Four Star, Maybe Plus

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 816, 18 March 1955, Page 24

Four Star, Maybe Plus

A monthly review bv

OWEN

JENSEN

ERE is a bunch of LPs that you might well put your money on; or, for that matter, into. The fidelity of each is as good as you will hear; the playing on nearly all of them does the composer proud; and, as for the music-well, that’s a matter of taste. For me, the music comes first. It must be good of its kind but, to go into the personal library, it should be something that one likes well enough to come back to time and time again, One is hardly likely to enjoy this, however, if the performer doesn’t see eye to eye or ear to ear with the composer. And, if the technician blots his copybook, you have to make up your mind whether it wouldn’t be better to wait for a fairer transcript. So when it comes to four star and the edge that makes the plus, a balance has to be struck between the music, the performance and the art of the recording studio. This is how it comes out, Take Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C Minor which, whatever your personal taste, is music not to be cavilled at, Among the most popular and perhaps the best known of all symphonies, it has received pretty rough treatment from time to time, either from the conductor, his players or from the recording people, Now comes along a version in which all of them seem to agree on what’s what, Erich Kleiber with the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam (Decca LXT 2851) present the genuine Beethoven. Symphony No. 5 in C Minor is. given with authority, not only in regard to the text but in the spirit of the music. The Concertgebouw play in their best manner, precise, but flexible to the demands of the music. Then there is Haydn, Symphonies No. 83 ("Hen") and \96 ("Miracle"), not the best known of the Salomon series, but a very happy addition to the listening repertoire, Sir John Barbirolli and the Hallé Orchestra play them with that lithe, virile enthusiasm which one associates with the Hallé (H.M.V. ALP 1038). Another item you might like to add to your library is Chabrier’s Suite Pastorale, Chabrier, Civil Servant turned musician, oecupies a much more important place in French music than that with which he is sometimes credited. The Suite Pastorale is just what its

name implies-nothing deep, but colourful and quietly beautiful, what the French would call "charmant." On the reverse side is the equally charming music of Bizet’s suites, Jeux d’Entants and La Jolie Fille de Perth, Both sides are played sympathetically and expertly by L’Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire de Paris conducted by Edouard Lindenburg (Decca LXT 2860). The recording is fine. And now a little sophisticated wit: in fact, the epitome of musical good humour, Saint-Saens’s Carnival of Animals. For good measure on this disc, Noel Coward underlines Saint-Saens’s jokes with a narration of verses by Ogden Nash about the animals and their habits. It is very well done in the Coward style. Some eyebrows have been raised, I believe, at the playing of André Kostelanetz and his orchestra. Too plush and svelte for Saint-Saens, seems to be the criticism. Saint-Saens, I think, can take it. And with pianists as scintillating/as Leonid Hambro and Jascha Zayde, the Carnival of Animals is as amusing a z00 as you might visit anywhere. The recording measures up to the interpretation (Philips NBR 6001). Cook's Tour-de-Force A new batch of Nixa records has the sub-label "Another Cook Sounds of Our Times Recording." This is the success story of 41-year-old Emory Cook, an American radio-engineer with bright ideas. On radar work for Western Electric during the war, Emory Cook tinkered about with a little recording on the side. Like a lot of other people, Cook was concerned at the high degree of distortion in current commercial recordings — current in 1946, that is, He turned his inventive mind to overcoming some of these defects. Leaving out the technical details and cutting a short story into an LP, it seems that Cook came out with a disc which was already an improvement on a 78 he had exhibited at the 1949 New York Audio Fair proudly publicised as "Cook, 20,000-cycle Records." His 1951 LP exhibit was described as "making hi-fi history," . Cook, having no money to spend on Toscaninis or Boston Symphony Orches-

tras for his recordings, settled for something cheaper, and’a little of what nature could provide. His Christmas Music Box -Christmas carols on an old-fashioned music-box — has sold almost 50,000 copies; but he hit the headlines with Rail Dynamics. This was no more than a choice selection of train noises. It was snapped up by those thousands for whom the train-steam for preference-is still the most romantic of travel ways. Flushed with success; Cook recorded a summer thunderstorm which proved. equally popular. Profiting by this technical experience and turning the profits into further technique, he now embarked on the more prosaic field of music. There are still no celebrity names to speak of in Emory Cook’s catalogues but the extraordinary fidelity of his recording makes the best of everything he touches. When Reginald Foort plays on the Mosque Theatre Organ (Nixa SLPY 148) Emory Cook gives you more Wurlitzer than you may ever have heard before. Maybe you are with me in not caring to hear "In a Monastery Garden," "The Light Cavalry Overture" or even Grieg’s "To the Spring" on a Wurlitzer and even less when it’s as mighty as Reginald Foort’s machine; but you must give it to Mr. Cook that he delivers the goods, In fact, with Edward Vito in a harp recital (Nixa SLPY 145) you get rather more than your money’s worth. You seem to be sitting alongside the harpist and even, sometimes, plucking the strings yourself. The playing is very expert, but the mixture of music-Chopin’s "Fantasie Impromptu," "Claire de Lune," Moskowski’s "Valse Ceélébre," etc.-is an odd one. The most interesting of Cook’s out-of-the-run discs is the one which features Ruth Welcome on the zither on one side and Dick Marta, cimbalom, on the other (Nixa SLPY 149). While "Greensleeves" and "Barbara Allen" may not be quite what one expects on such a slither as the zither, the instrument makes some very pleasant sounds in three other little pieces. As for that ancient instrument the cimbalom (a variation of the dulcimer), the music it produces out of a Rumanian Rhapsody and some traditional Czardas has to be heard to be believed. Coming to the straight and more serious, Cook’s Sounds of Our Times offers

Masterpieces of the Dance (Nixa SLPY 802) and Masterpieces of the Theatre. (Nixa SLPY 801). To conduct his "popular" classics Emory Cook introduces one Willis Page who steps from the first double bass desk of the Boston Symphony to take up the baton. Mr. Page may not yet be a Koussevitzky but he is by no means a ham at conducting. With an ensemble called the New Orchestral Society of Boston, Willis Page makes music which, if it may lack a little in subtlety, has plenty of vigour and brightness. The dance masterpieces include Rimsky-Korsakov’s "Dance of the Buffoons," Johann Strauss’s "Emperor Waltz,’ the famous "Danse Macabre" and "Hungarian Dance No. 6." The theatre masterpieces are the Introduction to Act 1 of Carmen, Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra Overture, the Midsummer Night’s Dream Scherzo and Weber’s Euranythe Overture. The recording is fine. , The same orchestra and conductor play an entrancing Cantilena and Danza by Heitor Villa Lobos in which soprano Phyllis Curtis gives a breathtakingly beautiful interpretation of the solo vocalisation. This is a 45 disc (Nixa 45 EP 652) as is also Pacific 231 of Honegger and Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings on the reverse side (Nixa 45 EP 651). But my pick of these "Sounds of our Times" is Carlos Montoya’s guitar recital of flamenca music (Nixa SLPY 141) and his "Flamenca Fiesta" (Nixa SLPY 140) in which the guitarist is assisted with singing, castanets, clapping, in fact all the excitement of an Andalusian gypsy fiesta. The performance and recording are quite out of the ordinary.