Sounds for a Winter Night

By Christopher Porterfield

A sampler of classical LPs to keep the stereo glowing

Mozart: The Six Viola Quintets (Juilliard Quartet with John Graham, second viola, Columbia; 3 LPs). The best complete set of these masterpieces since the recording by the Budapest Quartet with Walter Trampler. The playing is supple and urgent, fully equal to the symphonic sweep of the great C major quintet as well as the tragic stoicism of the G minor. What it sometimes misses is the mystery of Mozart's luminous, godlike simplicity. But then that is the quality in Mozart that Artur Schnabel described as "too easy for children and too difficult for artists."

Strauss: Four Last Songs; Orchestral Songs (Soprano Kiri Te Kanawa, London Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Davis conductor, Columbia). The early items included here were written in the 1890s; the famous Four Last Songs, incredibly, date from half a century later, in 1948, when the 84-year-old Strauss roused himself to compose shimmering valedictories to nature, life and in effect to the 19th century. Te Kanawa's singing, with its creamy tones and long, effortlessly soaring phrases, is simply ravishing.

Beethoven: The Five Middle Quartets (Cleveland Quartet, RCA; 4 LPs). As if to mark its artistic coming of age, this ten-year-old group is moving impressively through that phonographic rite of passage for string quartets, a Beethoven cycle. The dramatic works in this installment burst the molds of classicism and prepare the way for the somber spirituality of the last quartets. The performances--strong and probing--capture the paradox of the quartet form: a cohesive ensemble but seemingly spontaneous individual voices.

Bartok: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 (Maurizio Pollini, Chicago Symphony, Claudio Abbado conductor, Deutsche Grammophon). Pollini has had a banner year on disc, issuing fine performances of a staple of the repertory (Beethoven's Third Concerto) as well as an avant-garde experiment (Luigi Nono's... sofferte onde serene ...). This set--modernist but accessible-- falls happily in-between. Bartok's angular octaves and Hungarian folk rhythms tempt many pianists to turn into percussionists. Pollini achieves a biting authority without ever banging.

Johann Christian Bach: Six Symphonies, Op. 3 (Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Neville Marriner conductor, Philips). Marriner has made more than 200 recordings with this London chamber orchestra, most of them in the pre-1800 repertory and quite a few of them models of punctilious, shapely interpretation. Never more so than here. These modest works by Bach's youngest son are lively, economical and flowering with the charm of a style that is well along the path leading from his august father to Mozart.

Berlioz: Beatrice et Benedict (Mezzo Janet Baker, Tenor Robert Tear, Soprano Christiane Eda-Pierre, John Alldis Choir, London Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis conductor, Philips; 2 LPs). In his final work, the ailing Berlioz took Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and made it into his own Tempest, a blend of wit, ardor and gentle sadness bathed in the amber light of a late Parisian afternoon. The opera may be better heard than seen, since its extended passages of French dialogue make it problematical to stage; certainly it is a pleasure in this buoyant, graceful version by Davis, with Baker as a captivating Beatrice.

Bach: Magnificat. Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms (Deutsche Oper Chorus, Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan conductor, Deutsche Grammophon). This is an apt pairing: a monument of the Baroque and a modern masterpiece whose liturgical austerity looks back to precedents in the Baroque and earlier. Karajan's Bach, velvety and well turned, may not be for purists, but the Stravinsky seems just right, with its tart syncopations dancing beneath a lustrous choral hymn of praise.

Mozart: Don Giovanni (Baritone Bernd Weikl and Bass-Baritone Gabriel Bacquier, Sopranos Margaret Price and Sylvia Sass, London Opera Chorus, London Philharmonic, Sir Georg Solti conductor, London; 4 LPs). "Summer lightning made audible" was Shaw's metaphor for this miraculous score, and it serves well to describe Solti's performance--swift, dramatic, deft. The tragic hints in the work are systematically underplayed; the elegant comic surface remains unbroken. Colin Davis' 1974 recording, with its darker moods and more muscular texture, still provides a compelling alternative reading. But the splendid cast and Solti's conducting make this set at least the equal of any now available.

P.D.Q. Bach: Black Forest Bluegrass (Vanguard). Composer Peter Schickele's latest burlesque features Blaues Gras, a hilarious collision between a stately 18th century cantata and some mean pickin' and strummin'. It just shows what Spike Jones could have done if he had gone to Juilliard.

Busoni: The Six Sonatinas for Piano (Paul Jacobs, Nonesuch). Frederick Rzewski: Song and Dance. John Harbison: The Flower-Fed Buffaloes (Speculum Musicae, John Harbison conductor, Nonesuch). These two discs exemplify the fare that tiny, enterprising Nonesuch has been putting out for 15 years, a mixture of the unhackneyed traditional and the contemporary. The Rzewski-Harbison set -- fresh, interesting chamber works by two Americans in their 40s -- is the latest in a long line of contemporary composers on the label, including Elliott Carter, Morton Subotnik and George Crumb. Last month None such's guiding spirit, Teresa Sterne, was dismissed and its future sessions canceled by the parent company, Elektra/Asylum (owned in turn by Warner Communications). Ominously, it now appears that many worthy scores may go unrecorded if the label is in the grip of those to whom the real score is the balance sheet.

--Christopher Porterfield

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