Record Reviews

BY HERBERT KUPFERBERG

Max Rudolf conducting Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra; Decca DL-710107 (stereo) and DL-10107

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is a skilled and precise musical organization, and Max Rudolf is a conductor with disciplined technique and a keen musical mind. What makes this record news is that Decca has decided to put these qualities to use here in the United States rather than to employ still another second-line European ensemble in these Haydn symphonies. The Cincinnatians rise to the challenge nobly, playing these sparkling works with briskness of spirit and a clean, lean sound. They lack the lustiness of tonal texture that is the hallmark of the Big Three or Four American orchestras, but this is not a quality especially needed in Haydn symphonies. More Haydn from Mr. Rudolf and his men would decidedly be welcome.

This is the last recording made in America by Pierre Monteux before his death, and it demonstrates the conductor’s youthful and adventurous spirit at the age of eighty-eight. Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s Trumpet Concerto is rarely heard (as with the two other pieces, it was recorded from manuscript), but it is a dashing and dazzling piece, and Monteux conducts it with as much elan as Armando Chitalla displays in his facile solo performance. Hummel, who succeeded Haydn in his job as musical director to Prince Esterhazy, also apparently learned from him the art of writing brilliant trumpet concertos. The two other pieces on the record are rather less imposing, although that does not prevent Mr. Ghitalla from playing them in fine style. Harold Farberman is the conductor in the Albrcchtsberger and the Moltcr piece, both of which antedate the Hummel.

Puccini: Tosca

Georges Pretre conducting Paris Conservatory Orchestra and Paris Opera Chorus with Maria Callas, soprano; Carlo Bergonzi, tenor; and Tito Gobbi, baritone; Angel SBL-3655 (stereo) and 3655: two records

After her magnificent Carmen, Maria Callas’ Tosca comes as a decided letdown. Nor should this be particularly surprising; there is no reason why a great cellist should suddenly be handed a violin and told to start playing. The Callas voice, as noted at the time of her Carmen recording, has lost both its gleam and its steadiness in the upper reaches; it is no longer a Tosca voice. In an actual performance, as at her two Metropolitan Opera appearances last spring, the Callas personality and presence assert themselves, but in a recording there arc no such compensations. So although her new Tosca offers some distinctive insights into a famous operatic role (Callas can still act a part with her voice as no one else can), her singing is distractingly edgy and uneven. Much the same applies to Tito Gobbi’s Scarpia; and Carlo Bergonzi’s Cavaradossi, while smooth enough, is dramatically phlegmatic. Conductor Georges Pretre manages to contribute a welcome measure of restraint to a work that often suffers from an excess of sound and fury.

Murray Schisgal: Luy

With Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, and Alan Arkin, directed by Mike Nichols; Columbia DOS-718 (stereo) and DOL318: two records

Luv is a two-act, three-character comedy of the absurd which is currently established as a Broadway hit. With the exception of an occasional “sight gag” — a leap or two off the Brooklyn Bridge, for instance — its humor comes through deftly and delightfully in this original-cast recording. The intellectual purpose of Luv seems to be to spoof the cliches and the postures of everyone from playwrights to psychoanalysts; its physical locale is a bridge promenade. upon which a young woman oscillates illogically and unpredictably between two men who take turns becoming her husband. Whatever its enduring value may be as social commentary, Luv possesses the simple and immediate theatrical virtue of being funny. For example, this attempt to patch up a marital quarrel:

She: Now that I’ve lived with you I find you an utterly obnoxious person. He. All right, that’s a beginning, that’s a start.

Much of Luv’s brightness steins from the swift and sure playing of the three-star cast, especially Anne Jackson, who makes the changeable young woman seem not only personable but plausible. And the sound effects add a few cheery touches of their own: the distant splashes of those plunges into the East River, for instance.

Songs of the Ghetto

This is one of the most moving of all Yiddish-language records, a unique musical memorial of the tragedy that gave birth to such literary works as The Diary of Anne Trank and John Hersey’s The Wall. It is a collection of songs actually sung by the inhabitants of the ghettos set up by the Nazis in Eastern Europe, and by concentration camp inmates. There is despair and resignation in many of them, but also a stubborn note of courage and hope. Most striking of all is a strain of grim humor, as when a well-known Jewish operetta number is parodied in a melody succinctly entitled “No Raisins and No Almonds,” or in “Why Need We Cry?”, a spunky song that promises a day when Jews will yet live to say Faddish — that is, mourning prayers over Hitler. Purely as songs, many of these unpretentious melodies are touched with beauty. They arc sung with great expressiveness and sensitivity by Cantor Brun, who himself is a survivor of the ghetto in Lodz, Poland. Both the Yiddish words and an English translation are provided in an accompanying booklet.