Word: lps
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Verdi: Simon Boccanegra (Victoria de los Angeles, Tito Gobbi. Giuseppe Cam-pora, Boris Christoff; Rome Opera House Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Gabriele Santini; Capitol-EMI, 3 LPs). Verdi constructed his stately, somber-hued monument to paternal love and loyalty midway in his career, saw it fail at the box office and later agreed with the public that it was a "monotonous and cold'' work. Nevertheless, he returned to it after 25 years and extensively revised it. Not often performed, the revised Boccanegra is a fascinating melange of early Verdian flamboyance and late Verdian depth. In this...
Weill: Die Dreigroschenoper-The Threepenny Opera (Lotte Lenya, with supporting cast and orchestra conducted by Wilhelm Bruckner-Ruggeberg; Colum-bia, 2 LPs). Composer Weill's widow Lotte Lenya (TIME, Aug. n) went to Berlin last winter to handpick and train singers, direct a 30th anniversary recording of the complete score (including some lusty, gutsy sections never before performed) for the first time in Bertolt Brecht's inimitable original German. The result is by far the best recorded recreation of Kurt Weill's jazzy, bitterly ironic score, with Singer Lenya herself heading a first-rate cast. Every sardonic...
Mahler: Symphony No. 2, "Resurrection" (Emilia Cundari, Maureen Forrester, Westminster Choir; New York Philharmonic, conducted by Bruno Walter; Columbia, 2 LPs). An invaluable record of a mammoth mixture of mysticism, romanticism and folklore by a composer often rated alongside history's greatest, conducted by his disciple, close friend and most inspired interpreter...
...Night Session (Hampton Hawes Quartet; Contemporary, 3 LPs) seems designed to prove Composer Babbitt wrong, and to show once again that real jazz must be improvised. Pianist Hawes, Guitarist Jim Hall, Bass Player Red Mitchell and Drummer Bruz Freeman turned up at the studio one night and piled into Jordu and Groovin' High, and from there on "we just played because we love to play." The result is one of the few genuine jam sessions on LPs. The quartet offers some effervescent readings of blues and ballads, including four numbers composed on the spot by Pianist Hawes. For listeners...
Rossini: Le Comte Ory (Sari Barabas, Cora Canne-Meijer, Juan Oncina, Michel Roux; the Glyndebourne Festival Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Vittorio Gui; Angel, 2 LPs). "A collection of diverse beauties," said Berlioz of Rossini's next-to-last opera, "which would make the fortune not of one but of two or three operas." The melodic beauties are there in full measure, as this first recording of Le Comte demonstrates, but linked together they constitute not three operas but a splintered fragment of one. The work has some rich ensemble climaxes and some rippling solo parts, but after...