GRAMOPHONE NOTES
H.M.V. have issued two remarkable recordings of classical violin concertos : Beethoven's played by Menuhin with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra under Furtwangler, and Brahms's by Ginette Neveu with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Dobrowen. The soloists are well chosen, for Menuhin brings all his beautiful sanity and balance to this most serene of Beethoven's major works, while Mlle. Neveu's leonine energy and fervid emotion are admirably suited to one of the most romantic of Brahms's. Carl Schuricht with the Suisse Romande Orchestra has recorded Beethoven's Second Symphony with the right simplicity and nobility, thoroughly rhythmic without any exaggerated dynamism. Karl Rankl with the National Symphony Orchestra has given Brahms's Fourth Symphony a broad, unfussy interpretation which lets the music speak for itself. Both these are issued by Decca, who have also some interesting smaller works on their list.
The L.P.O. under van Beinum play Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, sung by Eugenia Zarewska, and Charles Munch conducts the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra in Roussel's Petite Suite and Faure's Pavane. The National Symphony Orchestra has recorded two French works—Ravel's Mother Goose Suite (conductor Sidney Beer), and Saint-Saens's Danse Macabre (Boyd Neel)—and the suite from Falla's Three-Cornered Hat (Jorda). Both the works by Roussel and Ravel are extraordinarily typical of their composers and exceptionally well recorded. L'Apprenti Sorcier, too, sounds particularly brilliant played by Eugene Ormandy and the Phila- delphia Orchestra, while I confess to enjoying enormously the overture to Zampa (Sir Malcolm Sargent and the Liverpool Phil- harmonic Orchestra). Both these last are Columbia records, and so is a scrupulously musical recording of the Emperor Concerto by Dennis Matthews and the Philharmonia Orchestra—the kind of Beethoven-playing it is good to hear after the inevitably more virtuosic displays of the great " stars." Sir Thomas Beecham obviously enjoys the orchestral counterpart of this technique of showmanship in his recording of Strauss's Ein Heldenleben with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (H.M.V.), and it is really the only interest left in the work. M. C.
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