New Records

Hot jazz and boogie, between bright red and yellow album covers, have stolen the record show this spring. Victor has issued six jazz albums (priced higher than its standard Red Seal records) ranging from old New Orleans Pioneer "Jelly Roll" Morton through contemporary Benny Goodman and Lionel Hampton. Columbia has reissued an 18-album series featuring Louis

Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basic, Bix Beiderbecke and Frank Teschemacher. Decca has marketed such choice collections as Riverboat Jazz and Harlem Jazz, 1930. Asch has continued to record the jazz chamber music played in Manhattan's nightclubs by Mary Lou Williams and Art Tatum.

For more conservative collectors:

Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major (Vladimir Horowitz and the NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini conducting; Victor, 12 sides). A reissue of a brilliant 1941 recording. Performance and recording: excellent.

Lily Pons: Bell Song from Delibes' Lakme, and Mad Scene from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor (Columbia, 6 sides). The Met coloratura's polished style, as well as her occasional variance from pitch, heard in her two most famed roles. Performance and recording: good.

Andres Segovia: Music of Albeniz and Granados (Decca, 6 sides). Segovia's fastidious reading of two Spanish composers--on a guitar as sensitive as a harp --makes this the collector's album of the month. Performance: excellent. Recording: good.

Stravinsky: Scenes de Ballet (Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, Igor Stravinsky conducting; Columbia, 4 sides). Much more exciting in concert version than in Billy Rose's The Seven Lively Arts, for which it was commissioned. Performance and recording: excellent.

Chopin: Music to Remember (Jose Iturbi; Victor, 4 sides). The four piano pieces with which Iturbi put Chopin on the cinema hit parade. Performance: excellent. Recording: good.

George Gershwm: Show Tunes (Andre Kostelanetz and his orchestra; Columbia, 8 sides). Gershwin's impressionism made sweet and fancy as a Strauss waltz. Performance: fair. Recording: good.

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