Word: lps
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BRAHMS: GERMAN REQUIEM (Deutsche Grammophon; 2 LPs). "Blessed are they that mourn," softly sings the chorus, and soon the sad saraband begins ("For all flesh is as grass"). At length the black solemnity is relieved by the soaring soprano voice of Gundula Janowitz singing "I will see you again." A powerful, rhythmically relentless performance by Herbert von Karajan, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Singverein...
WAGNER: DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NüRNBERG (RCA Victor; 5 LPs). There is no single coruscating star unless it is Conductor Joseph Keilberth, who makes the long score snap with life rarely caught even when recorded, as this was, during a performance (the opening of the rebuilt National Theater in Munich). Basses Otto Wiener and Hans Hotter give their well-established interpretations as Hans Sachs and Veit Pogner, but the freshest voices belong to two Americans, Soprano Claire Watson as Eva and Tenor Jess Thomas as Walther...
MAHLER: SYMPHONY No. 9 (Angel; 2 LPs). Mahler's orchestral masterwork, his last completed symphony, is played in the grand manner by the Berlin Philharmonic, Sir John Barbirolli conducting. The first movement, as long as Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, is full of fluctuating rhythms that move along with a tidelike pull. Barbirolli lets them ebb and flow, then swings vigorously into the dissonant dance movement and the coarse burlesque Rondo that mock the first floating dreams...
BRUCKNER: SYMPHONY No. 8 (Deutsche Grammophon; 2 LPs). Like Mahler...
...cain't roller-skate in a buffalo herd," suggests his favorite song, "but you can be happy if you've a mind to." In a twangy baritone that is happy scatting, whoop-whooping, country yodeling or just plain singing, he has recorded 25 songs on two LPs, all but one of them his own. But somehow his name is not widely known. It is probably because he does not impose himself, any more than he imposes his lyrics...