New Records

Handel: Messiah (Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Malcolm Sargent conducting; Huddersfield Choral Society, with Isobel Baillie, soprano, Gladys Ripley, contralto, James Johnston, tenor and Norman Walker, basso; Columbia, two albums--38 sides, $22.50). An outstanding performance but not quite as good as the version done by Sir Thomas Beecham more than 15 years ago. Performance: orchestra and chorus, excellent; soloists, fair.

Khachaturian: Gayne (pronounced "guy-nuh") Ballet Suite (New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, Efrem Kurtz conducting; Columbia, 6 sides). The furious-paced, but sometimes silkily lush music for Khachaturian's ballet on Soviet collective farm life. The ballet, which is loud with the pounding rhythms of Armenian dances, won its 43-year-old Soviet-Armenian composer the Stalin Prize in 1942. Performance: excellent.

Falla: El Amor Brujo (the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski conducting, with Nan Merriman, mezzo-soprano; Victor, 6 sides; the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner conducting, with Carol Brice, contralto; Columbia, 6 sides). Reiner's version of this Debussy-scented Andalusian suite, which includes the popular Fire Dance, is less vivid than Stokowski's.

Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps (San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Monteux conducting; Victor, 8 sides). Stravinsky's disjointed, noisy ballet music played with assurance, brilliance, clarity and precision by the tubby little maestro who first shocked a Paris audience with it 34 years ago.

Chopin: Concerto No. 2 in F Minor (Artur Rubinstein, with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, William Steinberg conducting; Victor, 7 sides). Chopin, never at his ease in large, rigid forms, played superbly by Rubinstein, always at his best in Chopin. Performance: excellent.

Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin (soloists, orchestra and chorus of the Moscow State Theater; Disc, two albums, 34 sides). Recorded in Russia, sung in near-hysterical Russian style. Performance: good.

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