Music: New Records, Dec. 23, 1946

This year ten times as many phonograph records are being sold as ten years ago. To catch the buyer’s eye, record companies are turning some strange handsprings. Wagnerian Soprano Helen Traubel can be heard singing Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’ in one album, and in another, Frank (“The Voice”) Sinatra, who can’t read music, conducts a symphony orchestra in Alec Wilder’s jazzy suites (Columbia, 6 sides).

Victor, with an eye to the big spenders, brought out a “Heritage Series” of wheezing reissues from opera’s so-called “Golden Age” at $3.50 a disc (with gold labels). Pressed from musty masters are Soprano Frances Alda’s gracefully sung Willow Song and Ave Maria from Otello (recorded in 1910) and Baritone Mario Ancona’s Eri tu from The Masked Ball (1907). Even scratchier is Luisa Tetrazzini’s carelessly sung Voi che sapete from The Marriage of Figaro (1908). Enrico Caruso’s faltering Rachel, quand du seigneur, from La Juive, was recorded in 1920 when the great tenor’s voice was running down.* Victor has far better Tetrazzini and Caruso records in its files, and obviously wasn’t shooting the works the first time around.

There are also new records or albums by Zinka Milanov, Jan Peerce, Licia Albanese, Ezio Pinza and Alexander Kipnis, all of them first rate; and a Carmen album with Gladys Swarthout, which is not.

Other noteworthy albums:

Stravinsky: Petrouchka (London Philharmonic Orchestra, Ernest Ansermet conducting; Decca Record Co., Ltd., 10 sides). One of the first of English Decca’s FFRR (Full Frequency Range Records) albums to be distributed in the U.S. Its reproduction is brilliant.

Khachaturian: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (Moura Lympany with the London Symphony Orchestra; Decca, 8 sides). A flashy piece by Russia’s No. 3 composer (after Prokofiev and Shostakovich), also FFRR.

Bach: Cantata No. 106: “God’s Time Is Best” (Harvard Glee Club and the Radcliffe Choral Society with chamber orchestra, G. Wallace Woodworth conducting; Technicord, 6 sides). An early Bach cantata for a funeral service meticulously performed on the small scale in which it was written.

Bach: Concerto in D Minor for Piano and Orchestra (Alexander Borovsky and the Lamoureux Orchestra, E. Bigot conducting; Vox, 4 sides). A violin concerto transcribed by Ferruccio Busoni, now one of Bach’s most popular piano pieces.

Early American Carols (John Jacob Niles; Disc, 6 sides). Most beautiful of this year’s Christmas albums. Nativity music sung simply and sweetly to a dulcimer by the dean of American balladeers.

Brahms: Liebeslieder Waltzes (duo-pianists Pierre Luboshutz and Genia Nemenoff with the Victor Chorale, Robert Shaw conducting; Victor, 6 sides). Brahms in one of his happy moods. Pianos and voices are well balanced.

Brahms: Symphony No. 3 in F (the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy conducting; Columbia, 8 sides). Newer but not better than Serge Koussevitsky’s glossy 1945 recording.

* It was also the last role he ever sang at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Opera. He sang it on Christmas Eve, 1920, collapsed the next day, died eight months later.