Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1930-11)

38 The Phonograph Monthly Review Editorial B USINESS drought or no, this year’s phono- graphic harvest is the richest, the most di- versified, in the history of recorded music. Beside the musical feast for the 1930 phonophile’s Thanksgiving, the best menus of the so-called golden days of the phonograph, at the height of the acoustical area, offered meagre fare indeed. I don’t know how well our reviewing staff is qualified as musical dieticians. I’m afraid that we cannot offer a great deal of help to the hungry but bewildered record buyer. The release lists are apparently illimitable this month; this is no time for cocksure and off-hand advice that this set and that set should be bought. In the first place, there is almost no one who can afford to purchase even a majority of the important recordings dis- cussed in this issue. It has been almost impossible for one person even to hear them all. I have been playing more discs than at any time I can remem- ber, and yet there are dozens of them that went out to the reviewers unheard or hastily listened to. Several releases in the Victor special list have had to be deferred until next month, notably Delius’ In a Summer Garden and A Song Before Sunrise, Schmitt’s Tragedy of Salome, and the Theremin exercise and accompaniment records— forecast in last month’s Theremin article. Also the 9th Victor Educational list containing several news discs by Dr. Damrosch and his broadcasting National Symphony Orchestra (three record sides of Gluck airs de ballet, an arrangement of a ga- votte from a Bach violoncello suite, Moszkowski’s Perpetual Motion, and a Faure Pavane) . As it is, more records are reviewed this month than in any previous issue of the P. M. R. The “balance” of the issue may be criticised, but I do not feel that the abundance of releases is an excuse for deny- ing the more important of them adequate review space. However, I imagine the magazine’s readers are not so much interested in the extensiveness of the November release lists as they are in practical ad- vice on spending their record budget to the best advantage. And whatever the critical and analy- tical virtues of the detailed reviews may be, the various reviewers are so intent on giving due honor to the ranking works in their own favorite form that the layman is confronted with several masterpieces each of choral, operatic, orchestral, and other recordings. There are record buyers who confine themselves exclusively to one type of disc alone, but musical specialization is a barren practice. The musical qualities of the records this month are scarcely superior to their superb versimilitude and the too cautious buyer is going to deny himself rare pleasures. Now if ever is the time to dare unblazed paths and to seek fresh musical vistas. I am going to give only passing salute to the sturdy labors of the companies in orthodox fields: Brunswick’s steadily expanding repertory of or- chestral works, Columbia’s yeoman service in the re-popularization of the piano, the continuation of Victor’s operatic series and the long list of im- ported recordings in the special release. Among all the records I have played there are a few that I have played again and again, and that—for me— rise steeply above the others in musical stature. First, two of the best records of the Polydor catalogue, which I am delighted to see re-pressed under Brunswick labels—the choruses and chor- ales from the St. Matthew Passion, worthy to be filed beside the best of the Bach discs. Then the Columbia Spanish Album, a happy and ingenious recognition of the flourishing popularity of Iber- ian composers, already seriously contesting their Russian colleagues’ hitherto invincible position as chief purveyors of musical color. Bach again, in the form of Elizabeth’ Schumann’s arias from the Matthew Passion and the 159th Cantata—the disc which more than any other has been held abroad to merit the title, “the perfect vocal record.” The Delius works, of course, and the little Bartok- Szigeti disc, the modest but invigorating begin- ning of what should be a series of recordings of the works of a musical pioneer. But even such delectable mountains are dwarfed beside the prime reasons for phonographic thanksgiving, two additions to recorded literature that will surely be ranked by the phono-historian of twenty years from now—and later—as musical landmarks. Ernest Bloch expressed the feeling of all modern musicians when he said, “Gregorian Chant is the basis of all our music, and probably the greatest, the most ‘modern’, the most beautiful