Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 4, No. 6 (1930-03)

184 The Phonograph Monthly Review March, 1930 tras of this country play a Strauss waltz or two in order to give the laymian an opportunity to really enjoy one of these organizations' record- ings. It would be interesting to hear what these same orchestras could do with a popular march." The Victor Company has not been slow in real- izing the importance of the suggestion made above. This month we have a recording of Sousa's famous Stars and Stripes Forever and equally famous El Capitan, played by the Phila- delphia Symphony Orchestra. And what a strik- ing record it is! Be sure to hear it on your next visit to your dealer and I am confident that you will include it in this month's budget. During a visit to New York last week, I learned that the Columbia Company will follow up its ex- cellent release of Tchaikowsky's Fifth Symphony, played by Mengelberg and the Amsterdam Con- certgebouw Orchestra (Masterworks Set No. 104), with the same artists' recording of Tchai- kowsky's Fourth. This is indeed good news. My associates on the staff and I are looking forward with the greatest anticipation to the arrival of these advance samples at the studio. However, I am sorry to say that the sale of Masterworks Set No. 104 has not been as satisfactory as could be expected from the artistic and mechanical perfection of that work. As I stated at the time this set was released, it is one of the most im- pressive recordings ever issued by any company. Once again I call special attention to the ex- cellent celebrity releases the Brunswick Com- pany has been favoring us with during the last few months. The feature of this month's release, Wagner's Lohengrin in abridged form, should be widely popular, and it too should not be overlook- ed by any of our readers when next they visit their record dealers. Recorded Spanish Music by ROBERT DONALDSON DARRELL A T first thought one would be inclined to say that the music of Spain is exceptionally well represented on records. Obviously, its distinctive qualities of piquant coloring and vivid rhythmical life are those which make for highly successful phonography, and the lively esteem in which the phonograph is held among Spanish-speaking peoples is testified to by the fact that the manufacturers find it necessary to supply Spanish translations of the English titles of their popular releases. But a moment's con- sideration reveals the situation in a somewhat different light. True enough, the Spanish idiom is ideally adapted for recording—but how often are the recorded examples not merely quaisi- Iberian? Hispanic America has an apparently insatiable appetite for disks, but if the authen- tically Spanish works are sifted out, they prove to be very few. In the great bulk of Spanish- American recordings, a majority of which are no better or worse than the majority of our own popular recordings, there are works which de- serve serious study. But their merits are their own, and while the Spanish influence is the pre- dominant one, they are of the new world and not the old. And so narrowing our field to the re- corded music that is genuinely Spanish, its ex- tensiveness is very greatly reduced. But the residue is not inconsiderable, either in extent or in significance. In the last two years alone it has been steadily and rapidly growing until now it can truthfully be claimed that there is a representative recorded literature available. The bulk of it of course consists of folk and pop- ular music, but as that subject has been capably dealt with elsewhere, and as in any case I am unequipped to deal with it all, I propose to confine the present survey largely to the field of “com- posed" music, and even more specifically to the works of the leading Spanish composers. As most of these works are but newly recorded, the article will be partly an augmentation of a more exten- sive study that appeared during the first year of The Phonograph Monthly Review, W. S. Marsh's splendid paper* on Musical Spain via Phonograph which ran in the December 1926 and February 1927 issues. Mr. Marsh is not merely a master of the subject, he is vigorously stimulated by it to infectiously spirited writing. The three years or more that have passed since its appearance have not dulled it in the slightest, and it makes as enjoyable reading (to say noth- ing of its information value) today as it did then. The description of the various Spanish dances and the study of the “zarzuelas"—and particu- larly the best of them, The Land of Joy"—are