Word: lps
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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...
Bartok: The Wooden Prince (The New Symphony Orchestra of London conducted by Walter Siisskind; Bartok, 2 LPs). Music for a "dancing play" from the late Hungarian master's middle period. The plot: boy wants girl; fairy queen (in enchanted forest) thwarts boy; girl wants boy; boy bored. The music, completed in 1916, before Bartok had honed down his modernities, is as lush as Richard Strauss, as elegant as Debussy...
With the 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...
Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier (Maria Reining, Sena Jurinac, Hilde Gueden, Ludwig Weber; Vienna State Opera Chorus; Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Erich Kleiber; London; 4 LPs). Strauss's most melodious score, in a stunning performance. It is dominated by the three brilliant sopranos, whose closing trio is the most affecting part of the opera, but the whole cast is in top form...
...latest product of a Stamford, Conn, sound engineer, Emory Cook, who got into the record business with an equally unusual record of chiming music boxes, built his label (Sounds of Our Times) up to the point where he is now releasing full-scale symphony LPs, has other record executives keeping a slightly envious eye on him. Cook's market remains mostly "audiophiles," who shiver in ecstasy over a tingling triangle while hardly noticing whether the music is a symphony or a psalm. But the number of listeners who look for realism in recorded sound is multiplying every day. Last...