94

The GRA,HOPHONE

August 1937

wonder if Lord Baldwin enjoys Mozart. I t would be an undertaking of considerable interest to ascertain the musical taste of some of our leading politicians. We are sometimes allowed glimpses of their literary tastes, and most depressing they usually are. An inquiry into their music might explain much.

Since I listened to Kirsten Flagstad's first record without being able to detect in i t what had made her the success she is with the public in this country I have listened very carefully to every record of hers published since, and I have come to the conclusion that she is, like Virgil's ghosts, vox et praeterea nihil. The voice is magnificent. So was the voice of the late Clara Butt. And I think i t would be fair, a.llowing for the difference between a vast soprano and a vast contralto, to put the two singers in the same category. I prefer the voice of Kirsten Flagstad because i t is less alarming in its soprano vastness than the contralto vastness of Clara Butt, and enthusiasm about any singer nowadays is so wecious that one dislikes finding fault with its inspiration.

Casta Diva from Bellini's Norma is one of the loveliest arias ever written for a soprano, and i t is also one of the most difficult. The comparatively few examples of i t recorded testifies to that. Galli-Curci never attempted i t even in her prime, although she sang beautifully two or three of the other great Bellini arias. Our H.F.V.L. reminded everybody last month that the best record of i t remains the Columbia Boninsegna, which was one of the first records I ever bought. The performance by Claudia Muzio on a light-blue Columbia disc with Pace Mia Dio from Verdi's Forza Del Destino on the other side is a beautiful piece of artistry, but, as H .F.V.L. points out, there is too much tremolo. The best examples of a great singer now dead were to be found on Edison discs made with the hill and dale groove, and not playable with an ordinary needle.

Elisabeth Schumann added another beautiful record to her now long list with a Lullaby from an opera of Smetana and Solveig's Song. It is good to think that a singer like her, so unaffected and poetic, should have endeared herself to the public. I cannot understand a devotion for Elisabeth Schumann existing with an equal devotion for Kirsten Flagstad. Two vocal discs of last month which should not be missed are the J 2-inch Parlophone of choral excerpts from Borodin's Prince Igor, sung in Russian by choruses of the Russian Opera. I thought the recording quite unusually good, and good choral records of this type are particularly welcome because except from records one seldom hears a satisfactory chorus over the wireless.

Mention of the wireless reminds me to say something about this idiotic attempt to change Tchaikovsky's name to Chaykowfski or some such spelling. I move that until the B.B.C. announcers can get through a year without making two dozen howlers in the pronunciation of perfectly familiar European place names the B.B.C. should close down on any attempt to impose a reformed spelling of composers' names. Should we be grateful to the U.S .S.R. wireless authorities if they decided to spell Chaucer" Chawsir," or Keats "Keets"? After giving out news about Spain for a year i t is really inexcusable to mispronounce Cordova and Granada, as they still repeatedly do. As to the names of racehorses, I have had to cut off all racing results to avoid any further shocks to my ears. I t wouldn't matter so much if some of the announcers didn't assume a special tone of voice to deal with foreign place names . A false quantity in honest English doesn't howl nearly as disagreeably as when i t is mouthed with a synthetic Continental accent.

It was a coincidence that immediately after asking for the recording of Busoni's Indian Fantasy Columbia should have issued Busoni's Indianisches Tagebuch. This is a fascinating disc. Petri's tone on the piano is perfectly suited to the subject, and obviously he is the man to play the Indian Fantasy. I venture to say that such a recording would be much more worth while than another recording of Bach's Partita in D minor. The Partita is a great piece of music, but as A.R. pointed out last month, we already have five recordings of it, and, although this new recording of i t by Milstein on three I2-inch Columbia discs is interesting, i t cannot hold a candle to Menuhin's and must be called superfluous so long as there are any conspicuous gaps in unrecorded works.

I t was a great pleasure to get the Brahms Sextet in G major played by the Budapest String Quartet with Alfred Hobday as second viola and Anthony Pini as second 'cello on four H.M.V. discs. We did both the B flat major Sextet and the G major with the Spencer Dyke Sextet for the National Gramophonic Society, but new recordings of them both were bad'ly required, and now we have them. I don't think the G- major will ever be such a favourite of mine as the earlier sextet, the melodies of which, although so easy to enjoy immediately, never pall. However, repeated playing,; of the G major increases my liking for i t aU the t ime and remind me usefully how necessary i t is to remember that the man unfamiliar with chamber music finds the simplest and most melodious Haydn quartet as obscure at first as I have found the G major Sextet. Following chamber music is rather like unknotting a piece of string. One picks away at knot after knot with apparently just as many left, and then suddenly one unpicks the key knot and the whole string smooth. itself out. It was also a great pleasure to get a rerecording by the Lener Quartet of Beethoven's A major, Op. 18, NO.5, on three 12-inch Columbia discs. The performance is beautifully rich and the recording perfect. Of late years the earlier quartets of Beethoven have been rather neglected, but I hope that the issue of the Fifth means that the Lener Quartet will give us all the rest of the first six as they did once upon a t ime in pre-electric days.

I notice in reading my GRAMOPHONE that Decca have brought out Dvorak's Trio in F minor and Brahms's Clarinet Sonata, 'but as they have sent me neither I can say no more about them. I hope that