Aug - AmericanRadioHistory.Com

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ties of man, has been skillfully evirated to a
glossy and complacent equanimity. In the
others, too, Beethoven's passionate confessional
has been metamorphosed with the
same address to a salon, serious indeed but
not very, and silken first.
This third volume lias an agreeable, unified
and unobtrusive quality in the reproduction
of the strings which is always acceptable
although it lacks the bite of the
best. C. G. B.
BEETHOVEN
Sonatas for Piano: No. 8, in C minor
( "Pathétique"), op. i 3; No. 3r, in A-flat,
Op. iio
Grant Johannesen, piano.
MUSICAL MASTERPIECE. SOCIETY MMS 52.
Io -in. $1.65.
Twenty -three other LPs contain one or the
other of these, not in such economy of
space and cost. That economy gives an
advantage to this mail -order disk confirmed
by performances of telling and reticent perception,
but compromised in some measure
by a piano reproduced not inaccurately but
with a semblance of being elsewhere and
filtered to us in reduction of the power
these sonatas in places must assert. C. G. B.
BEETHOVEN
Symphony No. r, in C, Op. 21
Symphony No. 7, in A, Op. 92
Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Anon. cond.
(in No. I). Vienna State Philharmonia,
Jonel Perlea, cond. (in No. 7).
Vox PL 912o. 12 -in. $5.95.
In all other editions the Seventh Symphony
is alone on two sides. The generous measure
here is effected by having its finale on the
outer band of Side 2, preceding the First
Symphony. A less spirited Seventh has not
been heard. It thuds where it should spin,
and stumbles where it should jump. It is
unfluent and the orchestra is uneven. The
Rumanian conductor has shown decided
ability in public performance, but his records
continue to disappoint.
Herr Anon is much more persuasive in
the First Symphony, which is a creditable
piece of playing and recording, although it
will not displace the Karajan and Scherchen
performances for Angel and Westminster,
nor the Pritchard for Epic. In sum, a disk
for those to whom duration is paramount.
C. G. B.
BEETHOVEN
Symphony No. 4, in B-flat, Op. 6o
Symphony No. 5, in C minor, Op. 67
Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of London,
Hermann Scherchen, cond.
WESTMINSTER WL 5406. I2 -in. $5.95.
Abhorring rote, Dr. Scherchen makes the
sharp scrutiny of the Fifth Symphony expected
of him. But what can remain concealed
in music whose hundred thousand
performances have included the concepts.
conscientious or not, of all the prominent
conductors of the last hundred years? The
new interpretation is not an apocalypse,
and the music lovers who anticipated one
will be disappointed in a performance of
firm but familiar virtues in the first three
movements and a quickened finale that
gives the excitement of a cavalcade instead
44
of the majestic exaltation of a cosmic
triumph. Excellent sound, but not of the
flattening force that the C minor Symphony
must be able to command at its apices in
the first and last movements.
Whereas the Fourth Symphony, presumably
recorded under the same general
conditions but much less unruly In the confinement
of the phonograph, emerges with
that presentation of clear detail and clean -
hewed mass, separate and together, that
distinguishes so many Westminster records
of the orchestra. Sonically this version competes
with the André version for Telefunken,
which is hardly in competition interpretatively.
The finale and the first movement in
Dr. Scherchen's leadership are as convincing
as we have them anywhere, the first movement
especially, in a fastidious discrimination
of textures without preciousness or a
betrayal of contrivance. It is the Adagio,
the heart, which falters a bit. Its serene
flow is troubled by a trifle more of stress
on its underlying rhythm than is good for
the ordained other -worldly current: we
can feel it being propelled. This is not obtrusive,
but it is damaging to a version
which otherwise would be called the best.
The Krips and Sold editions, both on London,
but each occupying an entire record,
still dispute the leadership. C. G. B.
BERLIOZ
La Damnation de Faust (excerpts)
Act II: Sans regret j'ai quitté les riantes campagnes
(Faust). Act III: Autrefois un roi de
Thulé (Marguérite); Grand dieu! que vois-je?
(Marguérite); Angeadoré (Marguérite, Faust)
Act IV: D'Amour, ¡ardente flamme (Marguérite);
Nature immense (Faust).
Irma Kolassi (ms), Marguérite; Raoul
Jobin (t), Faust. London Symphony Orchestra,
Anatole Fistoulari, cond.
tMassenet: Werther (excerpts)
Act I: Je ne sais si je veille ... 0 nature plein
de grace (Werther). Act II: Qui! ce qu'elle
m'ordonne ... Lorsque ¡enfant revient (Werther).
Act Ill: Letter Aria (Charlotte);
from Ah! mon courage m'abandonne through
N'achevez pas (Charlotte; Werther).
Irma Kolassi (ms), Charlotte; Raoul Jobin
(t), Werther. London Symphony Orchestra,
Anatole Fistoulari, cond.
LONDON LL t 154. 12 -in. $4.98.
The performances here are fair to a shade
better than middling, the main interest of
this disk being its oddly assorted, if not
quite omnibus, contents. They are all to be
ADVERTISING INDEX
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London Records
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Record Index _ 59
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Technical Tape Corp.
6r
Vox Productions, Inc. .. 63
Westminster Recording Co. 68
heard otherwise on LP - but not so disposed.
And in the case of La Damnation de
Faust, there is no really comparable representation
of the score in less -than -complete
form, though there are disks that offer
various purely instrumental excerpts.
Lon-
don has managed to get quite a bit of the
music of Marguérite and Faust on a single
twelve -inch side, and a healthy - if that is
quite the word - chunk of Werther on the
turnover. In both operas, Raoul Jobin uses
his strong, not terribly suave voice, with
good sense. As hi -fi Berlioz Fausts go, he
is by all odds the best stylistically: on the
basis of his singing here, a full -dress re-
cording with him would be no displeasure
at all. As Werther, he is less open to compliment.
He lacks the elegance of the
Urania Werther, Charles Richard, though
he has a solider voice in the climaxes. Irma
Kolassi is no paragon either as Marguérite
or Charlotte. Greek by birth and French
by habitat, she sings both roles like a well -
trained, musicianly concert singer, but not
as if she had ever stepped on a stage, and
with curiously dead tone.
Anatole Fistoulari's conducting is of the
bread -earning variety, the playing of the
London Symphony suitably responsive. The
recording, quite clear so far as the voices
are concerned, does curiously slight justice
to the scoring of Massenet, leave alone of
Berlioz. No texts, so-so notes. J. H., Jr.
BIZET
Les Pécheurs de Perles
Pierrette Alarie (s), Leila; Léopold Simoneau
(t), Nadir; René Bianco (b), Zurga:
Xavier Depraz (bs), Nourabad. Elisabeth
Brasseur Choir, Orchestra des Concerts Lamoureux,
Jean Fournet, cond.
EPIC SC 6002. Two I2 -in. $9.96.
Les Pécheur. de Perles was Bizets first full length opera. Not an immediate success -
except with Berlioz, who wrote a favorable
review - it nevertheless stands, as Eugene
Bruck points out in his good background
notes to the new Epic set, as one of the
best "first" operas any composer has produced.
Bizet was charged with imitating in
it almost any established opera composer
whose name happened to pop into the mind
of the unresponsive listener - Gounod.
Wagner, or Félicien David. The more valid
point, though, is not that the score is in
some ways derivative, but that it is, in ways
that matter more. quite good, if not great.
Very different from Carmen (just in case
there is any advance doubt on that point),
it is a score in which the melodies are
longer and more pure, the declamation less
down -to -earth and more in line with long -
established French lyric usages; a romantic
score in which the sentiment is herbed
with the instrumental and harmonic devices
that were the common coin of nineteenth -
century French orientalisme.
The most valid complaint against Les
Pécheurs de Perles is its libretto. Set in an
extremely nonspecific Ceylon (any place East
of Suez would do as well) and an equally
nonspecific antiquity, it has to do with a
love triangle, complicated by much the
same kind of French -distilled Brahminism
that complicates the plot of Lakmé. The
work has variant endings, and the one
used in both current LP recordings leaves
considerable room for doubt. In this con-
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