New Records

Brahms: Violin Concerto in D Major (Joseph Szigeti and the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy conducting; Columbia, 9 sides); Symphony No. 1 in C Minor (Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski conducting; Victor, 10 sides). Szigeti plays Brahms's bombastic music straight, while Conductor Stokowski plays it pretentiously. Szigeti's concerto is a better performance, but Stokowski's symphony is more clearly recorded on unbreakable vinylite.

Bach: Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 3 & 4 (Boston Symphony Orchestra, Serge Koussevitzky conducting; Victor, 8 sides). Koussevitzky uses four times as many musicians as Bach intended, which may scare the purists away. The recording, made in Koussevitzky's music shed at Tanglewood, Mass., is just about perfect. Performance: good.

Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet Suite No. 2 (Moscow State Philharmonic Orchestra, Serge Prokofiev conducting; Disc, 11 sides). Nothing like Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet. This is lean, unsentimental music, composed for a Soviet ballet in 1935. It has never been recorded in the U.S. Performance: good.

Aaron Copland: Appalachian Spring (Boston Symphony Orchestra, Serge Koussevitzky conducting; Victor, 6 sides). Reorchestrated and edited, this program music for a longish Martha Graham ballet is perhaps the best thing Aaron Copland has written.

Wagner: Bridal Chamber Scene from Lohengrin (Helen Traubel, soprano. Kurt Baum, tenor, and the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York, Artur Rodzinski conducting; Columbia, 4 sides). In this long-winded honeymoon conversation, Traubel ducks a few of the high notes but makes up for it with the lower ones. Performance: good.

Sing Out, Sweet Land! (Decca, 10 sides). A merry survey of 300 years of U.S. music from the late Broadway musical. Best of the 17 songs are Big Rock Candy Mountain, sung by Burl Ives, Casey Jones by Bibi Osterwald, and such treasures as Little Mohee and Frankie and Johnny. Performance: good.

Richard Dyer-Bennet: Love Songs (Disc, 6 sides). Wistful love, Elizabethan style. Guitarist Dyer-Bennet's six songs include Westryn Wind and Blow the Candles Out ("Roll me in your arms, love"). Performance: excellent.

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