GRAMOPHONE NOTES
Goon recordings of Berlioz's music are few and rare. I therefore welcome and recommend particularly his Harold in Italy, played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Koussevitzky with William Primrose as solo viola. This is a typical Berlioz composition, the sort that horrified our nineteenth-century pedants, who thought that symphonies could be written only on the German symphonic pattern, but now that about a hundred years have passed since it was composed we are struck only by its unique quality and indivi- duality. Those who are addicted to rich and voluptuous music will not find it here. The colouring is chaste, not to say austere, and indeed this symphony resembles a drawing in line with delicate but telling washes of colour by a master hand. Even the finale, described by Berlioz as an orgy of brigands, is more like a Tintoretto than a Rubens (H.M.V. DB6261-65).
A very pleasing recording of the attractive ballet music from Gounod's Faust, played by the City of Birmingham Orchestra under George Weldon, is a good example of excellent light music which the most serious music-lover will enjoy (Col. DX124-8). For those who like coloratura singing there is a new recording of the Bell Song from Delibes' opera Lakmi, sung in French by Lily Pons with orchestra, conducted by Pietro Cimara (Col. LX940). In con- trast there is that baritone well known to Covent Garden pre-war audiences, Herbert Janssen, singing "0 Star of Eve" and "Wolfram's Entry" from Tannhiiuser with the opera orchestra at Buenos Aires under Roberto Kinsley (Col. LX948). Mr. Heddle Nash records, " 'Tis Love! "from Gounod's Romeo and 7uliet and a well-known aria, in English, from Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amorc (I-I.M.V. Ca492), which will please his many admirers, and I must mention a recording of Butterworth's "The Banks of Green Willow" by the Philharmonic Orchestra under Maurice Miles (H.M.V. C3491), an English composer whose promising career was cut short in the war of 1914-18. Finally, I recommend a recording of Haydn's sonata in D major by Solomon (H.M.V. C 3494). This is a welcome adventure into the unhackneyed.
W. J. T.
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