New Records

Record companies are flooding the counters with albums gaudy and sedate, their eyes set on an expected alltime high of $225 million in record sales in 1954. Among the most interesting packages:

Beethoven: Fidelio (Rose Bampton, Jan Peerce, Herbert Janssen; NBC Symphony conducted by Arturo Toscanini; Victor, 2 LPs). Beethoven's only opera, which he reworked, shaped and worried over until it was as lean and passionate as he could make it. Its story--of a devoted wife who rescues her husband from a vengeful tyrant--is projected with all the heat of Toscanini's conviction. It was recorded in 1944 from the earliest of the maestro's-famed operatic broadcasts, but the fine performers sound through the technical imperfections.

Bartok: The Wooden Prince (The New Symphony Orchestra of London conducted by Walter Siisskind; Bartok, 2 LPs). Music for a "dancing play" from the late Hungarian master's middle period. The plot: boy wants girl; fairy queen (in enchanted forest) thwarts boy; girl wants boy; boy bored. The music, completed in 1916, before Bartok had honed down his modernities, is as lush as Richard Strauss, as elegant as Debussy.

Alejandro GarcfaCaturla: Suite No. 1 (Soloists of the French Radio Orchestra conducted by Georges Tzipine; Angel). A 1932 composition for winds and piano by Cuba's late, strongly original Composer Caturla. The intent of the work was to reveal folk and Negro themes in a concert setting, but its free-ranging style seems born of a broader world. Fascinating listening, right up to the fierce finale.

Falla: La Vida Breve (Victoria de los Angeles, Emilio Paya; Barcelona Opera Symphony conducted by Ernesto Halffter; Victor, 2 LPs). Written when he was nearly 30 (in 1905), this opera was chosen by Composer de Falla himself as his Op. 1. It starts as leisurely as a siesta, builds its tale of faithless love and sudden death (of a broken heart) to a warm climax. Soprano de los Angeles sings like a bird.

Milhaud: Poemes Juifs (Irma Kolassi, mezzo-soprano; Andre Collard, piano; London). Eight gently affecting songs written in 1916 and dedicated to the composer's Jewish friends and to their memories. The music contains none of the wailing minors that are usually associated with Jewish music, but uses restraining ostinatos and fresh, pastoral melodies to achieve a typically French effect.

Roussel: Trio, Op. 40 (Doriot Anthony Dwyer, flute; Joseph de Pasquale, viola; Samuel Mayes, cello; Boston). Fine first-desk players of the Boston Symphony combine tones to wax some of the most cheerful chamber music of the century.

Shapero: Symphony for Classical Orchestra (Columbia Symphony conducted by Leonard Bernstein; Columbia). A brilliant composer of the younger generation, Massachusetts' Harold Shapero, 34, has an ear for bright sonorities, a gift for formal construction, and a fascination for bygone masterpieces that has caused controversy. This attractive work, completed in 1947, parallels his efforts in Beethoven, Haydn and Stravinsky styles, resembles Prokofiev more than any other model.

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 10 (Leningrad Philharmonic conducted by Eugene Mravinsky on Concert Hall; New York Philharmonic-Symphony conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos on Columbia). The latest symphony by Russia's Dmitry Shostakovich performed by the orchestras that gave the work its world and U.S. premieres respectively. The Americans, for all their dazzling virtuosity, sound less Russian than the Russians, but both recordings make the work sound stronger and more cohesive than it does in concert.

Weber: Six Sonatas for Violin and Piano (Ruggiero Ricci, violin; Carlo Bussotti, piano: London). For all their outdated sighs and postures, these youthful works of the first genuine German Romantic composer (1786-1826) are melodious, unpretentious and full of charm..

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