Music: New Classical Records

Krenek: Piano Sonata No. 4 (Bernhard Abramowitsch; Music Library). A vintage 1948 work by a composer who made a worldwide splash with his opera, Jonny Spielt Auf, written in a kind of Teutonic honky-tonk style a quarter century ago. The sonata, sometimes using the twelve-tone technique, is full of ultramodern patterns, but they are served up in comparatively palatable form: there are moments of humor, drama and bewitchingly strange sounds. Pianist Abramowitsch plays it with skill and enthusiasm.

Sylvia Marlowe (New Editions). A sampling of four living composers played by Harpsichordist Marlowe and her Harpsichord Quartet. The program: Alan Hovhaness’ Quartet, a kind of musical still life that is less aggressively oriental than this composer’s usual efforts; John Lessard’s Toccata, a work of driving insistence that makes full use of the harpsichord’s jangling, percussive qualities; Virgil Thomson’s Sonata No. 4, a neatly drawn portrait in sound (of Art Patron Peggy Guggenheim) composed in an enigmatically old-fashioned style * and Vittorio Rieti’s Sonata all’ Antica.

Prokofiev: Piano Sonata No. 8 (Anthony di Bonaventura; #&134; Classic Editions). First LP of a work composed during the war, when Prokofiev was successfully fusing his modernist enthusiasm with his genuine romantic tenderness. It is consistently attractive and warmhearted, sometimes teeters on the edge of sentimentality. Performance: good, if on the chilly side.

Villa-Lobos: Trio for Violin, Viola & Cello (Members of the New York Quartet; Columbia). Whether he uses a full orchestra or limits himself to a mere three instruments, Villa-Lobos pours out ideas and melody as lavishly as rain in the jungles of his native Brazil. The trio teems with strong rhythm and ear-twisting changes; the three strings sometimes sound as rich as an orchestra.

Vaughan Williams: Mass in G Minor (Fleet Street Choir, conducted by T. B. Lawrence; London). A massive and elegiac work, written in 1923 by the dean of British composers. Through masterful maneuvering of block harmonies and medieval modes, he produces an antique flavor appropriate to the subject without once sounding musty.

Wiren: Serenade for Strings, Op. I I (Stockholm Radio Orchestra, conducted by Stig Westerberg; London). An appealing piece dating from 1937 by one of Sweden’s standout composers. Like a good many other Scandinavian efforts. Dag Wiren’s work avoids blatant modernity, but gets a fresh, airy effect by blending forthright melodic warmth with spicy dashes of dissonance.

* Composer Thomson has been doing musical portraits since 1928, usually with the subjects posing as for a painter, and now has well over a hundred (including one about Pablo Picasso called Bugles and Birds and a brassy waltz about Fiorello La Guardia).

#&134; Who recently married Sara Roosevelt, F.D.R.’s granddaughter (TIME, June 22).