They Shall Have Music and Now the Stereos

THE last blight that ravaged the repertoire of recorded music happened three years ago, when manufacturers realized that ten-inch LPs didn’t sell and probably never would. Some of what they then deleted later reappeared on portions of twelve-inch discs, but many a performance vanished for good — and I do not really mean, in all cases, good.

The next time of depletion is beginning now, as stereophonic discs come upon the market. I do not know how fast the depletion will progress, but it is inevitable and it will be extensive.

Not every music lover is going to rush out promptly and buy the extra equipment needed to yield 3-D sound in his living room, especially since the forthcoming stereo discs will be playable on non-stereophonic machinery. However, some people will. And these must be afforded a continuing flow of new listening matter if they are to be kept interested — which is to say, kept buying.

The flow will be afforded, without doubt, and something else is bound to accompany it. Whenever a stereophonic recording of a symphony or an opera is issued, it is likely to shove out of the catalogues a non-stereophonic version of the same work. Or two. Or three. And this will happen regardless of musical merit. Recording executives, in my experience, are somewhat more artistically oriented than most businessmen, but not so much so as to keep offering for sale, because they are fond of it, something that won’t sell. The nonstereo recordings will, first one by one and then dozen by dozen, disappear.

So far as concerns records made in the past two or three years, of course, this means nothing. The non-stereo record withdrawn will represent the very same performance that replaces it in stereo version.

The other category of records least likely to be affected is that of recognized great historic performances. Hardly is a Caruso aria withdrawn in one collection before it is issued in another. American Columbia pulls the Weingartner Beethoven symphonies out of circulation just as a French company announces their reissuance. And so on. So perhaps we need not worry much about the vintage of 78.

However, the non-stereo LP decade, 1948-1958, may in some ways have been unique in its bounties. It came as aftermath to a war. Musicians, especially in Europe, were hungry to work and would work for the meagerest cash. Tape had just been invented and had made possible the roving one-man recording studio, an invitation to many musical ventures. There burgeoned also an enormous public appetite for music. No one in or out of the recording industry seems to know just how many discs have been coined in these ten years, but it is patent that many of them were made simply because their makers loved the music.

Of these thousands of records, hundreds were worthless; a waste of time, tape, and vinylite. But, obedient to the law of averages, a small multitude of others were very, very good. Some have value because they came from musical territory not likely to be explored except by small entrepreneurs seeking novelty. Some were expensively planned and forced to be good. Some acquired merit — surpassing merit — through sheer fortuity.

A favorite record of mine (to which I have referred before in these pages) illustrates this last-mentioned quality and will help clarify the point toward which I am working. It is the Beethoven Fourth Piano Concerto in performance by Clifford Curzon and Hans Knappertsbusch with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, on a London disc. Curzon has told how the recording was made. A whole day had been spent in takes and retakes; something satisfactory had been captured. Nearly an hour of paid time remained. Someone suggested to someone else that the concerto be played through from beginning to end, just for fun. It was. Luckily the engineers kept the tape machine going; and this is the record finally published. I say luckily; it is an understatement: here is the fleet, luminous, and unerring discovery of the heart of a masterpiece, all anew, by all concerned. Now Curzon and Knappertsbusch, under London’s auspices, seem determined to put out all the Beethoven piano concertos. They will make another Fourth for the twin microphones of stereophony. The question is, can they make another miracle? The query answers itself. Performances like that one cannot be planned. They simply happen.

A number of them have happened during the welter of recording activity in the LP decade. Their merits vary, but to me in many cases they outweigh, through pure musical force and virtue, any sonic assets which tridimensionality could bring to routine performances. The criterion I like best to apply, in evaluating now these recordings of the pre-stereo LP era, is how a given recording measures up, in total effect, against live performances of the same work that I have heard. Nothing is quite so stereophonic as a live performance.

This frustrates me, of course, because I have not heard all the best modern performers in all the works that exist on LP. And I am further limited by space. There simply is not room here for a definitive shopping list of pre-stereo LPs that should be bought now, or soon, before they are nudged from the catalogues or the shop shelves. At least one such list already has been assembled, and there will be others, compiled by rare-records dealers and collectors.

My own listing, given here, will be marred with great gaps and also distorted by personal devotions; in fact it will be merely a smatter of suggestions, more or less alphabetically arrayed.

Let us begin with Bach, always a convenient man to begin with. His long choral works will be redone in stereo and will benefit by it. Some of the cantatas may not, however, and many excellent performances of these, by Prohaska for Vanguard and Scherchen for Westminster, are now in the catalogues. About the harpsichord works in Landowska performance I shouldn’t worry; I do not foresee their deletion. I’m not so sure about the two violin concertos Heifetz made for Victor, but Heifetz is a problem: he might do them anew, in stereo, every bit as beautifully. Helmut Walcha’s magnificent Complete Organ Works for Decca’s Archive Series may have been duplicated on stereo tapes, but I doubt it. And I know Karl Haas’s Brandenburg concertos, with the London Baroque Ensemble (block-flutes and all) on Westminster were made before stereo reared its double head.

These last items — not epochal, but how charming! — help me make another point. I think all the companies now are psychologically older, more inclined to be prosaic, than they were in LP’s early days. We will have fewer artistic flings in stereo’s early days. Too bad.

Bartók playing Bartók on the piano I suppose we need not worry about: the existence of the Bartók Records label reassures us.

Beethoven affords no great area of apprehension, either. The Curzon Fourth Concerto I have mentioned already. The Toscanini symphonies will stay in print, as will the Budapests’ quartets (Columbia), unless the latter gentlemen feel inclined to repeat themselves in stereo. The same security applies to the Schnabel readings of the piano sonatas (though the excellent Schnabel-Fournier performances of the cello sonatas are gone already). Recordings still available, but maybe not for long, are the thrilling versions of the four Fidelio and Leonore overtures made for London by Clemens Krauss.

Berlioz is stereo material, which may imply the prompt vanishment of the delightful Primrose-Koussevitzky Harold in Italy, and perhaps endanger Eleanor Steber’s uniquely perceptive Nuits d’Été, made for Columbia.

Imperiled Brahms includes any of the symphonies, even the Toscanini and Walter performances, the Marian Anderson Alto Rhapsody (just as good as you remember its having been), and the splendid BackhausBöhm First Piano Concerto.

Rubinstein’s Chopin probably is safe. But is Koussevitzky’s Copland, meaning Appalachian Spring? I have my doubts. Gieseking’s Debussy I expect to be with us yet a while. However, the large orchestral works may be dislodged, even Toscanini’s La Mer and Monteux’s spirited Images pour Orchestre. Ditto for the Debussy songs by Maggie Teyte.

Dvořák has excellent interpreters today, but I don’t expect anyone to play the Slavonic Dances exactly as Václav Talich did, nor the Cello Concerto exactly as Casals did, the former for Urania, the latter for RCA Victor.

Handel, too, is well served now (with a Handel Year upcoming), but I never heard soloists respond to a conductor in Messiah quite the way Scherchen’s did in his Westminster album, and I fear this was made in days before stereo taping.

Haydn quartets do not benefit much from 3-D, but they did benefit much from the dedicated industry of the Schneider Quartet in its enormous labor for the Haydn Society, the lovely results of which still are listed in the Schwann LP catalogue. Mogens Wöldike’s late Haydn symphonies (Vanguard) probably were duplicated in stereo, but those by Scherchen for Westminster, of comparable merit, were not.

Certainly the Kodály Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello, in its ecstatic performance by Janos Starker for Period, was not recorded stereophonically - why should it be? But may we not see the displacement of some works simply because they don’t gain by stereo reproduction? We may: it is a matter of what the customers ask the dealers for.

Mahler, like Berlioz, takes on magic with an extra dimension, but I don’t want to forget the magic brewed by Kathleen Perrier and Bruno Walter in their London version of Das Lied von der Erde. Mozart, by and large, needs a third dimension about as badly as a man needs three legs, but it might he wise to buy now the horn concertos as played by the late Dennis Brain, the Beecham Symphonies Nos. 39 and 40, and the late Erich Kleiber’s enchanting Marriage of Figaro. Landowska’s sonatas won’t disappear.

Any opera is better in stereo than in monophony, all other factors being equal. All other factors are not equal between the Tosca Callas sang for Maestro de Sabata and any other Tosca I’ve ever heard.

Rachmaninoff playing Rachmaninoff is safe; probably so is Casadesus playing the Ravel piano works. Toscanini’s Rossini overtures may or may not be. And as for Stravinsky conducting Stravinsky, it’s a question of when the records were made: they span a third of a century. (And I have come to the conclusion, for myself, that the Monteux Sacre is as good as the old version led by the composer.)

Johann Strauss waltzes will yield to stereo, surely, so give a thought to the lovely sad playings of Clemens Krauss in London’s several collections. More important is the Kleiber conducting of Richard Strauss’s exquisite Rosenkavalier on London, which I once called here the best recorded opera and which still enthralls.

The Verdi treasure is largely discoverable by reading down the lists for the name Toscanini, and I truly do not see much Toscanini Italian opera being withdrawn, though I could be wrong. You ought to own them all, anyway.

Richard Wagner has not been well served in the LP era; for Wagnerians stereo will be the gate to Valhalla (I’ve heard the stereo Act III of Die Walküre, and I am sold). But there remains the Furtwängler-Flagstad Tristan, which I would not be without. And again, Toscanini.

Stereo will not affect the market for jazz classics. In vintage Goodman, the swing is all the dimension you need, and Satchmo’s old Hot Five will clank along monophonically till doomsday, bless them.

Where astute quick buying is indicated, though, is in the held of original-cast Broadway show records. Oklahoma!, South Pacific, and Pal Joey, for instance, already are represented in movie sound-track stereo versions which are monstrous perversions of their marvelous precursors. Stereo is no substitute for Ezio Pinza, Mary Martin, Vivienne Segal, or Celeste Holm.

In fact, stereo isn’t a substitute for music at all, as I hope I have pointed out. It is simply an aid to some music. Unfortunately, as concerns record listeners, to some other music it may be a menace. But this is what we pay for progress.

Record Reviews

Copland: Suites from Billy the Kid and Rodeo

Morton Gould conducting studio orchestra; RCA Victor LM-2195: 12”

When a new Appalachian Spring is made, I rather hope Copland conducts it himself, but for Billy and Rodeo I think no better choice could have been made than Morton Gould. He knows how to generate sonic excitement, which is what these ballet suites need to succeed in the living room, and he knows American musical idiom. Beyond this, all he required RCA Victor supplied: to wit, the fi is as high as could be desired.

Delius: Hassan; Arabesque; Over the Hills and Far Away

Sir Thomas Beecham conducting Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and BBC Chorus; Columbia ML-5268: 12”

Delius had a knack, sometimes also afforded to successful writers of romantic novels, of depicting far places where he never had been. I do not suppose Hassan, the cantata tale of a Baghdad candymaker, would sound very Arabian to an Arab, but it sounds most enchantingly Near Eastern to me. The same tiling applies to Arabesque. Perhaps the real treasure in the collection, however, is the entirely English early work, Over the Hills and Far Away, which is almost required listening for anyone whose ancestry stems from the wellknown sceptcred isle. Beecham is at his very best here.

Franck: Pièce Héroïque; Chorales No. 1, No. 2, No. 3

Marcel Dupré playing the organ of St. Thomas Church, New York; Mercury MG-50168: 12”

The review copy of this disc was misplaced so this comment is tardy. LaLe or not, though, something must be said about Dupre’s Franck. Franck is perhaps the only truly great composer since Bach and Handel to devote any of his best talent to the organ. And Dupre and the magnificent Aeolian-Skinner organ of St. Thomas’ Church are the perfect instruments of his art: here is music of giant scope, tenderness, and majesty. But it is also music of enormous acoustic power, and I must say that if you do not own a big loudspeaker and an amplifier that can deliver thirty clean watts, this record may be beyond your means.

Lalo: Symphonic Espagnole

Leonid Kogan, violin; Charles Bruck conducting Paris Conservatory Orchestra; Angel 35503: 12”

A most excellent young violinist with a fine command of his instrument here is displayed once more. Both his tone production and his agility evoke admiration, and I think his musical sense is good, too, though it is not given much range on this disc. What Bruck and the orchestra play is plain accompaniment, and Lalo’s spirited orchestral music might as well not have been written. If you want to hear Lalo’s Symphonic Espagnole, buy London LL-763 (Van Beinum and Campoli), but if you want to hear Kogan, buy this.

MacDowell: Woodland Sketches; Sonata Tragica

Vivian Rivkin, piano; Westminster XWN VN-18201: 12”

MacDowell, like his Norwegian counterpart, Edvard Grieg. achieved such popularity at the piano practice bench that he has been lowrated as a composer. I will not go along with that; I don’t think simplicity is either a vice or a failing. If you don’t either, you probably will enjoy this record, because Miss Rivkin has put serious attention into her playings of both the Sketches and the sonata. For this I love her dearly; they deserve the effort. Do not, by the way, let the Tragica tab on the sonata keep you away from it. It is about as tragic as Anitra’s Dance. Westminster has given the piano exactly the right rich gentleness to match the music. Should you suspect that this record won my fondest partisanship at first hearing, you would be exactly right.

Vaughan Williams: Serenade to Music; Fantasia on Greensleeves; toward the Unknown Region; Overture: “The Wasps”

Sir Malcolm Sargent conducting soloists, chorus, and London Symphony Orchestra; Angel 35564: 12”

Perhaps because so many of today’s great conductors are English, no living composer (except Stravinsky, who serves himself) has been so well served by conductors as Ralph Vaughan Williams. Here we have what must be the fifth or sixth practically perfect performance of the Greensleeves Fantasia, which puts it well ahead of the Mozart G Minor Symphony or the Beethoven Fifth. What distinguishes the record, though, is the inclusion of the profoundly moving serenade, of Shakespearian flavor, and of the death song, to a Walt Whitman text, called Toward the Unknown Region. Angel furnishes no texts for these, but they make sense without them. Sir Malcolm helps to this good end; so do the engineers.

Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras No. 2. No. 5, No. 6, and No. 9

Heitor Villa-Lobos conducting Victoria de los Angeles, other soloists, Orchestra of the French Broadcasting System; Angel 35547: 12”

Apparently the old Capitol 78-rpm record of “The Little Train of the Oaipira,” last movement of the Bachianas No. 2. generated considerable demand for a remake, since this tiny toccata is singled out for mention on the jacket of the recording. ft is here, right enough, in all its Andean peasant jollity, along with the flute fun of No. 6 and the jungle keening of No. 5, which always puts me in mind of Green Mansions. All told, the disc is a treasure house to anyone who enjoys Villa-Lobos. It would have been even better if the composer were a more exacting conductor. However, Miss de los Angeles is very good indeed.