Record Reviews

BY HERBERT KUPFERBERG

Barber: Knoxville, Summer of 1915, for Soprano and Orchestra, Opus 24 Berlioz: Nuits d’Eté, Opus 7

William Strickland conducting Dumbarton Oaks Chamber Orchestra; Dimitri Mitropoulos conducting Columbia Symphony Orchestra; Columbia ML-5843 (monaural)

Samuel Barber’s Knoxville, Summer of 1915, with a text by the late James Agee, has taken on the stature of an American musical classic, as has Eleanor Steber’s singing of it. It was she who commissioned the work, gave it its world premiere with Serge Koussevitzky in 1948, and made its first recording in 1950. This is the same recording, reissued by Columbia and coupled with another Steber re-release, Berlioz’s haunting song cycle A Nuits d’ Eté. Both belong in the active catalogue, and it is good to have them back there, though Columbia might have indicated clearly on the jacket that these are, in fact, reissues and not new recordings.

Britten: War Requiem, Opus 66

Benjamin Britten conducting London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Melos Ensemble, and Highgate School Choir, with Galina Vishnevskaya, soprano; Peter Pears, tenor; and Dietrich FischerDieskau, baritone; London OSA-1255 (stereo) and A-4255: two records

Wilfred Owen was a British poet killed in action at the age of twentyfive in Flanders on November 4, 1918 — exactly one week before the armistice. Such poems as “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” “The Next War,” “Futility,” and “Strange Meeting” have survived not only his war but another, without losing in poignancy or pertinence. Now Benjamin Britten, England’s foremost composer, has set Owen’s poetry to music in his War Requiem, a work which, despite some banal and uninspired passages, is a massive, moving, and exalted achievement. Britten chose to alternate Owen’s poems with the Latin text of the Mass for the Dead, melding them into a Requiem sometimes intimate, sometimes marmoreal. The ecclesiastical portions, particularly the “Dies Irae,” seem modeled on Verdi’s Requiem, and are less personal and touching than the settings of the Owen poems. Despite its unevenness, the music abounds in emotional power and dramatic effect, and keeps faith with the poet who wrote: “Above all I am not concerned with Poetry./My subject is War, and the pity of War./The Poetry is in the pity.” As if to point up the War Requiem’s immediacy, the three main performers in this recording are a Briton, a German, and a Russian, with Peter Pears and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau blending their voices beautifully in Owen’s poems, and Galina Vishnevskaya soaring securely and serenely through the Latin Mass.

Lehár: The Merry Widow

Franz Allers conducting American Opera Society Orchestra and Chorus with Lisa Della Casa and Laurel Hurley, sopranos; Charles K. L, Davis, tenor; and John Reardon, baritone; Columbia OS-2280 (stereo) and OL-5880

Although this Merry Widow is graced with an expert and appealing cast, and excellent sound, what sets it apart from a mass of competitors is that it is sung in a new, tasteful, and amusing English translation by Merl Puffer and Deena Cavalieri — a translation in which, for instance, Count Danilo flees to Maxim’s to escape red tape and endless conferences. Lisa Della Casa is a Widow whose English is charmingly accented, and John Reardon an engaging and warm-voiced Danilo. The work is abridged, but it is the most captivating one-record version available in any language.

Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (selections)

The Pardoner’s Tale, read in modern English by Michéal MacLiammoir; The Miller’s Tale, read in modern English by Stanley Holloway; Caedmon TC-1130 (monaural only)

General Prologue; Prologue to the Parson’s Tale; Chaucer’s Retraction, read in Middle English by J. B. Bessinger, Jr.; Caedmon TC-1151 (monaural only)

“Painless Chaucer” might well serve as a general title for records such as the presentations by Michéal MacLiammoir and Stanley Holloway of two of the choicest Canterbury Tales, in breezy modern English “translations” by Theodore Morrison. MacLiammoir’s reading of “The Pardoner’s Tale” vividly creates a character in addition to recounting the story of three profligates’ deaths through avarice and treachery. Holloway, for his part, is content to tell a bawdy, earthy story with unadorned straightforwardness. Mr. Bessinger’s record — to a nonspecialist, at any rate — is much less fun and of interest chiefly as one expert’s version of what “Whanne that Aprille with his shoures sote” actually sounded like in its own day.

She Was Poor but She Was Honest: Nice, Naughty and Nourishing Songs of the London Music Hall and Pubs

Sung by Derek Lamb with guitar, banjo, violin, and choral accompaniment; Folkways FW-8707 (monaural)

Don’t Go in the Lion’s Cage Tonight, and Other Heartrending Ballads and Raucous Ditties

Sung by Julie Andrews with the Quartones and an orchestra conducted by Robert Mersey; Columbia CS-8686 (stereo) and CL-1886

These two records share a common point of origin, the London music hall, but their divergencies are more notable than their similarities, and there is not the slightest duplication of repertory. Julie Andrews, the original Eliza Doolittle of Mv Fair Lady, gives a decidedly American cast to her record with the likes of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and “By the Light of the Silvery Moon.” Furthermore, though she sings charmingly, more often than not she spoofs the old ballads just a bit more than connoisseurs of the style may fancy. Derek Lamb is more earnest about his work. He applies a light and sweet-sounding lyric voice to an astoundingly varied collection of music hall songs and poems, including such arresting titles as “They’re Moving Grandpa’s Grave to Build a Sewer” and “The Little Shirt My Mother Made for Me.” A word of warning: elegance and elevation are not basic elements in all of Mr. Lamb’s ballads, which encompass the horrendous “Sweeny Todd the Barber” and the ribald “Barsted King of England.” Not a record, obviously, for the jeune fille,