweetness as the occasion demands, and whose passage-work and skips are effortless in effect. Raymond Leppard does a sterling job of accompaniment, keeping clarinet and snare drum in perfect balance not only with one another but also with the ensemble. The recording staff, too, deserves some credit for the exquisite balance, as well as for the suitably intimate acoustic surround achieved for both works.
Mozart's ever-lovely masterpiece has never lacked for distinguished recorded performances, going all the way back to Reginald Kell's 78's from the late 1930's. Mr. McCaw need take no back seat to Kell or any of his successors when it comes to a musicianly and ravishingly beautiful performance of the solo part. Tempos are on the leisurely side, but never sluggish, and the result is a half-hour of purest joy. - D.H.
ORFF: Der Mond (see Best of the Month, page 71) ORFF: Street Song-Selections from Schulwerk. Tolzer Boys' Choir; instrumental ensemble, Carl Orff cond. BASF HC 25122 $6.98.
Performance: Authoritative
Recording: Good
From this album's brief liner blurb (in lieu of any annotation), it appears that radio stations in Cleveland and Milwaukee have been playing the piece called Gassenhauer (Street Song) from the Schulwerk of Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman every morning, and it has really caught on, leading BASF to assemble a disc of similarly provocative selections from the complete recording of the Schulwerk made by Harmonia Mundi about a decade ago.
There are twenty of them in this package, in varied instrumentation and rhythms, with fifes, recorders, and "rhythm instruments" predominating. The Klangstuck which opens side two and some of the other mallet pieces make a pleasantly Balinese effect; the boys' choir takes part in only one number (Diminu tion-Schrei), and one is performed entirely in hand-clapping (Rondoapplause); the sequence includes a Brittenesquely titled Canonic Caprice and ends with an Unsquare Dance. I wish BASF had at least pictured or described the instruments in the respective pieces, but the bright packaging is appealing, and this would be a nice surprise to slip into a pre-teener's rock pile. R.F.
PROKOFIEV: Piano Concerto No. 3, in C Major, Op. 26; Piano Concerto No. 5, in G Major, Op. 55. Michel Beroff (piano); Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Kurt Masur cond. ANGEL S-37084 $6.98.
Performance: Suitable
Recording: Spacey
Michel Beroff is a brilliant exponent of the kind of keyboard athleticism usually associat ed with American pianism. The Prokofiev concertos are suitable vehicles for this kind of playing, and, if you can manage the notes (Beroff can), not much else is usually needed for a surefire result.
The quirky, problematic work here is the Fifth Concerto, which contradicts the notion that Prokofiev's later, Russian-period works are simpler and more traditional than his ear lier ones. Set against the familiar lyric virtuosity of No. 3, the Fifth Concerto appears to be eccentric, yet it has wit and appeal. I could imagine another kind of performance making it work better, but this reading seems reasonably apposite. The reproduction, how ever, has a slightly artificial-sounding spaciness that is not much to my taste. E.S.
PROKOFIEV: The Story of a Real Man. Evgeni Kibkalo (baritone), Alexei; Glafira Deo midova (soprano), Olga: Georgi Shulpin (tenor), Grandfather Mikhailo: Georgi Pankov (bass), Andrei; Mark Reshetin (bass), Vasili Vasilevich; Artur Eizen (bass), Com missar: Kira Leonova (mezzo-soprano), Klavdia: Alexei Maslennikov (tenor), Kukushkin; others. U.S.S.R. Bolshoi Theatre Chorus and Orchestra, Mark Ermler cond.
WESTMINSTER GOLD WGSO 8317-2 two discs $6.98.
Performance: Good
Recording: Good
The Story of a Real Man, Prokofiev's last opera, is based on the true story of a Soviet war hero, pilot Alexei Maresyev. Shot down by the Nazis, Maresyev was severely wounded and near death from hunger and frostbite when he was found by some villagers. The amputation of one leg threw him into severe depression, but, after an agonizing period of physical and psychological readjustment, he eventually found his way back to usefulness, self-esteem, and even happiness.
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In music, credentials command attention; performances, respect.
The Mozart Solo Sonatas: Two Integral Sets
No pianists active today have been so long and so closely identified with the music of Mozart, especially through recordings, as have (1) Artur Balsam, whose new recordings of all the solo sonatas have just been released in an eight-disc set by the Musical Heritage Society, and (2) Lili Kraus, whose similar project, initiated on the Epic label in the late Sixties, has now been completed and issued in two three-disc Odyssey albums.
Balsam's 1950-ish Concert Hall recordings of some of the early concertos are still cherished by collectors, his 1963 set of the piano sonatas is still circulating on L'Oiseau-Lyre (as is a collection of the violin sonatas he made with William Kross), and MHS has also recorded him in virtually all of Mozart's other piano works. Kraus, who has published her own edition of the sonatas, also made an earlier recording of the entire cycle (for Disco philes Frangaises in 1954, issued in this country by the Haydn Society together with the violin sonatas and piano trios, in which her associates were violinists Willi Boskovsky and cellist Nikolaus Hubner). Earlier still she made a celebrated set of the violin sonatas with Szymon Goldberg and recorded several individual sonatas and concertos for EMI and Vox, much later she remade some titles for Concert Hall (issued here on Vanguard and Monitor), and just prior to her stereo remake of the sonatas she became the first pianist to complete a recorded cycle of all the Mozart concertos. Such credentials, on the part of both pianists, command attention, and the new recordings repay it well.
Before considering the performances them selves, it might be noted that the contents of Balsam's eight discs and those of Kraus' six are not identical. In addition to the conventional canon of seventeen sonatas, with the Fantasy in C Minor, K. 475, as preface to the sonata in the same key (K. 457), Kraus plays the Fantasy in D Minor, K. 397, and the Rondo in D Major, K. 485. Instead of these two very brief works, Balsam offers the additional sonata made up of the Allegro and Andante in F Major, K. 533, and the Rondo, K. 494. (MHS has listed this composite work as "Sonata No. 15" and renumbered the last three sonatas, as shown in the detailed listing at the end of this review. The numbers assigned to K. 310 and K. 311 have been reversed, too, evidently in the interest of chronology, but these gratuitous relabelings of familiar works, like those tried by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in its listings of the Mozart piano concertos a few years ago, can only create confusion.) The additional discs in the beautifully recorded MHS presentation are not accounted for by this one difference in repertoire, but by more leisurely tempos on Balsam's part and a more cautious time limit per side: the brief first movement of K. 284 is on the side preceding the other two, even though the total playing time for the work is only about twenty-seven minutes, and K. 457 is given an entire side to itself, with the Fantasy on the preceding side. Kraus' C Minor Fantasy and K. 457 Sonata are on the same side but with no separating scroll between them; in fact, with the single exception of the scroll following the first movement of K. 333, there are none between the movements of any of the sonatas in the Kraus sets-a format inconvenient for anyone who may wish to spot a particular slow movement or finale.
Balsam's MHS series is not only far less expensive than his L'Oiseau-Lyre discs, but more attractive musically (and sonically, too, except for a nasty hiss across the start of K. 494 and some insistent pre-echo on several sides). He always brings impeccable style and solidity to his playing, but there is more life and variety in the remakes, and I suspect (though I have no information on which to base my inference) that this may be because the MHS sessions were spaced over a longer period, allowing time for refreshment and renewal between the respective works. Balsam sees none of the sonatas as mere "charmers" or opportunities to dazzle, nor does he labor to make them portentous; he shows his authority in a very undemonstrative way, which many listeners are sure to find comfort able and convincing and others are likely to find a bit bland--just as those who admire this approach may consider Kraus too assertive.
There is, without question, more drama in Kraus' playing, and more variety, both throughout her series and within each work. It is not simply a matter of brisker tempos (there is nothing here resembling Glenn Gould's drive to see how fast the allegros can be played), but of an almost mystically enlivening "aura"-a visionary approach without self-consciousness on Kraus' part. She takes some risks to achieve something like the improvisatory spirit we associate with Mozart-as-performer. Her phrasing is characterized by subtle inflection, one is aware of a con trolled undercurrent of nervous animation, and there are most effective dynamic contrasts--but always within reasonable approximation of the dynamic range of the late-eighteenth-century instruments.
IT is curious that none of the Mozart specialists who have made "integral" recordings of the sonatas have recorded on a period instrument. Both Kraus and Balsam, of course, play modern concert grands, but Kraus shows more regard for the "slender" character dictated by the nature of the Hammerklavier Mozart himself played-again, it is not a matter of mere briskness, but of crispness in her articulation. And how much this tells in the radiant opening of K. 333 and in such works as the last of the series (K. 576 in D Major), the marvelously tight-knit K. 284, and the well-loved K. 331! Balsam may seem to show more affection in the opening measures of K. 331, and his unfolding of the movement does not lack momentum, but it is really a bit too relaxed; Kraus has not only momentum, but the tension to raise and sustain a really imposing edifice: the conclusion of the variation movement is credibly climactic.
As for the suggestion that Kraus' way with Mozart is too aggressive, I can only wonder if that attitude doesn't represent some sort of lingering sexual prejudice. Walter Susskind remarked, in a recent memoir, that Artur Schnabel "played with great understanding, but almost against the accepted concept of Mozart style; he emphasized the masculine element, and brought it off superbly." This, it seems to me, is exactly what Kraus does in these recordings; there is nothing "ladylike" in her playing, and a comparison of her version of the great A Minor Sonata (K. 310) with Schnabel's will show some astonishingly close parallels.
After living for some time with all the currently available sets of the Mozart sonatas, I find myself enjoying the Kraus performances more and more. The one set that appeals to me as strongly is Walter Klien's, also in two three-disc albums (Vox SVBX-5428 and SVBX-5429). Klien is a bit less adventurous than Kraus, but his integrity and inspiriting sense of style are unfailingly satisfying-and his Volume II has the advantage of including the K. 533/494 Sonata, though his performance of this piece happens to be less persuasive than Balsam's. (The Vox recording is more than a dozen years old, and less bright than either Kraus' Odyssey or the fine sound provided for Balsam by MHS, but it is un marred by the excessive pre-echo that obtrudes in the latter set.) I would urge anyone interested in an integral set of the Mozart sonatas to try to hear at least parts of both the Kraus and the Klien--and also to decide how important it is for K. 533/494 to be included.
From the way Daniel Nimetz's annotations are laid out in the MHS booklet, I would expect those discs to be made available individually before long, and Balsam's K. 533/494, paired with K. 333, would make a handy supplement to the Kraus series.
IT is not absolutely necessary to acquire the sonatas in an integral set, of course, but it is the most convenient and economical way, and most of the Kraus and Klien performances are fully competitive with any available individually. Moreover, both the Odyssey and Vox prices are so low that one need not feel extravagant in duplicating a work occasionally, when so outstanding a release as Vladimir Ashkenazy's magnificently large-scaled K. 310 (London CS-6659) or Glenn Gould's agreeably exciting K. 284 ( Columbia MS 7274) comes along.
-Richard Freed
MOZART: Piano Sonatas: No. 1, in C Major (K. 279); No. 2, in F Major (K. 280); No. 3, in B-flat Major (K. 281); No. 4, in E-flat Major (K. 282); No. 5, in G Major (K. 283); No. 6, in D Major (K. 284); No. 7, in C Major (K. 309); No. 8, in D Major (K. 311); No. 9, in A Minor (K. 310); No. 10, in C Major (K. 330); No. 11, in A Major (K. 331); No. 12, in F Major (K. 332); No. 13, in B-flat Major (K. 333); No. 14, in C Minor (K. 457); No. 15, in F Major (K. 533, with Rondo, K. 494); No. 16, in C Major (K. 545); No. 17, in B-fiat Major (K. 570); No. 18, in D Major (K. 576). Fantasy in C Minor (K. 475). Artur Balsam (piano).
MUSICAL HERITAGE SOCIETY MHS 3056/3063 eight discs $28.00 (plus 75¢ handling charge from the Musical Heritage Society, Inc., 1991 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10023).
MOZART: Piano Sonatas: No. 1, in C Major (K. 279); No. 2, in F Major (K. 280); No. 3, in Bliat Major (K. 281); No. 4, in Elia Major (K. 282); No. 5, in G Major (K. 283); No. 6, in D Major (K. 284); No. 7, in C Major (K. 309); No. 8, in A Minor (K. 310); No. 9, in D Major (K. 311); No. 10, in C Major (K. 330). Lili Kraus (piano). ODYSSEY Y 33220 three discs $11.98.
MOZART: Piano Sonatas: No. 11, in A Major (K. 331); No. 12, in F Major (K. 332); No. 13, in B-flat Major (K. 333); No. 14, in C Minor (K. 457); No. 15, in C Major (K. 545); No. 16, in B-fiat Major (K. 570); No. 17, in D Major (K. 576). Fantasy in D Minor (K. 397); Fantasy in C Minor (K. 475); Rondo in D Major (K. 485). Lili Kraus (piano). ODYSSEY Y 33224 three discs $11.98.
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In a sense, this is an experimental work.
After his successful stints as a composer for motion pictures, Prokofiev wanted his new "Soviet opera" to benefit from cinematic techniques: short episodes that are disconnected in space and time, with fadeouts, are at times linked by brief symphonic interludes.
The experiment worked somewhat unevenly, as did the infusion into the musical fabric of such elements of popular music as a waltz and a rhumba, but the opera as a whole is decidedly not without interest. The musical style employed is Prokofiev at his most conservative. There are some commonplace pages of love music and rather obvious patriotic choruses (many based on folk elements), but there are also passages of great descriptive and evocative power.
The Story of a Real Man was given a single hearing at Leningrad's Kirov Opera on December 3, 1948, and then withdrawn for reasons known only to Soviet authorities. Prokofiev was subsequently attacked in Izvestia, and to the end of his days (1953) received nothing but abuse for this ardently patriotic work. Posthumous sanction came in 1960, when the Bolshoi Theatre gave the opera's official premiere, with the real-life "Real Man" Maresyev in attendance.
This recording, made a year later, features most of the members of that Bolshoi cast headed by Evgeni Kibkalo, who performs the title role movingly, with great conviction and vocal authority. The cast is large, and the singers, as usual in Russian productions, are noteworthy more for vivid character projection than for show-stopping vocal splendor.
Outstanding among them is basso Artur Eizen as the old commissar whose heroic example inspires Alexei to regain his own wish to live.
Tenors Maslennikov and Shulpin also con tribute memorable cameo characterizations.
The choral and orchestral work is creditable, and the recorded sound is far superior to the mono pressings of the same performance which circulated here (on Ultraphone 147 149) around 1966. GJ.
RACHMANINOFF: Aleko. Nikola Gyuselev (bass), Aleko; Dimiter Petkov (bass), Old Gypsy; Blagovesta Karnobatlova (soprano), Zemfira; Pavel Kourshoumov (tenor), Young Gypsy; Tony Christova (contralto), Old Gypsy Woman. Chorus of the Sofia TVR Ensemble; Plovdiv Symphony Orchestra, Rouslan Raychev cond. MONITOR HS 90102/3 two discs $7.98.
Performance: Fair
Recording: Very good
Aleko, written by Rachmaninoff when he was nineteen, is not a perfect opera, but it is a highly effective one. Tchaikovsky's influence is evident, but so is the precocious genius of the composer. With a cast of Bolshoi front-liners, Aleko could easily hold the stage today. This Bulgarian production offers only an adequate performance, though, and the harsh, tremolo-ridden Zemfira is even some what below that level. The strong characterization of Gyuselev (spelled Ghuiselev when the artist sings away from Bulgaria), who projects the passion and revenge of Aleko vividly, suffers from the excessive effort demanded by the high tessitura. Dimiter Petkov brings a powerfully resonant dark bass to the role of the Old Gypsy, but his tones are unsteady, and tenor Kourshoumov forces his attractive light tenor unmercifully. The orchestral background is quite good, and the chorus reveals strength in the male voices (and some unsteadiness in the female ones), but side two, containing the gypsy dances and relatively little solo singing, is the most effective part of the set.
Technically, the recording is entirely satisfactory. The package includes a synopsis and the English translation of four extended vocal excerpts. The two sides of the inner fold are devoted to the complete libretto in Russian--a gesture I am sure will endear Monitor to all Cyrillic scholars. -GJ.
RACHMANINOFF: Prince Rostislav; The Rock; Vocalise. U.S.S.R. Symphony Orchestra, Yevgeny Svetlanov cond. MELODIYA/ ANGEL SR-4052 $6.98.
Performance: Strong
Recording: Very good
In 1891, when Sergei Rachmaninoff was eighteen, he turned to a ballad by Tolstoy to write a "poem for orchestra" called Prince Rostislay. It seems there was this prince who was killed in battle and wound up at the bottom of the Dnieper River, where he was comforted by some water nymphs who kept combing his hair. On this dubious theme the young pupil of Arensky wrote a piece of music that not only evokes the eerie underwater mood of its set ting in yearning melody and rich orchestral sound, but foreshadows the great tone poems to come, especially the hypnotic Isle of the Dead of 1907. Yet the work is tentative and unrealized. But The Rock, written only two years after Prince Rostislav, is as solid as its title. Rachmaninoff never cleared up the pro gram of The Rock: is it about a little cloud spending the night on the crest of a giant mountain, as in Lermontov's poem of the same title, or does it have to do with a fragile girl (the golden cloud) who spends a night at an inn listening to the life story of a gruff, middle-aged man (the rock) as in a certain tale by Chekhov? Either way, the music is moving and persuasive in the idiom the composer had already made his own. To round out the pro gram there's an extended arrangement of the haunting Vocalise originally written for voice but usually dressed nowadays in orchestral garb.
The performances are strong--although Rozhdestvensky's treatment of The Rock in an earlier recording on the same label is even more colorful. P.K.
----- SHERRILL MILNES, NICOLAI GEDDA: An exuberant, truly Italian-sounding
Barber
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
ROSSINI: The Barber of Seville. Nicolai Gedda (tenor). Almaviva; Beverly Sills (soprano), Rosina; Sherrill Milnes (baritone), Figaro; Renato Capecchi (baritone), Don Bartolo; Ruggero Raimondi (bass), Don Basilio; Joseph Galiano (tenor), Fiorello; Michael Rippon (baritone), Ambrogio; Fedora Barbieri (mezzo-soprano). Berta. John Alldis Choir; London Symphony Orchestra. James Levine cond. ANGEL SCLX 3761 three discs $20.94.
Performance: Sparkling
Recording: Very good
There are many good things about Angel's new Barber. It is, above all, a bubbly and exuberant performance and a truly Italian-sounding one: the "international" stars blend with their Italian colleagues delightfully. This means that the dialogues are delivered with the same idiomatic care as the arias and ensembles. Conductor Levine must take credit for much of this, and particularly for sustaining a lively, youthful spirit throughout. He rushes a few allegros and sacrifices a certain degree of refinement and ensemble precision to keep the action moving at an ebullient clip, but the totality is laudable: most of his tempos are well judged, all the important arias are exemplary in presentation, and in the delight ful intermezzo of "La Tempesta- he whips up quite a storm.
Sherrill Milnes is a youthful-sounding and exuberant Barber, far more idiomatic and more natural than Hermann Prey in the recent and disappointing DG set. As Rosina, Beverly Sills is full of charm and temperament. She knows how to enliven her dialogues with subtle touches, and her singing here is on the level of her current best. I don't think she should treat Rossini's music with quite so much freedom: surely the composer's own florid layout of Rosina's part in the "Dunque io son" duet is good enough and ornate enough without requiring additional embellishments, but at least Miss Sills has the technique to bring off whatever she attempts.
I am somewhat less enthusiastic about Nicolai Gedda's Almaviva. At some moments he is far above all other recorded interpreters, for he offers tonal substance to go with the requisite elegant phrasing, but his still sensuous voice is not as steady as it once was, nor is it always pure in intonation. As for the florid requirements, Mr. Gedda bravely sings the part as written, but some fearsome passagework gets delivered with only reasonable accuracy.
Ruggero Raimondi's Don Basilio could use a little more weight and pomposity, but in terms of sheer singing it is superb, and Renato Capecchi's agile and comically expressive Bartolo is his worthy partner. Casting Fedora Barbieri in the role of Berta may have seemed inspired, but, alas, she sings very badly.
This is a very complete Barber. All the dia logues are here, uncut, and so is Almaviva's difficult scene in Act U, culminating in the aria "Cessa di pia resistere." There is even an interpolated soprano aria from the earlier (1815) Sigismondo. (It is stylistically right and gets a deluxe treatment from Miss Sills.) While all this "completeness" is impressive, the opera runs some two hours and fifty minutes in this edition. This being the approximate length of Aida and La Gioconda, I submit that we are perhaps being offered too much of a good thing.
There are some unusually informative an notations by Charles Osborne with the set.
The sound is fine, though some balances are odd, as, for example, Gedda's distant placement vis-à-vis Miss Sills in the Lesson Scene.
In sum, I would not judge this set clearly superior to London 1381, RCA 6143, or Angel 3638, but it is in the same high class. G J.
SCHUBERT: String Quartets Nos. 13, 14 ("Death and the Maiden"), and 15 (see Choosing Sides, page 102) SCHUBERT-LISZT: Das Wandern; Der Muller and der Bach; Liebesbotschaft; Horch! Horch! Die Lerch! (see Best of the Month, page 72) RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT SCHUMANN: Kreisleriana, Op. 16; Humoreske, Op. 20. Vladimir Ashkenazy (piano). LONDON CS 6859 $6.98.
Performance: Volatile
Recording: Somewhat variable
Ashkenazy dares all here in attempting to get to the heart of what impelled Schumann to write Kreisleriana and yet to stay within the bounds of the actual printed notes. His is a performance of great passion and brilliance leavened with the utmost tenderness. Certainly, it is one of the few great readings of this difficult work ever committed to disc. The Florestan-Eusebius dualities of the Humoreske are tackled with equal brio and tender ness, and, on the whole, I find the recorded sound a bit more full-bodied and sonically precise than in the Kreisleriana. The opening and No. 7 in that work sound somewhat washed-out in their more dense and brilliant moments because there is more evident room reverberation than in the Humoreske. Even with its minor technical flaws, however. this is an outstanding disc, a must for all Schumann buffs and aficionados of the Romantic keyboard repertoire. -D.H .
STILL: From the Black Belt; Darker America. Music for Westchester Symphony Orchestra, Siegfried Landau cond.
KAY: Six Dances for String Orchestra. Westphalian Symphony Orchestra, Recklinghausen, Paul Freeman cond. TURNABOUTTV-S-34546 $3.98.
Performance: Lively
Recording: Very good
Here is a program of music by two black American composers that is longer on charm than on militancy. The eighty-year-old William Grant Still has been known for some years as the "dean of Afro-American composers." He worked as an arranger for W. C.
Handy, yet he never became a jazz musician. He studied under Varese, but the experience never altered his open, innocent style. Efforts like his Afro-American Symphony and his opera Troubled Island brought him fame in the Thirties and Forties, but the works on this record were written in the Twenties. Darker America is a tone poem for chamber orchestra that depicts the power of prayer to raise the black spirit from defeat to triumph. Composed in 1924, it is a persuasive piece sketched out in clean powerful lines. From the Black Belt is a dance suite of miniatures that live up to their programmatic titles: Li'! Scamp; Honeysuckle; Dance; Mah Bones Is Creakin': Blue; Brown Girl; and Clap Yo' Hans'. These short items were written in 1926 "frankly to amuse and please," and they still do.
Tucson-born Ulysses Kay, now fifty-seven, got lessons on the trumpet after his uncle, the great jazz trumpeter King Oliver, prescribed them when Kay was hospitalized as a boy, but Kay's direction has had little to do with jazz.
Indeed, there is nothing "ethnic" about his work, and that's as true of these six dances as it is of his operas, symphonies, concertos, and chamber music. The suite is unmistakably American, however, as it proceeds from a cheery schottische to an elegant waltz, a serene round dance, a glittering polka, a noble promenade, and a final galop. The musical accent, never Southern, might be traced to Roy Harris or Aaron Copland, but the inventions are entirely Kay's own, and utterly at tractive. All these works receive lively readings and are well recorded. P.K.
R. STRAUSS: Death and Transfiguration, Op. 24 (see HINDEMITH) TCHAIKOVSKY: Piano Concerto No. 2, in G Major, Op. 44. Sylvia Kersenbaum (piano); Orchestre National de la ORTF, Jean Martinon cond. CONNOISSEUR SOCIETY CSQ 2076 $6.98.
Performance Mostly urgent and impassioned
Recording: Loud and clear
Until now the most nearly complete stereo version of the Tchaikovsky G Major Concerto has been that by Soviet pianist Igor Zhukov with Gennady Rozhdestvensky con ducting the Moscow Philharmonic, but that Melodiya/Angel recording is marred by over balancing in favor of the piano as well as by Zhukov's generally hell-for-leather approach.
Argentine virtuoso Sylvia Kersenbaum and conductor Jean Martinon offer us Tchaikovsky's Op. 44 absolutely complete. Their new Connoisseur Society version includes the slow movement and its important solo violin and cello parts as written by Tchaikovsky himself--as opposed to the Siloti edition, drastically cut and rewritten, that is all too often used in performance and recording.
Indeed, it is the extended slow movement-a virtual chamber concerto-that comes off best here. Miss Kersenbaum has speed and strength to burn, and she plays the concerto with great gusto and with M. Martinon's enthusiastic cooperation. Aside from the fact that I do agree, to some extent, with those who insist that the level of Tchaikovsky's musical invention is not sufficient to sustain the length of the work, my one criticism of this performance has to do with pacing: I would have liked a more stately "Ballet Imperial" treatment of the opening pages and more
------- PAULA ROBISON: setting the record straight about the
virtuoso flute verve in the finale. The sonics are clear and bright, almost
aggressively so, and quadra phonic (SQ) playback pleasingly enhances the
overall ambiance. - D.H.
COLLECTIONS RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
PAULA ROBISON: Flute Music of the Roman tic Era. Godard: Suite de Trois Morceaux, Op. 116. Genin: "Carnival of Venice" Variations. Boehm: Introduction and Variations on "Nei Cor Pia," Op. 4. Hummel: Sonata in D Major. Gaubert: Nocturne; Allegro Scherzando. Paula Robison (flute); Samuel Sanders (piano). VANGUARD VSD 71207 $6.98.
Performance: Virtuosic
Recording: Close up
Since the nineteenth century, the primary instruments of musical virtuosity have been the piano and the violin, and between them they have so preoccupied connoisseurs of musical high-wire acrobatics that the virtuosic traditions of other instruments have been largely overlooked. The flute is among those suffering unjust neglect, and here to set the record straight is a perfectly luscious new recording of Romantic-era flute music by a luscious looking flutist named Paula Robison. The music not only dazzles the ear but offers, as some virtuoso exercises do not, some genuine nourishment besides.
The most ambitious item in this carefully assembled concert is a twenty-minute sonata for flute and piano by Johann Nepomuk Hummel, who didn't play the flute himself but certainly knew how to write for it. Hummel moved through the musical world of the eighteenth century in a flurry of associations with the celebrities of his time. Among his champions were Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven with whom he had a falling out but whose early music Hummel's tends to resemble. The Sonata in D Major is a fully realized work of his maturity, a solidly structured piece that challenges the gifts not only of the flute player who performs it but of the pianist as well. It opens with an Allegro con brio in conventional sonata form but with unconventional harmonic forays in its development. A serene, quite Beethoven-like Andante follows, leading into a swift yet pastoral Rondo. The performance is at once utterly subtle and totally exciting.
For years I thought the only piece Benjamin Louis Paul Godard had written was the Berceuse from Jocelyn they used to play for us in music-appreciation class, but it seems this nineteenth-century Frenchman was far more prolific than that. His Suite de Trois Morceaux is one of hundreds of his compositions-operas, violin concertos, a symphony, more than a hundred songs, and some delightful chamber pieces like this one. which was originally scored for flute and orchestra. Miss Robison makes the most of her opportunities in the opening Allegretto to take off in bird-song arabesques, then charms us for several breathtaking minutes in an ensuing Idyll, and is not unconscious of the wit in the closing Waltz, with its sly quote from Waldteufel's Les Patineurs.
The rest of the concert is relatively light weight but equally beguiling, though it is, of course, quite flashy, coming as it does from the pens of composers who were flute virtu osos themselves. There's a spectacular series of variations on "Nei Cor Pia," by Theobald Boehm, who in the early nineteenth century helped to develop the modern flute on which Paula Robison performs her wizardries, and another set on the famous Camila! of Venice theme, replete with pyrotechnics. A pair of short pieces by Philippe Gaubert (1879-1941) brings the program to a colorful close.
The heroine of the album, who studied un der Julius Baker and recently became a resident artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, more than lives up to her growing reputation on this delightful disc, and the support she receives from pianist Samuel Sanders shouldn't do his reputation any harm either. But what has happened to Vanguard's once-lovely surfaces? -P.K.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
ANDRES SEGOVIA: The Intimate Guitar. Weiss: Bourret,. Benda: Sonatina in D Major; Sonatina in D Minor. J.S. Bach: Three Movements from the Cello Suite No. 1. Scarlatti: Two Sonatas. Sor: Andante in C Minor; Minuet in C Major; Minuet in A Major; Minuet in C Major. Asencio: Dipso. Ponce: Prelude in E Major. Andres Segovia (guitar). RCA ARL 1-0864 $6.98, ARS1-0864 $7.98, ARK 1-0864 $7.98.
Performance: Spellbinding
Recording: Excellent
Intimate is surely the word for the guitar of Segovia, which insinuates its way into the blood stream almost as if the sounds of his subtle strumming had bypassed the ears. But Segovia has recorded so much, and we are so well acquainted with his special musical ac cent by this time, that a new album seems almost, at first glance, a superfluity. Still, there are two reasons to keep adding to one's Segovia collection: first, the exceptionally good recording he is getting from RCA these days--it is as though several thicknesses of veil had been lifted from the sound since the old Decca attempts; and second, the unex pected nooks and crannies the maestro explores to add to his repertoire. For example, take the compositions of Sylvius Leopold Weiss, regarded as the greatest lutenist of the eighteenth century: the Bourree introduced here has exceptional charm. The winsome sonatinas of Georg Benda were written as accompaniments for the spoken word, but, with Segovia on hand, words are not only unnecessary, they would come as an impertinence. As the program proceeds from Segovia's transcription of three movements from a Bach cello suite to a couple of Scarlatti sonatas, a miniature suite by Sor, a gloss on the fifth word ("I thirst") of Christ on the cross by Vicente Asencio, and a delicate Prelude in E by Manuel Ponce, the spell woven by the world's greatest living guitarist is ever more binding. Fortunate it is for us that, at eighty two, he is still recording. We thought we knew him; he proves once again to be even better than we thought. - P.K.
ROBERT SYLVESTER: Cello Recital. Ysaye: Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello, Op. 28. Hindemith: Sonata, Op. 25, No. 3. Wellesz: Sonata, Op. 30. Crumb: Sonata. Robert Sylvester (cello). DESTO DC-7169 $6.98.
Performance: Excellent
Recording: Very good
Robert Sylvester has performed in a number of chamber-music recordings, but I believe this is his first solo venture. It is an impressive one, not only as a demonstration of his per forming skill but in terms of the imaginative repertoire. George Crumb's tight-knit, surprisingly expressive sonata was composed in 1955, the other three works in the Twenties; all are decidedly worth hearing-and hearing again. Egon Wellesz's 1921 sonata (the long est of the four works presented here, though the only one cast in a single movement) is especially rich in display opportunities, the Ysa9e of 1928 an intriguing corollary to that composer's set of sonatas for violin solo.
Sylvester's liner notes tell us little about any of the works, but the performances leave little unsaid. Handsome, lifelike sound. - R.F.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
RICHARD TUCKER: In Memoriam. Verdi: Requiem Mass: Ingemisco tamquam reus. Rigoletto: Parmi veder le lagrime. Aida: Ce leste Aida. Luisa Miller: Quando le sere al placido. Puccini: Manon Lescaut: Donna non vidi mai; Guardate pazzo son. Tosco: E Lu cevan le stelle. Turandot: Nessun dorma: Non piangere Liu. La Boheme: Che gelida manina. La Fanciulla del West: Ch'ella mi creda. Giordano: Andrea Chenier: Un di all'azzurro spazio. Ponchielli: La Gioconda: Cielo e mar. Leoncavallo: Pagliacci: Vesti la giubba. Bizet: The Pearl Fishers: Je crois entendre. Carmen: Air de Fleur. Meyerbeer: L'Africaine: O paradis. Massenet: Le Cid: O souverain, o juge, o pere. Niehu1: Joseph: Champs paternels. Halevy: La Juive: Rachel! Quand du Seigneur. And seventeen other ar ias, songs, and Hebrew prayers. Richard Tucker (tenor); orchestras conducted by Fausto Cleva, Nello Santi, Pierre Dervaux, Emil Cooper, Alfredo Antonini. Franz Alters, Sholom Secunda, and others. COLUMBIA D3M 33448 three discs $20.94
Performance The best of Tucker
Recordng: Good to excellent
This three-disc set has been compiled from no less than fifteen different LP sources ranging over more than twenty years. It is obvious that unusual care has been lavished on the project, and the result is a thoughtfully pre pared, eminently representative, and dignified testimonial to Richard Tucker. the man and the artist.
In keeping with the late tenor's own artistic profile, the largest group of selections comes from Italian opera, beginning with a relatively early (1949) Rigoletto excerpt and going to the Luisa Miller aria recorded in 1964, a souvenir of one of Tucker's last roles. This group offers singing of such consistently high quality that every one of these excerpts may be ranked with the best versions in recorded his tory. The French repertoire was less congenial to Tucker only because he did not possess the idiomatic rightness of sound and style, which one seldom finds in singers who are not native to it (Richard Crooks and Nicolai Gedda come to mind as exceptions). On the other hand, how many exponents of stylish Gallicism could match the gripping tension of Tucker's "Rachel! Quand du Seigneur" or that firmness of sound coupled with the ca ressing legato of his "0 paradis"? Old Italian airs of Giordani and Torelli are sung with a flowing line and sensitive re straint; lighter Italian songs of Rossini, Falvo, and Bixio come across with fine lyric abandon and convincing Mediterranean zest; and the Viennese bits by Lehar, Heuberger, and Sieczynski are sung as well as anybody can sing them in English translation. There are three Broadway songs (You'll Never Walk Alone, Sunrise, Sunset, and The Exodus Song) that take on a golden sheen, and Tucker's mastery of the cantorial repertoire here finds new affirmation. And framing the entire program between the twin spiritual peaks of Ingemisco and Kol Nidre was sheer inspiration.
This tribute displays singing of amazing consistency. Here was a voice that developed from a light lyric sound to darker, dramatic sonority naturally and gradually, guided by good teachers and governed by the artist's own seriousness and sound judgment. Richard Tucker was a serious and thorough artist whose technique was sound and who sang with a pure intonation and excellent enunciation. He left no recorded examples unworthy of his art; surely, the present collection commemorates him at his best. A special twenty-page booklet that comes with the set contains tributes from colleagues, photographs, and good, informative notes by Alix B. William son. (The selection erroneously identified on side five as "Dicitencello vuie" is really Bixio's "Torna, piccina.") -G J.
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THE UTAH SYMPHONY'S MAURICE ABRAVANEL: "You know, there's a lot of snobbery around music circles"