Classical Records

A few months after the death of Com poser Maurice Ravel in 1937, his brother Edouard saw Disney's feature-length cartoon Snow White and decided that "this is the way L'Enfant et les Sortileges should be presented. Ravel's second and last opera had for its locale the mind of a child. In its cast are teapots as big as a man, cats who talk of love, squirrels who ruminate on redemption. It calls for 18 principals and a chorus of tree frogs, and one of its climactic solo passages by a Chinese cup (mezzo-soprano) consists of this mad litany, set to a foxtrot tempo:

Ping, pong, ping, pong

Keng-c,a fou, Mahjong

Cas-ka-ra, harakiri, Sessue Hayakawa

Kek-ta fouhtuh d'mon Kaoua?

Ravel's opera was a critical success but a popular failure at the Opera-Comique in Paris in 1926 (the love duet of the cats, with its mewing violins, enraged the audience). Nevertheless, L'Enfant contains some of Ravel's most appealing music, as a fine new Deutsche Gramophon recording conducted by Lorin Maazel--the first of the opera in stereo--again demonstrates.

The story, by Colette, has a Hans Christian Andersen simplicity: a naughty child, in a harlequin rage, rips up the furniture, twists the cat's tail, yanks the clock's pendulum and exults: "I'm free--naughty and free." In the second scene, the animals gather to threaten the child, forgive him only after he has come to the aid of an injured squirrel.

The libretto was ideal for a composer who retained a lifelong longing for the "green paradise of childhood." Ravel was determined that "the vocal line should dominate," and it does, against an orchestra as luminous as any Ravel ever created. Among the opera's more effective touches: a procession of shepherds and shepherdesses to a sinuous dance theme played by reed pipes and tambourines; the dizzying dance of the digits (Mon Dieu! c'est I'arithmetique!) to raucous and leering brasses.

Other new records:

Janequin: Choral Works (the Bach Choral Society of Montreal, conducted by George Little; Vox). The strange, polyphonic songs of the 16th century French composer who pushed musical description to a new high--or low. Stereo fans will be fascinated by two pieces in particular: Le Chant des Oiseaux, in which the chorus twitters and coos, and La Guerre, in which the chorus, without lifting its collective voice beyond a murmur, suggests the confused clamor of the battlefield.

Mozart: Concertos for Horn and Orchestra (Albert Linder, horn; Vienna State Opera Orchestra, conducted by Hans Swarowsky; Vanguard). The four concertos Mozart wrote for horn are all beauties --full of pert, charming and sometimes humorous ideas put together with faultless style and taste. Danish Hornist Linder does them justice.

Mauricio Kagel: TransiciOn II (Time). With its suddenly splatted chords, its plocks and thunks and harplike glissandos. Argentine-born Composer Kagel's piece for piano, percussion and magnetic tapes suggests a very drunk fraternity pianist trying to play Stardust in pitch darkness, occasionally mashing his fingers with the piano lid. Weirdly compelling, but likely to make few converts to the electronic school.

Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. I & 8 (the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Pierre Monteux; RCA Victor). The Pierre Monteux of 86 has a natural affinity for the Beethoven of 30 and of 42.

Poulenc: Sextet for Piano & Woodwind Quintet (Frank Glazer, piano; the New York Woodwind Quintet; Concert-Disc). After 30 years, Poulenc's tart and witty notes still work surprisingly well. Many a composer might envy the piece's weakness: a manner sometimes too glib and an oversupply of ideas.

Faure: La Bonne Chanson (Martial Singher, baritone, and instrumentalists from the Marlboro Music Festival; Columbia; and Gerard Souzay, baritone, accompanied by Dalton Baldwin, piano; Epic). Two new recordings of the nine songs Faure composed to the cycle of poems addressed by Verlaine to his fiancee ("One bright summer day the sun will second my joy The sky like a tall tent will wave around us"). As might be expected of the two leading interpreters of French art songs, both readings are of first quality. Singher, at his peak, is marred only occasionally by an overexpressive wobble. Souzay's touch is lighter, his pace brisker, his tonal coloration less varied. But he somehow seems closer to the text's vernal moods.

Hindemith: String Quartet No. 3 (The Kroll Quartet; Epic). A fine recording of a 1922 work that is admirably forthright in feeling, rhythmically sophisticated, studded with complexities and equipped with an impressively melancholy slow movement.

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