New Records

For the second year in a row, Columbia Records has dipped into the works of contemporary U.S. composers, filled six LPs with chamber music by a dozen of them. Columbia does not expect its Modern American Music Series to cause any stampedes at record counters, is issuing the series in a spirit of 1) adventure, and 2) duty to U.S. music. Nonetheless, a few of the scores in the new 1954 edition are first-class of their kind and well worth a hearing.

String Quartet No. 1, by the University of Southern California's Leon Kirchner, 34, is both attractive to the ear in its warmth and strength and stimulating in its complexity. Its closest musical relative is Bartok, but its fading repetitions, its wistful interludes and its snarling climaxes are thoroughly individual in effect. Another, Quartet in B-flat, by Guggenheim Fellow Andrew Imbrie, is packed with up-to-date invention and energy, but it is an undergraduate work (1942), shies clear of the more ardent expression that the 32-year-old composer dares today.

Also notable: an alternately brusque and limpid Sonata for Piano Four Hands by Harold Shapero, a crisp woodwind Quartet in C by Arthur Berger, both of Brandeis University; a series of gay brevities called Music for a Farce by Author-Composer Paul (The Sheltering Sky) Bowles. All were recorded under the com posers' personal supervision, a sometimes questionable practice that here results in some good performances.

Other new records:

Gounod: Faust (Victoria de los Angeles, Nicolai Gedda, Boris Christoff; Chorus and Orchestra of L'Opera, Paris, conducted by Andre Cluytens; Victor, 4 LPs). The third "complete" version of this tinseled old warhorse, notable for the properly terrifying Mephistopheles of Basso Christoff and the limpid-voiced Marguerite of Soprano de los Angeles. Contains the usually omitted ballet music for the Walpurgis Night.

Andre Jolivet: Concerto for Trumpet, Piano & String Orchestra (Roger Del Motte, Serge Baudo; Champs-Elysees Theatre Orchestra conducted by Ernest Bour; Westminster). Debussyan impressionism and Stravinskyan neoclassicism get taken for a mocking ride in this single movement, but it is not quite so witty in this performance as the composer seems to intend.

Jacques de Menasce: Piano Concerto No. 2 (Vienna State Opera Orchestra conducted by Edmund Appia and the composer at the piano; Vanguard). Like Paganini and Liszt, Composer de Menasce writes his own showpieces. If not exactly a world-shaker, this one is able, sophisticated and full of pianistic beans.

Puccini: Tosco (Maria Callas, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Tito Gobbi; Chorus and Orchestra of La Scala conducted by Victor de Sabata; Angel, 2 LPs). The seventh complete version of Puccini's old pulse-bumper, and one of the best. The name part is sung fervently and in high style by Brooklyn-born Soprano Callas.

Sessions: Three Chorale Preludes (Marilyn Mason, organ; Esoteric). In Composer Sessions' later works, the melody is sometimes pretty hard to follow, but these short pieces of 1924-26 bring it out clearly. Two of them are slow, serene and almost spiritual; the third is harsh and craggy. The organ is well-played and cleanly recorded.

Strauss: Don Quixote (Boston Symphony conducted by Charles Munch; Victor). A fairly beery treatment of the Cervantes tragicomedy by one of the world's great orchestraters. The Boston Symphony (plus Cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, Violinist Richard Burgin, Violist Joseph de Pasquale) gives it a foamy performance.

Strauss: Four Last Songs (Lisa Delia Casa, soprano; Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Karl Bohm; London). Luxuriant melody of autumnal mood in a luxuriant orchestral setting. One of the songs

(September) is literally late Composer Strauss's last work. All are sung with melting beauty and ease by Vienna State Opera Diva Delia Casa, who this season made her Metropolitan debut.

Organ Music by Modern Composers (Richard Ellsasser; M-G-M). Some of the gaudiest organ sounds outside the Roxy are mixed with some in a more reposeful vein in these nine pieces. Among the best: Bartok's En Bateau, a flashy, seasick impression of a boatride; Copland's Episode, a neat vignette that builds from nearly nothing to a roiling climax; Milhaud's delicately tinted Pastorale; Messiaen's mystical Le Banquet Celeste.

Other notable new records: all five of Beethoven's adult Piano Concertos, played by Wilhelm Kempff and the Berlin Philharmonic under Paul van Kempen (Decca, 3 LPs); all of Beethoven's Violin Sonatas, played by Jascha Heifetz (Victor 5 LPs); Ernest Bloch's String Quartet No. 2, played by the Musical Arts Quartet (Vanguard).

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