Word: beethovens
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...Beethoven: Fidelio (Rose Bampton, Jan Peerce, Herbert Janssen; NBC Symphony conducted by Arturo Toscanini; Victor, 2 LPs). Beethoven's only opera, which he reworked, shaped and worried over until it was as lean and passionate as he could make it. Its story-of a devoted wife who rescues her husband from a vengeful tyrant-is projected with all the heat of Toscanini's conviction. It was recorded in 1944 from the earliest of the maestro's-famed operatic broadcasts, but the fine performers sound through the technical imperfections...
...Symphony conducted by Leonard Bernstein; Columbia). A brilliant composer of the younger generation, Massachusetts' Harold Shapero, 34, has an ear for bright sonorities, a gift for formal construction, and a fascination for bygone masterpieces that has caused controversy. This attractive work, completed in 1947, parallels his efforts in Beethoven, Haydn and Stravinsky styles, resembles Prokofiev more than any other model...
...another good Person to Person program, with Lillian Gish arguing charmingly but ineptly for a Secretary of Fine Arts to be added to the President's Cabinet, and Robert Q. Lewis surprising few viewers by denying that he is a comedian. On Omnibus, Composer Leonard Bernstein analysed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and showed, with orchestral help, how Beethoven made repeated false starts and fruitless excursions in composing his masterpiece...
...appearance of LPs, once-bulky record albums became slender. Now major labels are again selling bulk, by releasing records in packages and series. As the winter music season got under way, several large, attractive series were on the counters. Victor released the second two LP volumes of the Beethoven Piano Sonatas, played with unbeatable fire and insight by the late great Artur Schnabel. London completed its own releases of the same series by 70-year-old Wilhelm Backhaus, as well as all seven Symphonies by British Composer Ralph Vaughan Williams with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult...
...best, it swings as vigorously as any of its predecessors, but once it starts swinging, it seems to move on to more interesting matters, such as tinkering up a little canon à la Bach or some dissonant counterpoint à la Bartok or even a thrashing crisis à la Beethoven...