London, W.1.

THE GRAMOPHONE London Office: 58, Frith Street,

Edited by COMPTON MACKENZIE

TELEPHONE : Regent 1~83

Vol. III.

AUGUST, 1925

No.3

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QUARTERLY REVIEW OF RECORDS

'Vith a Note on the Caxton Hall Tests

By THE EDITOR

THIS is the last quarterly revi ew that I shall write. I feel like one of those enthusiastic frogs who got rid of King Log and set up Kin g Stork. I bow my head, p artly in humble grat,itude to the recording companiet> and partly to protect i t again t the shower of new di 'cs. !;ike a babe in the wood-or should I say the Sir Hemy Wood ~ -I li e bmied beneath a weight of dis cs which th e birds of the recording rooms place on my prostrat e form. , "vVe have r eleased six Beetho ven S) mphonies ," ann01ll1ces the P ar10phone Company proudly . That just describe what they haye done ; and they are running wild on J ethou at this moment. In future I shall try to k eep up with the monthly out put in the next month's numb er of THE GRAMOPHONE. I am unwilling to make this change; but as things are at present i t is really impossible to make this revi~w readable, and I think that I am better qualified nowadays to give a quick opinion of a record than I was two years ago.

The outstanding production of this quarter for myself has been the is sue on si x double-sided r ecords of Berlioz' Symphonie Jjlcmt (tstiq1le. I was 1ll1aware that i t was on the verge of bcing " rel eased" (I do beg the recording companies not to borrow this detestable expression from the cinema, that great corruptor of the English language) when I asked for i t in my last review, though my r emarks must have seemed like groundbait for our readers. To my mind this is the best orchestr al r eco,t'cling achieved by the gramophone up to date. Apart from the remarka,ble quality of the string tone and the exceptional t impani, the brass is much b etter managed than usual and never s01ll1ds as if a small boy at a fair had suddenly blown a t in trumpet in one's ears to pierce them above the noise of distant rounda bouts. The symphony i tself is full of melody. I can't think why we never had that waltz to dance to in the days when we used to waltz. It's as good a waltz as exist s. It r eminds me curiously of the a'nciante in one of Mozart's Dive)'l'imenti. The whole work has something of the quality of a Balzac novel. It's no use trying to enjoy Berlioz unless you have some sense of the drama, and i f musical

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