The Year's Best LPs

BERLIOZ: BENVENUTO CELLINI (Philips, 4 LPs). Berlioz's first opera is deeply poetic, grandly exuberant and stunningly performed under Conductor Colin Davis.

SCHOENBERG, BERG, WEBERN: COMPLETE STRING QUARTETS (DG, 5 LPs). A landmark of recorded chamber music by the La Salle Quartet.

MAHLER: SYMPHONY NO. 8 (London, 2 LPs). Conductor Georg Solti triumphs in a work that, in emotional scope and array of forces, is a most difficult challenge to recording.

HAYDN: SYMPHONIES NOs. 49 TO 56 (London Stereo Treasury, 4 LPs). A choice sampling of the rich little-known "middle-period" symphonies, stylishly conducted by Antal Dorati.

ROSSINI: LA CENERENTOLA (DG, 3 LPs). From Conductor Claudio Abbado comes a stereo recording worthy of Rossini's comic masterpiece.

STRAVINSKY: PETRUSHKA (Columbia). Conductor Pierre Boulez at his and the composer's best.

ARETHA FRANKLIN: AMAZING GRACE (Atlantic, 2 LPs). The high priestess of soul returns memorably to the gospel style in which she started.

PAUL SIMON (Columbia). Unpretentious poeticizing about many of the same urban and exurban complaints that Simon & Garfunkel used to adjudicate so well.

DAVID BOWIE: THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST (RCA). A gripping evocation of the fearful doom that can sometimes threaten a rock star, from one of the most talented--and most fearful--of the breed.

JOHN PRINE (Atlantic). Blue-collar blues from an ex-mailman who may be the closest thing yet to the old Bob Dylan.

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