The Fifth benefits from fleet tempos, tight ensemble, and punchy attacks, with the woodwinds nicely cutting through the string-centered sonority. Munch tends to set a course and push through without offering any of the telling details of phrasing and pacing provided by, say, Carlos Kleiber and the Vienna Philharmonic, to say nothing of the splendid recent Vänskä/Minnesota surround version on BIS (coupled with the Fourth). Still, it’s a fine performance comparable to the early 1960s Karajan, but with greater textural variety... A very good Fifth.

-- James Reel, FANFARE [reviewing the Beethoven Fifth, reissued as part of RCA 67892]

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The “Unfinished” Symphony gets a fine performance here too: weighty but not stodgy, with a graceful singing line and especially lovely woodwind work.

-- James Reel, FANFARE [reviewing the Schubert Eighth, reissued as part of RCA 704603]

MESSIAEN: TURANGALILA, UN SOUR

Alicia de Larrocha shows herself a splendid champion of Mompou in this elegantly salon-like series of songs and dances based on traditional Catalan melodies.

For the benefit of those who may not know the elegantly salon-like series of 13 Songs and dances (plus one for guitar, not included here), composition of which was spread out over more than 40 years, let me say that with only very few exceptions each consists of a coupling of two traditional Catalan melodies, freely arranged with artfully expressive harmonies. (RCA confuse the trail a little by identifying the tunes by their first words rather than their titles—e.g. ''Dotze cavallers'' instead of ''La senyora Isabel'' for No. 2; and the Dance of No. 9 is classified as original Mompou whereas it is surely ''El barretinaire''?) The earlier pieces, from the 1920s, reveal influences of the Parisian composers with whom Mompou was friendly (the piled-up fourths of No. 3 unmistakably point to Milhaud), but the idiom becomes rather more personal later (and No. 6, which is entirely original, goes to Latin America for its inspiration). More individual than this series, however, are the Preludes: No. 6, the longest piece here, is somewhat Scriabinesque (apart from the similarity of its being for the left hand alone) and No. 7 by far the most impressionist and virtuosic.

As one who knew Mompou well and was the dedicatee of some of his pieces (including the Prelude No. 11—sometimes erroneously listed as No. 7—which was written as a wedding present for her in 1949), Alicia de Larrocha is in an almost unique position as an interpreter of his music, of which she again shows herself here a splendid champion. Being the artist she is, and like the best artists not content simply to repeat a previous interpretation without further thought, she offers readings noticeably different from her now nearly ten-year-old Decca performances of some of the Songs and dances. For the most part she adopts somewhat faster speeds, and as compared with the composer's own performances, recorded for the Musical Heritage Society, her approach is more direct, with more cohesive phrasing and without his habit (which becomes increasingly tiresome) of playing left-hand-before-right on almost every chord. In general she brings more vivacity to the Dance sections—markedly so in Nos. 7 and 8, though she is quieter and gentler in No. 10; she takes the 6/8 section of No. 4 with a charming lightness. Accentuation is sometimes different, as in No. 1 and in the bell-sounds of No. 5; but a compelling feature throughout this disc is her subtle tonal gradations. Larrocha's performances and the warm, natural recorded piano sound are both in the highest class.

-- Lionel Salter, Gramophone [11/1994]

Principal cast: Hildegarde Neff, Don Ameche, Gretchen Wyler, George Tobias, Leon Belasco, Henry Lascoe, David Opatoshu, Philip Sterling.
Recorded March 6, 1955.

Track Listing
1. Body and Soul
2. When Day Is Done
3. Bouncing With Bean
4. April in Paris
5. Angel Face
6. I Love You
7. There Will Never Be Another You
8. Little Girl Blue
9. Bean Stalks Again, The
10. Have You Met Miss Jones?

Personnel includes: Coleman Hawkins (tenor saxophone); Thelma Carpenter (vocals); Benny Carter (alto saxophone, trumpet); Eustice Moore, Budd Johnson (alto saxophone); Fats Navarro, Jimmy Nottingham, Tommy Lindsay, Joe Guy (trumpet); Jimmy Buffington (French horn); J.C. Higginbotham, J.J. Johnson, Urbie Green, Jack Satterfield (trombone); Julius Baker, Sid Jekowsky (flute); Danny Polo (clarinet); Phil Bodner (oboe); Hal McKusick, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn (reeds); Marty Wilson (vibraphone); Gene Rodgers, Hank Jones (piano); Lawrence Lucie, Chuck Wayne, Barry Gailbraith (guitar); Johnny Williams, Milt Hinton, Oscar Smith, Jack Lesberg (bass); Walter Johnson, Max Roach, Osie Johnson, Art Herbert (drums); Phil Kraus (bells).

Recorded between October 11, 1939 and January 20, 1956. Includes liner notes by Ira Gitler.

Digitally remastered by Joe Lopes and Jay Newland (1991, BMG Recording Studios, New York, New York).

On APRIL IN PARIS, the king of tenor saxophone plays in myriad musical settings recorded over three decades. Hawkins' inimitable dark-toned sound is documented over these ten tracks. However, his classic recordings from the '30s and '40s demonstrate his legacy best. Whether it is "Body and Soul" or "Bouncing With Bean," Hawk's woody, vibrato-laden approach is in full bloom.

Songs such as "There Will Never Be Another You," "Little Girl Blue," and "Have you Met Miss Jones?" are enhanced by the delicate and lush sound of a string orchestra. Hawkins, known for a thick, almost abrasive sound, plays lighter and more romantically (a la his friend Lester Young) on these tracks.

Includes work(s) for flute by Johann Sebastian Bach. Ensemble: I Solisti di Zagreb. Soloists: James Galway, Kyung-Wha Chung, Kurt Moll, Moray Welsh.

SOPHISTICATED LADY DUKE ELLIN

NARCISO YEPES, GODELIEVE MONDE

NANCARROW: STUDIES INGO METZM

A towering and majestic performance.

Slatkin gives a towering and majestic performance of the Sinfonia Antartica (No. 7), which evolved from RVW’s score for the film Scott of the Antarctic. It must be regarded as the best modern choice, eclipsing even Haitink’s impressive EMI recording. Slatkin’s Antarctic wilderness chills you to the bone. You smile at the comic dignity of the penguins, are awed at the immensity and weight of the ice wall and thoroughly involved in the human tragedy. A glowing account of the lovely Dives and Lazarus Variants completes a very attractive issue.

Performance: 5 (out of 5), Sound: 5 (out of 5)

-- Ian Lace, BBC Music Magazine

RIGHT AS THE RAIN - LEONTYNE P

THERE COMES A TIME GIL EVANS

DELIUS: CELLO CONCERTO LLOYD

Francesca da Rimini is a tapestry of sumptuous orchestral color and florid arabesques with a Salomé-like savagery. Kabaivanska sings with plenty of vehemence, while Arena conducts with feeling for the alluring colors and textures of the score.

Zandonai is a fascinatingly anomalous figure, a fundamentally flawed composer but at times a very impressive and curiously original one. Born in 1883, he was one of the generation of Italian composers who had to decide whether to continue the Puccinian line or to contract one or other of those modernisms that Puccini himself described as "venereal diseases of music that come from beyond the Alps". Zandonai did neither; his music is variously described by Italian critics as art nouveau, 'Liberty' (after the London furnishing store) or pre-Raphaelite, and in defining his style some such visual metaphor seems more apt than a recital of the obvious influences upon him of Wagner, Richard Strauss and his teacher Mascagni... Francesca da Rimini has been continuously in the Italian repertory since its first performance in 1914 but who, asked one speaker, can whistle any of its tunes? There is an element of truth in this. The first appearance of Paolo, with whom Francesca falls instantly, adulterously and fatedly in love, is quite magical: a tapestry of sumptuous orchestral colour, with ecstatic choral interjections and florid arabesques from a group of exotic obbligato instruments (lute, piffero and viola pomposa)—pre-Raphaelite indeed, and a wonderful image of Paolo's glamour in Francesca's eyes, but memory retains the impression of a richly complex embroidery in which the melodic line is subsidiary to the overall pattern-making. Even the gorgeously beautiful love-duet in Act 3 makes as much of its effect with texture and colour and with fluid declamation as with its moments of lyrical expansion...

Zandonai's hieratic, 'patterned' style (he makes much use of varied repetition and ostinato) is very well suited to evoking the archaic, the ethereal and the bright freshness of the opera's medieval Italian setting, but the story of Paolo and Francesca contains savagery and horror also, especially in D'Annunzio's version (the basis for Zandonai's libretto). D'Annunzio emphasized the sadistic, Salome-like aspects of the plot (there is an almost prurient preoccupation with blood in his text, much talk of dismemberment and deformity), and these are reflected with dismaying fidelity by Zandonai's 'other' manner, a pile-driving use of gestural ostinato that can only be termed brutal. He uses it in the battle scene in Act 2, less to evoke the conflict itself than to emphasize how Francesca's infatuation is intensified by danger and violence, and again in Act 4 where her downfall is plotted with repulsive savagery. More worrying still, it is this latter manner that he uses for what ought to be the culmination of all those lovely pre-Raphaelite scenes: the last meeting of Paolo and Francesca is a shouting-match on two notes, an image of strenuously self-destroying lust that owes more to D'Annunzio's decadent sensationalism than to Dante's pitying tenderness.

These flaws almost pull the opera apart (they require, aside from anything else, two quite different styles of singing), but a strong and lyrical performance can make the pre-Raphaelite Zandonai seem to dominate his repulsive alter ego. This is such a performance... Kabaivanska's voice is not so fresh as once it was, but it still has some grace and plenty of vehemence. Matteuzzi begins like a decent, conventional Italian tenor but then demonstrates that he can sing with quiet subtlety, even in the higher register. Manuguerra sings well enough but makes a less interesting villain of Francesca's jealous husband than that admirable character tenor Piero De Palma as the really nasty member of the Malatesta family (he too lusts after Francesca after—typical D'Annunzio touch—she binds up his blinded eye with her kerchief)... Maurizio Arena conducts with an obvious feeling for the alluring shot colours and encrusted textures of the score. He is slightly let down by what sounds like a rather under-staffed string section, more seriously by a recording which places the singers very far forward and in dazzlingly bright focus: Francesca da Rimini is not an opera for canary-fanciers who couldn't care less what's happening in the orchestra, but this recording treats it at times as though it were... The lute called for by Zandonai sounds at times very like a harp and at others very like a banjo; the piffero, as intended, is impersonated by an oboe, and the viola pomposa (otherwise known as the violoncello d'amore) sounds quite splendid. The best pages of Francesca do Rimini have a Burne-Joneslike mystery and radiance to them that neither Zandonai's darker side nor an insensitive recording can obscure.

-- Gramophone [7/1988]

*** This title is a reissue of a Japanese release with liner notes in Japanese. ***