New Discs Offer Sound Trips

By Jay Cocks and Michael Walsh

MESSIAEN: Turangalila-Symphonie; LUTOSLAWSKI: Les Espaces du Sommeil, Symphony No. 3. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra (Messiaen) and the Los Angeles Philharmonic (Lutoslawski) (CBS).

Composed between 1946 and 1948, the Turangalila-Symphonie is a ten-movement, 80-minute showpiece for large orchestra, elemental in its power, yet seductive in its radiant beauty. The title derives from Sanskrit and roughly connotes "vitality" and "life," and thus gives some indication of both the piece's formidable substance and its stunning effect. Its thundering chord progressions and leaping, birdlike themes, its mixture of brutal dissonance and sunny consonance, make Turangalila-Symphonie one of the French composer's finest creations. It is difficult for both performer and listener, which may be why it is rarely played in concert. It does, however, offer a splendid workout for a CD player. Finnish Conductor Salonen, 28, leads an assured performance that serves notice of his arrival as an important young maestro. Two atmospheric works by Poland's Witold Lutoslawski also reflect his ear for sonorities.

DVORAK: Symphony No. 9 in E Minor (from the "New World"). Christoph von Dohnanyi conducting the Cleveland Orchestra (London). Out of the media spotlight, Dohnanyi has been quietly restoring the full luster of the Cleveland Orchestra since he succeeded Lorin Maazel in 1984. Rich, detailed and burnished, this handsome "New World" Symphony shows why the Cleveland under its German-born leader is now the best-sounding orchestra in the country. Pass the word.

MOZART: Don Giovanni. Samuel Ramey, Don Giovanni; Ferruccio Furlanetto, Leporello; Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Donna Anna; Agnes Baltsa, Donna Elvira; Kathleen Battle, Zerlina; Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon). Salzburg Recital. Soprano Kathleen Battle, Pianist James Levine (DG).

Karajan and Mozart were both born in Salzburg, but that seems to be about all they have in common. Karajan's readings of his countryman's ineffable music have always been heavy and rhythmically sluggish, bereft of joy or bounce. His new recording, a warm-up for his production of the opera in Salzburg this spring and summer, never comes to fiery, diabolical life. It wastes the . talents of Ramey and Battle, and features an excruciating performance by Tomowa-Sintow as the hectoring, humorless Donna Anna. Far more harmonious is Battle's recording from her 1984 recital at Karajan's Salzburg Festival. The material is her familiar mix of early English songs by Purcell and Handel, German lieder, French chansons, and spirituals, but she sings with such crystalline vocalism and beguiling elan that it becomes irresistible. Levine's elegant pianism is a model of the accompanist's art.

PROFESSOR LONGHAIR: Rock 'n' Roll Gumbo. (Dancing Cat) His rightful name was Henry Roeland Byrd, but down in New Orleans everyone called him Fess and they knew without being told that he was more than a local legend. He was one of the all-time great rhythm-and-blues piano thumpers. His left hand rolled over the keys, keeping a wild rhythm that seemed to play out like an entire band. His right hand was like an antenna, pulling in melodies from the Delta blues, from Caribbean calypso, from rock and pop and jazz and anywhere else his ear chanced to roam. Even a jazz wizard like Art Tatum was astounded and flummoxed by Fess's style. This record, first released in 1975, has now been reissued on CD. The disc, with the good professor's piano remixed to stand way out in front of the band, is a perfect introduction to Longhair's eldritch dexterity. It is also as good a working definition of funk as you will ever find. The professor died in 1980, but there is a whole generation of peerless piano players, like Huey ("Piano") Smith, Allen Toussaint and Mac ("Dr. John") Rebennack, forever in his debt. He was the tap source of New Orleans rock.

THE NEVILLE BROTHERS: Treacherous. (Rhino) These four, New Orleans funk masters to the manner born, are heirs to the proud Byrd tradition. This two- record set covers 30 years of their music, starting with a rough-and-ready Mardi Gras Mambo (released in 1955) and ending with a spirited spiritual recessional recorded in the spring of 1985. New Orleans produced many superb musicians and singers, but the Nevilles are the town's premier vocal ensemble. A single cut, Fire on the Bayou, is like a dancing flame on an oil slick. It produces enough heat to warm a mountain cabin for a week.

Something Wild. (MCA) Sound-track albums are usually a flat-out marketing ploy to give movies a spurious Top 40 identity. This one is different, as kicky and eccentric as Jonathan Demme's inverted thriller (starring Jeff Daniels and Melanie Griffith), which it accompanies. Hearing these ten tunes is like checking into a padded cell inside a Wurlitzer. Listen to David Byrne's lyric for his salsa-inflected opening song, Loco de Amor ("Like a pizza in the rain/ . . . No one wants to take you home/ But I love you just the same"), there is no doubt that this album is a passport to alien territory. The music -- which includes Jerry Harrison's sinister Man with a Gun, the roof-raising African rouser High Life by Sonny Okosun and a Jamaican-flavored remake of the rock war-horse Wild Thing by Sister Carol -- is so shrewdly chosen and sequenced that it becomes an experience on its own, inflected by the film's moods but not dependent on them. Something Wild is one of the best uses of contemporary music since Mean Streets, but, whether as compilation or accompaniment to some movie in your own head, it is a bust-out record.