Music: New Records, Dec. 15, 1952

The record companies are doing their best to make it a grand-opera Christmas. With Victor, Columbia and Cetra-Soria setting the pace, the industry has released more than half a dozen full-length operas, nearly a score of recorded excerpts. Among the most important:

Mozart: Cosi Fan Tutte (Eleanor Steber, Blanche Thebom, Richard Tucker, Frank Guarrera; Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra conducted by Fritz Stiedry; Columbia). One of the frothiest librettos in opera, in English adaptation, and clean-cut performances of some of Mozart’s most winning tunes. The “official” Met version.*

Puccini: La Bohème (Rosanna Carteri, Ferruccio Tagliavini, Giuseppe Taddei; Chorus and Orchestra of Radio Italiana, Turin, conducted by Gabriele Santini; Cetra-Soria). The singers give an appealing account of life in their drafty garret, but are vocally outclassed by others who have recorded the popular opera.

Menotti: Amahl and the Night Visitors (Rosemary Kuhlmann, Andrew McKinley, David Aiken, Leon Lishner, Chet Allen; orchestra and chorus conducted by Thomas Schippers; Victor). Menotti’s 1951 Christmas story with the original NBC-TV cast, Menotti’s easygoing melodies, and the soprano voice of twelve-year-old Chet Allen.

Verdi: II Trovatore (Zinka Milanov, Fedora Barbieri, Jussi Bjoerling, Leonard Warren; RCA Victor Orchestra and Robert Shaw Chorale conducted by Renato Cellini; Victor). Some of the Metropolitan’s stars in an “unofficial” version (the Met’s contract is with Columbia). This one is notable for a magnificent recording job, the singing of Soprano Milanov, and some rousing choruses, including the Anvil.

Other new records:

Willy Burkhard: Toccata, Op. 86 (collegium Musicum, Zurich, conducted by Paul Sacher; London). One of Switzerland’s leading composers turns in a score that combines imagination with some down-to-earth counterpoint. Strings predominate, but winds and percussion give striking punctuation.

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3 (Benno Moiseiwitsch; Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent; Victor). One of the new, low-priced “Bluebird Classics,” Victor’s answer to the increasingly successful cut-rate labels. There are no program notes, but the performance is excellent, and there is little sacrifice in the quality of recorded sound.

Busoni: Sonata No. 2 (Richard Burgin, violin; Edward Weiss, piano; Circle). A massive and powerful work that seems younger than its 53 years. It is free of the flowery passage work of Busoni’s famous piano transcriptions, but never dissonant in the modern sense. It is excellently performed by the Boston Symphony’s concertmaster and a pupil of the composer.

Dancers of Bali Gamelan Orchestra (Columbia). Deep gongs, cymbals, gangsas (marimbas), reyongs (small tuned gongs), angklungs (rattles) and finger-drums, played with astonishing variety of tone and precisely stumbling rhythms by the Indonesian musicians now touring the U.S. (TiME, Oct. 6). Good fun, and a rattling good test for “hifi” phonographs.

Mozart: Sonata in B Flat, K. 570 (Ralph Kirkpatrick, pianist; Bartok). A virtuoso performance on a reconstructed 18th century piano. Kirkpatrick coaxes fine-grained inflections out of the instrument’s wiry pianissimos, makes its loud notes sound almost like those of a solid modern piano.

Poulenc: Les Biches (Paris Conservatory Orchestra conducted by Roger Désormière; London). Impudent musical commentary on I’amour, composed for a ballet by one of France’s gayest composers. Superbly played.

Anna Russell Sings? (Columbia). A woman’s-club-type lecture-recital on how to be a concert singer that is sometimes too true to be funny. Examples include a noisy aria for singers with “resonance where the brains ought to be,” art songs for singers with “artistry but no voice.” modern music for tone-deaf singers (“the more off-key, the more contemporary”).

Schubert-Weingartner: Symphony in E (Vienna State Opera Orchestra conducted by Franz Litschauer; Vanguard). One of the composer’s three uncompleted symphonies. This one was left fully sketched but not orchestrated, is called No. 7 by some reliable musicologists. It has a beautiful slow movement; all of it is good Schubert.

*The Met’s approved translation of Mozart’s title: “Women Are Like That.” Unapproved, but preferred by the cast: “All the Girls Do It.”