GRAMOPHONE NOTES
THERE are some really outstanding vocal records on my list. Maggie Teyte's two Faure songs, Le Secret and Clair de Lune (H.M.V.), should be missed by no connoisseur ; and admirers of the later Faure will be delighted with Gerard Souzay's singing of the cycle, L'Horizon Chimerique, even if it has not quite the unquestioned mastery that the songs demand (Decca). Jennie Tourel has recorded four Rachmaninov songs (including the popular Lilacs and Floods of Spring) for Columbia, and no lover of Russian music should miss Oda Slobodskaya's Grechaninov, Borodin and Balakirev songs (two to each side), which seem to me to have the same authenticity for Russian as Maggie Teyte has for French music (Decca). The pick of the operatic records is unquestionably Hilde Gueden's 0 mio babbo caro (Decca), which I find quite irresistible, with a good Musetta's song on the other side. For the amateurs of the molto appassionato I recommend Giuseppe di Stefano's E Lucevan le Stelle (H.M.V.), and Mozart-lovers will enjoy Suzanne Danco's Vol the Sapete and Come Scoglio (Decca).
There is not a great deal of chamber music. The Griller Quartet's playing of Mozart's string quartet in D minor. K.421 (Decca) is well balanced and finished, without having the superlative excellence of some of their other Mozart recordings. The Budapest's String Quartet's playing of Mozart's D major quintet K.593 (Columbia) I found rather disappointing in tone, though the interpretation is excellent. The Trio di Trieste have made a very good recording of Ravel's Trio, a contradictory work in that it contains some of the " bigger " Ravel when the form leads one to expect the smaller (H.M.V.). The Trio Moyse's playing of a sonata in G major by J. S. Bach is a pleasure to listen to, and the work itself a welcome variant of the usual chamber music repertory (H.M.V.).
M. C.
Previous page
