Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 5, No. 12 (1931-09)

September 193b Vol. V, No. 12 323 only is a wise investment even although only one side will be played. Dealers dislike to “break” sets, but they can always order single discs from a set through their jobbers, and will do so on request. Considerable trouble is involved in obtaining odd side pieces when the whole album set is not wanted, but when the music and performance are unquestion- ably superb, that trouble is a pleasure to take. I shall begin with pieces that are at present the only—to the best of my knowedge—or the best electrically recorded versions. Limiting the field for a time to orchestral work only, I think first of one of the most charming pieces of music and gracious recording I know, the exquisite Corelli Sarabande con- ducted by Arbos on the odd side of the Bach Suite in D (Columbia). Arbos has given us at least one other notable 1 odd side recording: the Intermezzo from Granados' Goyescas (a hackneyed piece ,to be sure, but played here exceptionally well). It comes with the Col- umbia set of Scheherazade . Another great favorite should be Schubert's Rosamunde En- tr'acte played by Furtwangler on the fourth side of the third Bach Brandenburg Concerto (Brunswick). More than any other conductor Kousse- vitzky, of the Boston Symphony (Victor) has selected odd side recordings of the utmost in- terest. Only one of the four to his credit is elsewhere recorded: the march and scherzo from Prokofieff's Love for the Three Oranges (with the “Classical'' Symphony). The others are a simple, infinitely moving Gymnopedie by Satie (with the Ravel Bolero), a Debussy Sarabande, brilliantly orchestrated by Ravel (Moussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition), and perhaps best of all, the gracious varia- tion, Apollo and Terpsichore, from Strawin- ski's Apollon Musagete (Petrouchka) . The scoring is for strings alone, and for sheer, transparent loveliness of recorded string tone this odd side is unsurpassed by anything in recorded music. Coates comes close to emulating Kousse- vitzky in the number and interest of the pieces he has chosen for fillers. Three are otherwise unrecorded: the rangy Dance of the Spirits for Earth from Holsts' opera The Perfect Fool (with Ravel's La Valse), Elgar's orchestration of a magnificent overture in D minor (with Tod und Verklarung), and a Beethoven Allegretto in E flat (with Bee^- thoven's “Eroica”). The other four are Mozart's Impressario overture (with the “Jupiter” symphony), Tannhauser's Rome Pilgrimage ( Tannhauser overture), and a transcription of Liadow's tinkling Music Box (Eight Russian Fairy 1 Tales). Short overtures, as indicated in several in- stances above, make excellent material for odd side recordings. Unfortunately the tend- ency is not always to select some of the ex- cellent unhackneyed fare that is available. The Impressario is a good choice; likewise Mozart's Ideomeno (with Kleiber's fine two- disc set of German Dances for Brunswick), Beethoven's Ruins of Athens overture (with Casal's H. M. V. version of the fourth sym- phony), Monteux's version (the best) of Ber- lioz's Les Troyens a Carthage overture (with the French H. Mi. V. discs of the Benvenuto Cellini overture), D'lndy's Fervaal overture (with Wolff's Brunswick version of Franck's Chausseur Maudit) , and finally the sprightly Abu Hassan overture of Weber, which has been twice done on odd sides, first, and per- haps most characteristically by Hamilton Harty (with the Haydn “Clock” Symphony— Columbia), and later by Max von Schillings (with the Columbia recording of Weber's Euryanthe overture). I omitted one interesting overture, Schu- bert's Zwillingsbriider, for separate mention under the conductor's name, Alois Melichar, Melichar is Brunswick-Polydor’s special ap- pointee for odd sides. Instead of the album set conductor being called on to provide the “encore”, Herr Melichar is called in and al- most invariably succeeds in giving us some- thing well off the beaten track. Besides the Schubert overture (which is issued with the Richard Strauss version of Mozart's G minor), he has also done a Valse D'Amour by Reger (with the Burger als Edelmann suite), a Liszt orchestration of a Schubert Hungarian March (with Wagner's Faust overture), and the Eugen Onegin Polonais— a welcome variation from the perennial waltz (with Tchaikowski's Capriccio Italien). These are all Brunswick releases. Others —conducted by the scintillating Wolff—in- clude a transcription of Mendelssohn's Spin- ning Song (with the Midsummer Night's Dream overture), Berlioz's Rakoczy March (with Brahms' Academic Festival overture), and the weird little musical fairy tale by Lia- dow, Baba Yaga (with Dukas' L'Apprenti sorcier ). For the Columbia Company Willem Men- gelberg has provided the best odd side per- formances, all of them of the highest merit: the Adagietto from Bizet's L'Arlesienne (with Moussorgsky's Night on Bare Moun- tain), Tchaikowsky's Valse-Serenade (with the brilliant Tchaikowsky fourth symphony), the scherzo from the Midsummer Night's Dream music (with the overture from the same incidental music), and a transcription of Beethoven's Turkish March (with the English Columbia Leonora No. 3 overture, not yet issued in this country. Other note- worthy Columbia odd sides are Gaubert's per-