Word: lps
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VERDI: FALSTAFF (3 LPs; Columbia). Verdi's last opera, an ebullient celebration of love and life, was written when he was 79, and Leonard Bernstein has captured all of its beauty and range. The entire cast exploits the comic possibilities in the music, but Regina Resnik as Dame Quickly and Graziella Sciutti as Nanetta stand out-along with the redoubtable Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who, as Falstaff, makes his voice convey everything from arrogance to cravenness to humiliation. At times the mirth seems about to explode in all directions, but Bernstein's firm hand directing the Vienna Philharmonic gathers...
...Folk Singer Buffy Sainte-Marie, 24, passionately pleading the cause of her fellow Indians when she is not recording top-selling LPs. It is Artist Jamie Wyeth, 20, improving on his father's style while putting in some 200 hours on a portrait of John F. Kennedy; Violinist James Oliver Buswell, 20, carrying a full Harvard freshman load and a 44-city concert tour simultaneously; Actress Julie Christie, 25, shedding miniskirt for bonnet and shawl while filming Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd and denouncing "kooky clothing" in the women's magazines. It is Sanford Greenberg...
...hills are alive still with the sound of success. Julie's recording of the Sound of Music holds the sales record (7,000,000) for all LPs, and her album of My Fair Lady (6,000,000 copies) is second. This month her LP of Christmas songs, recorded as a special premium offer for Firestone, is selling like crazy at Firestone dealers for $1 a throw. Even her rare appearances on television ring up records. Her last TV special, in November 1965, pulled 35 million viewers-more than the Streisand show or the Carol Channing show or the Sinatra...
HANDEL THE MESSIAH (3 LPs). Handel himself scored several versions of his oratorio, and they bear scant resemblance to the later interpretations inflated by choruses of thousands. Today's revived interest in baroque music has resulted in two new albums that aim at authenticity, each using a chorus of 40 or fewer and an orchestra of similar size. The soloists in both albums strive -with mixed success -to ornament their melodies in 18th century style. Robert Shaw (RCA Victor), conducting his own chorale and orchestra, shows how dramatic the scaled-down work can be; his version, with its furiously...
BEETHOVEN: MISSA SOLEMNIS (2 LPs; Angel). Otto Klemperer conducts the New Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus in a surging declaration of faith that should sweep away all earlier versions of the work, including his own. A second new recording, by Herbert von Karajan (on Deutsche Grammophon), approaches the music more humanly and pleadingly -and the effect is surprisingly persuasive. His orchestra is the Berlin Philharmonic and two soloists are especially fine: Gundula Janowitz and Christa Ludwig. For majesty, take Klemperer; for beauty, Von Karajan...