Record Reviews
by JOHN M. CONLY
Bach: Music of the Bach Family (Richard Burgin conducting Zimbler Sinfonietta, vocal and instrumental soloists, Boston University Chorus; Boston BUA-1: four 12”). Two years ago Dr. Karl Geiringer — a widely renowned musicologist, now at Boston University — wrote an enormous and fascinating book about the family which made the name Bach synonymous with Kapellmeister throughout German Europe for two whole centuries. Now Boston Records, in cooperation with the university, has made available to our ears proof of the prowess of this wonderful clan. Fourteen Bachs, spanning three generations, are represented in twentyseven composit ions on t hese disks, and there is not a dull moment out of the lot of them. Further, hardly .any of the works have been recorded before, nor have the Zimblers and their associated performers been heard heretofore to better advantage: the performances and recordings are beyond complaint. For an additional $9, you can have, from Harvard University Press, a hard-cover, full-size score of all works performed. Note: the only notable Bach absent from the collection is J.S., deemed amply recorded elsewhere.
Bach: Eight Little Preludes and Fugues (E. Power Biggs, organ; Columbia ML-5078: 12”). The “little” applies only to length, of course; these are concise masterpieces, instructional in origin but delightful to listen to, especially in Biggs’ performances on eight antique European organs. (In one instance, he is accompanied by loft-dwelling sparrows.) Recommended without qualification.
Beethoven: The Piano Sonatas (Artur Schnabel, piano; RCA Victor LM-9500: thirteen 12”). Here are at last the Beethoven Society performances by Schnabel reprinted on microgroove, for which let all Beethovenians be thankful, even if the album (which contains Simon & Schuster’s Schnabel edition of the scores) won’t fit record shelves, and although the sides are — weirdly enough — arranged in automatic sequence, so that you must play three disks to get the Hammerklavier. This doesn’t matter at all to anyone like me who has for years longed to hear these interpretations in their entirety. The originals were recorded between 1932 and 1935, but their sound does not betray its age; it is not hi-fi but it is pleasant. The performances, of course, are more than pleasant; they are probably as close to definitive as any since Beethoven himself played the sonatas. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how even the composer could have made his music speak with more clarity, life, and logic than it does for Schnabel. The set costs $80. RCA Victor plans to issue the sonatas on single disks at some time in the future.
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9, “Choral” (Jascha. Horenstein conducting soloists, Pro Musica Orchestra, chorus of the Vienna Friends of Music; Vox PL-10000:12“) So far as I know, this is the first time anyone has managed to get the Ninth on one record, and it is a bargain. Ilorenstein’s pacing is much like Toscanini’s, though his orchestra, unfortunately, isn’t. It is short of strings, a little thin, and beset by considerable hall-echo. Chorus and soloists are good. Vox has issued also a de luxe three-side version, accompanied by a remastering of their excellent Choral Fantasia, with Krauss and Wührer.
Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 with Beethoven: Choral Fantasia (Eugen Jochum conducting Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in the Bruckner; Andor Foldes, piano; Fritz Lehmann conducting RIAS choir, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in the Beethoven; Decca DX-139: two 12”). Bruckner himself and nearly all his associates by turns prepared revisions of his last symphony. None are, to my taste, as good as his original version, presented here. As a symphony it is somewhat formless, but it has some very big and tragic moments, and wears decidedly well. Jochum’s performance seems unexceptionable — which cannot be said, unhappily, for what Lehmann does with the Beethoven Fantasia, which occupies Side 4 of the set. A more lifeless performance would be hard to achieve.
Byrd: The Age of William Byrd (Alfred Dellcr, countertenor; Wenzinger Consort of Viols of Basle; Vanguard BG-557: 12”). Actually only five of fourteen pieces for voice and viols given here are by Byrd, but all embody great wit and charm and are performed with high artistry. Anyone who still thinks English is not a musical language should listen to Deller singing My Sweet Little Darling. The Swiss viol players are less convincingly English, but very good all the same, and the sound is velvety.
Ives:The Unanswered Question with Bartók: Divertimento for String Orchestra; Milhaud: ”Little“ Symphony No. 4; and Nikos Skalkottas: Little Suite for Strings (Lukas Foss conducting Zimbler Sinfonietta; Unicorn UNT-1037: 12”). An irresistible bouquet of modernism. The moving Bartók Divertimento has been as well played on records (by Tibor Serly for Peter Bartók) but never so well recorded. There is no rival to this recording of the brief, brisk, contrapuntal Milhaud, and Skalkottas’ intriguing and listenable twelve-tone Suite is completely new to records. My chief delight in the cluster, however, is the Ives piece, five minutes of shimmering magic, contrived with the simplicity that marks genius. Peter Bartók served as recording engineer and never has done better.
Mozart: Sonatas No. 4, K.282; No. 5, K.283; No. 9, K.311; No. 13, K.333; Country Dances, K.606; Rondo in A Minor, K.511 (Wanda Landowska, piano; RCA Victor LM6044: two 12”), More learned critics, with more room to write, will dwell on Mme. Landowska’s ornamentation of repeats and her interpolated cadenzas, which are present, interesting, and helpful. Of far greater importance, though, is the fact that here in these grooves are moments of the highest pure musical beauty I ever have heard from records — beauty to make your breath stop and your eyes sting, and to make you hope with all your heart that the lady of Lakeville will find it within her powers to give us more Mozart. No one else plays like this, nor can I describe the technique of her witchery. The measures arc lively, there is no caressing of notes, the sound is crystalline. Yet the effect is of an encompassing tenderness; you cannot worry about yourself or the world with this in your ears. As I said, descriptive efforts are useless; you’d better buy the records.
Sessions: Suite from The Black Maskers with Hovhaness: Prelude and Quadruple Fugue and Lo Presti: The Masks (Howard Hanson conducting Eastman-Rochester Symphony Orchestra; McrcuryMG-50106:
1%”). People who know The Black Maskers suite front its old American Recording Society represent ation by a little Austrian band hardly will recognize ii here, magnificently Dantesquc in Hanson’s reading and Mercury’s sound. The big, solid Rovhaness work predates the composer’s interest in Eastern single-note techniques: it is complex but rewarding. And young Mr. Lo Presti’s suite (the title stumps me) is very firm, almost classical orchestral writing, very reassuring to find coming forth in the 1950s. Good listening.
Panorama of Musique Concrete (London-Ducretet-Thomson DTL93090: 13”). Musique concrete is, as some readers will know, music devised from sounds of all varieties captured on tape and then processed to yield desired effects. The sounds are speeded, slowed, stretched, blended, reversed, clipped, superimposed. The art has been pioneered mostly in France, by Pierre Boulez, Pierre Schaeffer, and Pierre Henry, the latter two of whom are represented on the record along with a new adept named Art buys. The main point to be made is that we have here not mere tape trickery but some very good (if strange) music. Schaeffer makes a piano sound like a Jurassic jungle (except that I don’t think there were birds in Jurassic jungles, and there are in this). And Henry offers the first theater music contrived on tape, his cantata The Veil of Orpheus, which will make your hair stand up and your blood rim cold: Hades really comes to life in M. Henry’s portrayal, and you will be ghid it was Orpheus and not you that had to visit the place. It may be food for thought, too, that here we have, for the first time, music which, once it is composed, needs no performer except a tape or disk player.
H. L. Mencken — Interviewed by Donald Howe Kirkley, Sr. (Library of Congress PL-18, PL-19: two 12“). People who, like me, have thought of the Sage of Baltimore as acrid in his manner should hear this hour-and-a-half 1948 iterview. There is bite in what he says — about the American taste for ugliness, about politicians, about bosses and unions — but there is a gruff geniality in his address which makes you like him very much just the same. Newspapermen especially should listen to this; they will get some real home truths. It’s all spontaneous, unrehearsed, and unexpurgated.