Last Chances for Mono

The prospects of the monaural LP are as bright today as the presidential ambitions of Harold Stassen. Some record companies have stopped making them, and the rest may well soon follow suit.

Thus LP collectors are faced with the imminent disappearance of many fine mono recordings made between 1948, when the LP was first introduced, and 1958, when stereo was born. Some items may appear again on reissue lines, such as Angel's Great Recordings of the Century. But most will not. Nor does electronic rechanneling of the old recording into stereo solve the problem. "To put it bluntly, electronic stereo is presently nothing but sonic vandalism, a fact recognized and even privately admitted by the record companies themselves," says High Fidelity magazine.* Thus wise collectors are buying up the choice items still available. Among them:

WALTER GIESEKING (Columbia ML 4536/37/38/39). Superlative readings of the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23 and Franck Symphonic Variations, plus assorted works of Debussy.

MARIA CALLAS (Angel 3502, 3508). Bellini's 1 Puritani and Puccini's Tosca: the Greek-American soprano in her prime.

DINU LIPATTI (Angel 3556). Last Recital--Chopin, Bach and Schubert played by the great Rumanian pianist who died at 33 in 1950.

VIRGIL THOMSON: Four Saints in Three Acts (RCA Victor LM 2756). The Thomson-Gertrude Stein masterpiece of sophistication and naivete, recorded under the composer's direction in 1947.

SCHOENBERG: Four String Quartets (Columbia ML 4735/36/37). Incomparable performances by the Juilliard String Quartet.

WEBERN: Complete Works (Columbia K4L-232). The brief, vital lifework of one of the pivotal figures of 20th century music, conducted by Robert Craft.

MAHLER: Das Lied von der Erde (London 4212). An unmatched rendering by Conductor Bruno Walter and Contralto Kathleen Ferrier.

WEILL: The Rise and Fall of the City Mahagonny (Columbia K3L-243). The most elaborate of the collaborations by Weill and Bertolt Brecht, with the great Lotte Lenya heading the cast.

WAGNER: Tristan und Isolde (Angel 3588). Still the best recorded Tristan ever, with Conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler and Soprano Kirsten Flagstad.

SCHUBERT: String Quartets Nos. 13, 14 and 15 (Columbia ML 4831/2/3); HAYDN: Six Quartets, Op. 76 (Columbia ML 4922/3/4). Masterpieces of chamber music performed by the elegant Budapest Quartet.

*The most common method of rechanneling is to break down the original single track into a left track that emphasizes high frequencies and a right track that emphasizes the lows, then add reverberation. Electronic filters are used for the first operation, echo chambers for the second. The assumption is that most orchestras have the high instruments on the left and the deeper ones on the right, and that the left-right rechanneling will thus accomplish a sense of directionality, spread and depth. Of course, some orchestras are not arranged that way. Worse, the bass line is often muddied in the filtering and echo processes.

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