New Records

The third release of Columbia's A-for-effort Modern American Music Series contains music by ten composers on five LPs. None of the selections can qualify as a masterpiece, but some of them have a solid enough appeal. String Quartet No. 1, by Russian-born Alexei Haieff (played by the Juilliard Quartet), is a gentle composition that makes the most of the ensemble's wispy, wistful potentialities. The piece is old-fashioned without embarrassment, sometimes uses modern techniques without effort. Sonata for Piano and Percussion is by one of the world's few women composers, Australia-born Peggy Glanville-Hicks, 42. A vigorous piece, it craftily blends the disparate instruments, but drives home its points, even in the lyrical slow movement, almost too insistently.

Two composers who serve on the advisory committee of the series are paired on one LP. String Quartet No. 2 (1932), by Composer Virgil Thomson, is a smooth-gliding composition that would be more fun if it contained more of the surrealist ambiguity of Thomson's later style. William Schuman's five piano pieces called Voyage (played by Beveridge Webster) include two that find the composer more absorbed in the web of his ponderous sonorities than a listener ever could be; other movements titillate the ear with a kind of hectic animation.

Elsewhere in the series. Concerto for Piano--Four Hands, by Philadelphia's Teacher-Composer Vincent Persichetti, starts off in a tortured, plodding style, goes on to crank out some astonishing, dervish-like activity. Lilacs and Portals, by one of the "bad boys" of the '20s, Carl Ruggles (played by the Juilliard String Orchestra), are handsome but dated experiments in sound combinations. Since Columbia can hardly expect to show a profit on this series anyway, it seems a shame it does not grit its worthy teeth and bring out at least a few samples of really controversial music.

Other new records:

Bartok: Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano (Rafael Druian, John Simms; Mercury). Written at Bartok's most dissonant period, in 1922, this rarely heard sonata bursts with haunting effects. It contains whole sections where adjacent notes sound sweet as a simple triad, others where the same kind of crowded combinations become strident and even brutal, and yet the whole mysterious piece works out as logically as a Haydn minuet. It is expertly played by the concertmaster of the Minneapolis Symphony and Pianist Simms.

Beethoven: "Eyeglass" Duet for Viola and Cello (Joseph de Pasquale and Samuel Mayes; Boston). One of the most recently discovered Beethoven treasures (first published in 1912 ), this one is puckishly scored "with two eyeglasses obbligato." Scholars are still puzzling over what this notation means; Beethoven may have simply wanted to say: "Take a close look at the notes, boys, and play it right." Boston Symphony First Deskmen de Pasquale and Mayes play it so right and so resonantly that it sometimes sounds like a full quartet.

Kirsten Flagstad (Victor). Lieder by Schubert, Brahms, Strauss, both gentle and dramatic, sung with the melting grace and liquid power that few singers can match. An interesting comparison can be made with A Milanov Recital (also Victor), in which the Metropolitan Opera soprano pours her opulent tones into a pair of the same tunes (among others), but makes them sound like Verdi.

Stravinsky: Symphony No. 1, Op. 1 (Vienna Orchestral Society conducted by F. Charles Adler; Unicorn). A totally uncharacteristic work by the century's most notorious modernist. This beginner's work contains the material of Tchaikovsky without his melodic gift, the orchestration of Rimsky-Korsakov without his logic, the structure of Brahms in all his squareness. A good joke.

Weill: Concerto for Violin and Wind Orchestra, Op. 12 (Anahid Ajemian; M-G-M Wind Orchestra conducted by Izler Solomon; M-G-M). A selection from Kurt Weill's nearly forgotten early period in Germany. The first movement is modern, the second a sleazy serenade with a crude rhythm jiggling under a high-toned fiddle, the third a romping gallop. Despite the strange orchestration that leaves the mid-range empty, the music is rich harmonically, and contains snatches of Weill's low-down lyricism that was to blossom into Three-Penny Opera, Street Scene, September Song, etc. Performance: first-rate.

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