Word: lps
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John Cage: Indeterminacy (Music by David Tudor; Folkways, 2 LPs). In a search for a "new aspect of form," Composer Cage has glued 90 spasmodically rhythmic anecdotes (on such random subjects as a mushroom exhibition in Paris, a bridge-playing composer in "the loony bin") to the piano and electronic music of Fellow-Composer Tudor. The result is new, all right, and even engaging in spots, but for the most part it will remind the first listeners of a dyspeptic after dinner speaker talking through an electrical storm into a TV set with a faulty tube...
...Very First Time (Glenn Miller and his Orchestra; RCA, 3 LPs). A resurrection of 50 previously unreleased recordings of Miller broadcasts dating from the early '40s, when the band was in its roaring prime. The selections-I Cried For You, A-Tisket A-Tasket, Sweet and Low-carry a mistily nostalgic air, the big band sound is refulgent, and the phonograph shivers to a boldly swinging beat that has all but disappeared from the modern dance orchestra...
Bach: The Brandenburg Concertos (Baroque Ensemble of Stuttgart, conducted by Marcel Couraud; Columbia, 2 LPs). Six concertos, each for a different combination of instruments (including horns, oboes, bassoons, flutes, double bass), and each giving an ample showing of Bach's inventiveness and variety which range from dainty to dynamic, once again make clear why Bach is undisputed master of the baroque style...
Corelli: Concerti Grossi Opus 6 (Chamber Orchestra of the Societas Musica, directed by Jorgen Ernst Hansen; Vanguard, 3 LPs). An expert in the concerto-grosso form (where a group of solo instruments maintains a dialogue with an orchestral ensemble), Corelli was also the first to relax the strict contrapuntal style of his era, is shown in this recording to have mastered the full scope of string sonorities by making violins sound like a full-voiced choir...
Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (Spoken Word, 3 LPs) gets a fine new production by the players of the Dublin Gate Theatre, with Michael MacLiammoir as Malvolio, "sick of self-love," posturing his priggish way with timeless vulgarity. London is also out with a spate of Shakespeare-Coriolamis, Othello, Julius Caesar, Richard II-in a series of journeyman readings by the Marlowe Society players, who eventually will press all the plays. One of the most majestically read of the talking books is MGM's Joseph Conrad, in which Sir Ralph Richardson whittles Youth and Heart of Darkness to half...