The Miraculous .Mandarin; Choral Chant

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The Miraculous .Mandarin; Choral Chant verity. The stereo pressing offers only slow tempo. seemed a hit precious. On ly Hungarian and non -Western essence marginal differences from the excellent the whole. however. the performances from the folk material. he has adapted monophonic version. H.G. here are to me more consistently con- diatonic and modal vocal lines to simple vincing than on the previous disc. Still triadic harmonies written in close, non - in evidence. unfortunately. is Mr. contrapuntal form. The jogging iambic BACH: St. John Passion, S. 245 Gould's occasional faint humming. N.B. rhythms and stylized hunting -call figures and harmonies alternate with a kind of Friederike Sailer (s); Marga Höffgen melodic Hungarian solo recitative and (c); Helmut Krebs (t), Evangelist; Franz BARTOK: The Miraculous .Mandarin; choral chant. suggesting not a cantata but Kelch (b), Jesus: Hermann Werdermann Cantata Profana a kind of extended Hungarian ballad of (bs); Heinrich Schütz Choir of Heil- the chase. The work is open and attrac- bronn; Pforzheim Chamber Orchestra, Chorus of the Hungarian Radio. Buda- tive certainly, a little monotonous in its Fritz Werner, cond. pest Philharmonic. Janos Ferencsik, cond. insistently healthy, out -of -doors choral MUSICAL HERITAGE SOCIETY MHS 542/ (in The Miraculous . Mandarin): Joef sound. but with the authentic Bartók 43. Two LP. $5.00. Reti. tenor. Andras Farago. bass. Chorus touch in its simple and original expres- MUSICAL HERITAGE SOCIETY MHS and Orchestra of the Hungarian Radio. sive structure. 542/43. Two SD. $5.00. György Lehel. cond. (in the Cantata). The choral singing here is excellent DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON LPM 18873. ( including the tiny choral section in Werner's tempos are everywhere plaus- LP. $5.98. he Miraculous ;Mandarin); the instru- ible. His chorus is agreeable in tone, DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON SLPM mental performances are less noteworthy. and as a rule well balanced. The tenors 138873. SD. $6.98. Lehel seems highly capable; Ferencsik are not very strong but they almost al- is, however, surprisingly routine. The ways come out when they should. Some These works. separated by only twelve Mandarin proportions, particularly in of the crowd's ejaculations could be more years. represent Bartók in two of his matters of tempo and dynamics, often incisive, but the choir turns in fine most extreme phases: as a sophisticated seem wrong (nit sections cone out loud- work in that marvelous fugal piece "pri,nitif" in a .Sucre du Printemps vein er than forte sections later) and there is "Lasser uns den nicht zerteilen," the and as an almost purely consonant folk not much feeling for accent, texture, and moving "Ruhet wohl," and the chorales. composer. rhythmic shape. The recorded sound, on In the great opening chorus, despite The Miraculous Mandarin of 1918 was the fat heavy side, is not everything sixteenth -note figures that are detached the last of the composer's three stage that it might be and many details are and too regular, Werner builds up ex- pieces. all written in Budapest within obscured without any corresponding gain treme tension by maintaining Bach's in- a few years of each other. The origi- in power or richness. (This perform- exorable beat and stressing the dis- nal conception was that of a pantomime - ing edition, incidentally, seems to be sonances. Krebs is accurate but lacking with- dialogue rather than that of a missing a few mysteriously elided meas- in nuance. The other vocal soloists dance work proper: but the revolutions ures.) are all able, if not especially distin- of modern dance and ballet (of which Mandarin lovers might be well advised guished. Miss Sailer achieves real elo- this might be considered a pioneer ef- to wait for a new recording of the com- quence in "felt folge dir "; and one of fort) have made the distinction unneces- plete ballet conducted by Georg Solti, Werdermann's finer contributions is his sary and today the work is completely forthcoming soon from London Records. arioso " Betrachte, meine Seel." Miss danced without dialogue. The lurid For the moment. however, these record- Höffgen captures the mood of "Es ist story of the prostitute who lures men ings from Qualiton. the Hungarian State rollhracht," though she does not have to their deaths and of the strange Man- record company, will have to carry the the bravura needed in the middle sec- darin who cannot be killed until he has ball unless one is willing to go back tion. August Wenzinger's gamba playing possessed the girl is not so much sym- to earlier, monophonic versions of the in this aria is exquisite. bolic and allegorical as pure Freudian. Cantata under Susskind (Bartok) and of All in all, this is a performance with The score -a kind of urban, urbane, the Mandarin Suite under Dorati (Mer- many merits, if not quite as many as Hungarian version of .Satre- represents cury). E.S. the Archive and RCA Victor sets. Those, Bartók in his "barbaric" period when his however, are on mono. If it's stereo musical thinking was dominated by ac- you are after, the sound here is good cent and color. Swirling textures and ob- BEETHOVEN: Concerto for Piano, and this is a more consistent perform- figures. heavy stomping sessive repeated Violin, and Cello, in C, Op. 56 ance than Scherchen's stereo version on rhythms and dark. knotty. intense orches- ( "Triple ") Westminster. It is the only recording. tral colors reflect not only the influ- mono or stereo, that gets the complete ence of the greater. subtler. and more Rudolf Serkin. piano; Jaime Laredo, work on fewer than three discs. The sophisticated Stravinsky score but a kind original text and an English translation of Bartókian musical-dramatic image violin; Leslie Parnas, cello; Marlboro are provided. N.B. of primitive human impulses operating Festival Orchestra. Alexander Schneider, cond. beneath the cultivated surface of con- sciousness. Even more than Bluebeard's COLUMBIA ML 5964. LP. $4.98. MS 6564. SD. $5.98. BACH: Well -Tempered Clavier, Book Castle, this score represents Bartók's COLUMBIA I: Preludes and Fugues 9 -16 most extensive and sustained orchestral achievement. making up for what it lacks This is a fairly ripe performance of a Glenn Gould, piano. in subtlety with the power of its care- work that responds equally well to the COLUMBIA ML 5938. LP. $4.98. ful primitivism. the inventive quality more reserved and severely controlled set with COLUMBIA MS 6538. SD. $5.98. of its orchestration ( which the composer approach found in the DGG never again equaled). and the impact Anda, Schneiderhan. and Fournier under Mr. Gould continues his fascinating tra- of its colorful. dissonant tension, accent, Fricsay's direction. I played the two ver- versal of the 48 Preludes and Fugues. It and rhythmic thrust. sions back and forth against each other. is fascinating because one cannot predict The Cantata Profana is based on an decided that both were Beethoven, and what his conception of a piece will be old folk tale about nine brothers who left it there. Serkin is the real star like. More often than not, he will find a hunt a giant stag and are themselves of this new edition. and his performance fresh, though still plausible, way of per- turned into stags. The music, for male seems a good deal more sensitive than forming these familiar pieces. Even when soloists and double chorus. belongs with Anda's, but this is not a concerto in his approach is conventional, his playing the choral works of Zol;án Kodály as which the piano dominates. Your choice is so clean, so transparent, and so musi- part of the modern Hungarian attempt to of cellists is more nearly the key to excel- cal as to be fully satisfying. Only once create a popular native choral reper- the matter: for all the general on this disc did I find myself disagreeing: toire of high quality. The style is sim- lence of this performance and its re- the Prelude in F sharp major, because of plicity itself; instead of the more familiar cording, I'll stick with Fournier and the phrasing chosen combined with a Bartókian attempt to extract a specifical- friends. R.C.M. JULY 1964 53 .
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