SYMPHONIC, ETC.

Walter Piston: Suite From the Incredible Flutist (Boston "Pops" Orchestra, Arthur Fiedler conducting; Victor: four sides). Newly thawed from the Kulturbolschewist morgue, Harvard's Composer Piston kicks up his heels in one of the deftest, most scintillant ballet scores ever penned by a U. S. composer.

Jaromir Weinberger: Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree (Cleveland Orchestra, Artur Rodzinski conducting; Columbia: four sides). An English pseudo-folk song made famous when King George VI sang it at a boys' camp (TIME, Oct. 23), Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree was really written by old-fashioned British Composer William Sterndale Bennett. The spirited, polka-dotted variations on it by Czech Weinberger (who thought it a genuine antique) get brilliant treatment from the Clevelanders.

Debussy: La Mer (Boston Symphony, Sergei Koussevitzky conducting; Victor: six sides). Record of the month. Koussevitzky's Bostonians make every salty splash of Impressionist Debussy's great seascape glisten in hazy sunshine. Magnificently recorded.

Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 (NBC Symphony, Arturo Toscanini conducting; Victor: eight sides). Most famed of living maestros gives the most famed of all symphonies a fiery performance. But the asbestos-lined acoustics of Radio City's broadcasting Studio 8-H, where it was recorded, make it sound somewhat brittle.

Boccherini-Francaix: Scuola di Ballo (London Philharmonic, Antal Dorati conducting; Columbia: four sides). A sheaf of charming 18th-Century salon pieces collected and orchestrated as a ballet by tricky, French, 27-year-old Modernist Frangaix.

Wagner: Love Duet and Liebestod from Tristan, Bruennhilde's Immolation from Goetterdaemmerung (San Francisco Opera Orchestra, Edwin McArthur conducting, with Kirsten Flagstad and Lauritz Melchior; Victor: ten sides). Souvenir of a great operatic team which may soon be heard no more (TIME, Jan. 22). Conductor McArthur's shyly reticent accompaniment keeps it from being as good as it should be.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.