The Week's RECORDS

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 34, 3 February 1939, Page 8

The Week's RECORDS

IGLI has shown us that ballads may sound like masterpieces of vocal music-even talkie ‘‘hits’’ are transmuted into fine gold through his superb vocalisation. In Cinque’s ‘‘Mattinata Veneziana’’ and Tosti’s ‘‘La Serenata’’ he scores palpable ‘‘hits,’? but the musi¢ is on a higher plane than the average talkie song. With an orchestra under Dino Olivieri, Gigli misses no opportunity and the stirring tones of his glorious voice make the record (HMV. DA 1618) something to cherish. Paul Rosenfeld once wrote, "Richard Strauss was never the perfect artist." But a composer does not need to be the "perfect artist" that the critics worry so much about to be able to write such fine songs as "Night" and ‘Dream in the Twilight." To ideal piano accompaniments by Gerald Moore, the baritone soloist Herbert Janssen sings these two songs with perfect. taste. This record (IIMV. DA 1581) is one for lovers of fine singing to buy, to keep, and to play for the delight of all who have ears to hear. Of the making of gramophone records by Peter Dawson there is apparently no end. In two typically rousing sea songs, "Sea Winds," by Harrison, and "Full Sail" by Buck, he just rides along with his orchestra and makes his listeners feel that they simply must be of the old island breed. This record (HMV. B8627) is in Peter’s usual breezy, efficient style, and the orchestral accompaniments remind us of the important part his fellow artists play. , Hone Was Dashed It must be a dozen years or more since Master Ernest Lough, boy soprano, burst upon the gramophone world, became a best-seller, and so packed the Temple Church that the authorities had to admit "worshippers" by ticket to safeguard the ancient fabric. To-day Ernest Lough, aged twenty-five, is a married man, a baritone, and again singing on the records. Beyond the empty novelty of hearing what an ex-boy soprano sounds like, it is idle to waste words on his recording of Schubert’s "Serenade" and Easthope Martin’s "The Holy Child." The record (HMV. B8672) is a flopthe singing is spiritléss and dead. The old Lough is no morewhat a pity to disturb the memory of one of the loveliest _voices ever heard! At any rate we stif] have those fine records by which all future standards of boys as soloists must be fixed, Old Friends Return It is with delight that we turn to a most captivating recording {HMV. EA 2126) by our old friends, the Comedy Harmonists. This time they give us "I Love Thee Well" (Tivoglio Bene) and Johann Strauss’s infectiously happy ‘"Perpetuum Mobile." The last number is one of their best-no gramophile should be without a copy. It will liven up any- gramophone evening or party, and it goes to prove that the Comedy Harmonists ever pursue perfection.