GRAMOPHONE NOTES
THERE is a very full autumn list, and I can do no more than mention those records which seem to me especially interesting. From the purely musical point of view, apart from questions of performance, there are not many novelties. Among the most valuable are the Griller Quartet's records of Bloch's Second String Quartet, a fine performance of a work which can only be really known after several hearings and is therefore particularly suitable for recording. The Zorian Quartet's records of Tippett's Second String Quartet are valuable for the same reason. Both these are Decca. The only other chamber music is Schubert's Trio in B flat (Trio di Trieste. H.M.V.) and Brahnis' D Minor Violin Sonata (Isaac Stern and Alexander Zakin. Col.). The most unusual of the piano records is a beautiful performance of Poulenc's suite Napoli by Arthur Rubinstein -(H.M.V.), but Denis Matthews' records of Beethoven's E Major Sonata, op. too (Col.) are excellent in their clarity of texture and mingling of force with lyricism. Albert Ferber plays Schubert's " Little " A Major Piano Sonata (Decca) very charmingly, though the last movement is rather too heavy. Of the two recordings of the fifth Brandenburg Concerto (Boyd Neel, Decca, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, H.M.V.) I dis- stinctly prefer the former, if only for Kathleen Long's beautiful playing in the first movement, but also for the greater fullness and vigonr of the orchestral playing. Four works recorded by the Philharmonia Orchestra do them great credit. Issy Dobrowen conducts them in Berlioz's Carnaval Romain (H.M.V.), an attractively nervous and exciting performance. Siisskind conducts two concertos, a little-known Haydn violin concerto with Simon Goldberg as the soloist (Col.) and the A Minor 'Cello Concerto of Saint Saens with
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Pierre Fournier (H..V.). Alceo Galliera conducts Franck's Les Eolides (Col.), which shows the composer in a comparatively un- buttoned mood and seems more popular with foreign than with British conductors. !Some of the most beautiful orchestral playing is in Debussy's Nuages (Augusteo Orchestra under de Sabata, H.M.V.), but the Freischiitz overture played by the N.B.C. Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Toscanini (H.M.V.) has a very poor surface in places, with the tone constantly broken through. 'Two more Beethoven symphonies have been added to what must be an enormous list—the London Philharmonic Orchestra's Pastoral under Kleiber (Decca), a very straightforward and pleasing interpretation, and the Ninth by thc Vienna Philharmonic and a Viennese chorus
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