Music: August Records | TIME
Some phonograph records are musical events. Each month TIME notes the noteworthy.
SYMPHONIC, ETC.
Stravinsky: Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra . (Boston Symphony, Serge Koussevitzky conducting, with Jesus Maria Sanroma; Victor: 4 sides). Once the No. 1 bad boy of the Paris salons, Igor Stravinsky, in the late 1920s, began to serve up melodies that sounded like those of the sentimental 19th-Century Romantics. The Capriccio, a deft example of vintage 1929, is performed as only Mr. Sanroma and the Bostonians can do it.
Aaron Copland: Two Pieces for String Quartet (Dorian Quartet; Columbia). U. S. Modernist Copland, famed recently for his score to the picture Of Mice and Men, experiments, in these early items, like a tired cook in search of an unprecedented sauce, leaves out the meat.
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major (Saxon State Orchestra, Karl Bohm conducting, with Walter Gieseking; Columbia: 8 sides). But for the still-smoldering fire of two grand old men of pianism (Josef Hofmann and Sergei Rachmaninoff) French-born, 44-year-old Walter Gieseking would be ranked by most connoisseurs as today’s No. i pianist. Here Pianist Gieseking gives Beethoven’s most lyric piano concerto its finest recording to date.
Mozart: Symphony No. 38 in D Major (“Prague”), K. 504 (Chicago Symphony, Frederick Stock conducting; Columbia: 6 sides). A top-notch Mozart symphony recorded in top-notch style by Stock’s long phonographically silent Chicagoans.
Haydn: Symphony No. 92 in G Major (Paris Conservatory Orchestra, Bruno Walter conducting; Victor: 6 sides). Before Hitler’s Blitzkrieg, France had one top-rank symphony: the Paris Conservatory Orchestra. Haydn’s lacy melodies suit its light-stepping strings and wood winds.
Dvorak: Quartet No. 6 in F Major (Budapest Quartet; Victor: 6 sides). One of the first composers to try to write typically U. S. music was Czech Anton Dvorak who lived in the U. S. from 1892 to 1895. Today Composer Dvorak’s lively “American Quartet,” though engagingly tuneful, sounds more like a Czech Dumka than a U. S. foxtrot. The Budapesters give it a finely tooled performance.
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