THE MAGAZINE FOR MUSIC LISTENERS Ïgh .fidelity ® MARCH 60 CENTS .0mr. 24. -A--- : Alt PROKOFIEV a o U www.americanradiohistory.com i.md. > u, v. mo,, e,,.,,m. Mylot' atiaptape AUDIO DEVICES. Inc. how to select the best suited to your needs Standard Plastic -Base Audiotape meets strength and immunity to temperature all the requirements of the professional and humidity. Like all "Mylar" Audio - RELATIVE STRENGTH OF TAPE or home recordist to excellent advantage, tape, it will not dry out or embrittle BASE MATERIALS (at 75 °F) providing unsurpassed recording quality with age. at minimum cost. It has consistently set 50% Humidity -Thin 1/2 . the highest performance standards in Super Audiotape, on -mil radio stations, sound studios and record "Mylar," doubles the footage obtainable III 90% Humidity manufacturing companies throughout the on a standard reel. Its use, however, is world. 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Y., Cables "ARLAB" www.americanradiohistory.com High Jidcliiq T H E M A G A Z I - N E F O R M U S I C LISTENERS The Cover. This month's discography, by Volume 6 Number 3 1956 Alfred Frankenstein, features the music of March the clever and controversial Russian, Serge Prokofiev, and is appropriately presented under a clever (if hardly controversial) AUTHORitatively Speaking 4 cover by Richard M. Powers. His equally clever and even less controversial Bach The Listener's Bookshelf, by R. D. Darrell 8 cover for the September issue, incidentally, was so well received in certain important Letters 15 quarters that Mr. Powers now is under con- tract to produce a series of jacket designs Swap-a- Record 24 for Music Appreciation Records, the disk series of The Book -of- the -Month Club. Noted With Interest 2`3 This Issue. Everyone has something to As the Editors See It complain about, or nearly everyone. Ber- 4I lioz complains about the lack of choral Music in England 1851, facilities in France, while lauding those - by Hector Berlioz 42 of England. Eric Bentley complains, in An excerpt from Evenings with the Orchestra, translated by effect, that Shakespeare got too many Jacques Barzun. characters into his historical plays to make Whistle them ideal phonographic material. Gordon (Vivaldi) While You Work, by William Weaver 45 Holt complains about loudspeaker makers Italy's pre- symphonists are enjoying a transatlantic boom. who make for us the choice of whether The Haunted we'd rather have the concert hall in our Loudspeaker, by J. Gordon Holt 47 living rooms or vice versa. George Jellinek Is there a mysterious "presence" in your listening room? complains that artistic rectitude in the opera house threatens to drive the glamor Poor Richard's Soundtrack, by Eric Bentley 5o out of singing, a mournful prospect if Some comments on recorded Shakespearean drama. ever we heard of one. In fact, the only In unmitigatedly happy note in the issue Defense of a Voice, by George Jellinek 52 seems to come from William Weaver, as Dramatic know -how vs. virtuoso singing in opera. well it should. Nothing to do except Ways ramble around sunny Italy and listen to Thirteen of Listening to a Record (Verse), by Philip the contadini whistling Vivaldi, that's his L. Miller 53 situation. No further comment. Music Makers, by Roland Gelatt 57 Record Section 61-104 CHARLES FOWLER, Publisher Records in Review; Dialing Your Disks; Building Your Record JOHN M. CONLY, Editor Library; Prokofiev on Microgroove, by Alfred Frankenstein. ROY H. HOOPES, JR., Managing Editor Tested in the Home 107 J. GORDON HOLT, Assistant Editor Ampex Stereophonic System; Pilot Ensemble Phonograph; Leak ROY LINDSTROM, Art Director Pickups; Brociner Mark so Amplifier; Brociner Mark 304 Ampli- fier; Astatic 55 -TJ Cartridge; GE 85o Editorial Assistants Speaker, and AI -off En- closure; Hallmark Amplifier Kit; Beam Stentorian 12 -inch Speaker. MIRIAM D. MANNING; JOAN GRIFFITHS ROLAND GELATT, New York Editor FM Directory 23 Contributing Editors Audio Forum C. G. BURKE 12 7 JAMES HINTON, JR. CORA R. HOOPES Trader's Marketplace 130 ROBERT CHARLES MARSH Professional Directory I 32 WARREN B. SYER, Business Manager SEAVER B. BUCK, JR., Circulation Advertising Index Director 13 5 High Fidelity Magazine is published monthly by Audiocom, Inc., at Great Barrington, Mass. Telephone: Great Barrington 1300. Editorial, publication, Branch Offices (Advertising only): New York: and circulation offices at: The Publishing House, Great Barrington, Mass. Subscriptions: $6.00 per year in the United States and Canada. Single Room 600, 6 East 39th Street. Telephone: each. Editorial contributions copies: 60 cents Murray Hill 5 -6332. will be welcomed by the editor. Payment for articles accepted will be arranged Fred C. Michalove, Eastern prior to publication. Unsolicited manuscripts Manager.- Chicago: John R. Rutherford and Assoc- should be accompanied by return postage. Entered as iates, second-class matter April 27, 1951 at the post office at Great Barrington, Mass., under the of 3, 230 East Ohio St., Chicago, Ill. Telephone: 1879. Additional act March Whitehall 4- 6715. -Los Angeles: entry at the post office, Pittsfield, Mass. Member Audit Bureau of Circulation. Printed 1052 West 6th in the U. S. A. by the Ben Franklin Press, Pittsfield, Street. Telephone: Madison 6 -1371. Edward Brand, Mass. Copyright 1956 by Audiocom, Inc. The cover design and contents of High Fidelity magazine are fully protected by copyrights West Coast Manager. duced in any manner. and must not be repro- MARCH 1956 www.americanradiohistory.com AUTHORitatively Speaking In January we asked rhetorically whether Mozart would have been a hi -fi fan. With respect to Hector Berlioz, the question would be unnecessary. Of course he would have been. Anyone who doubts it, read his ecstatic analysis of St. Paul's cathedral as a resonance chamber, on page 44. Ber- lioz was an eminent journalist as well as a composer, hence the brisk and sprightly tone of his writing, which has been pre- served almost perfectly in the translation by Jacques Barzun of Evenings with the Orchestra. The book is a collection of news reports and satirical essays, set in a connective "conversational" narrative by Berlioz, all of it extremely amusing. Alfred A. Knopf will bring it out next month, and you should read it. Barzun of course, is also author of Berlioz and the Romantic Century and editor of Pleasures of Music, the latter a collection of short writings about music and musicians by people of note throughout the ages. Eric Bentley, who discusses the short- comings of recorded drama on page 5o, is one of the leading drama critics in the world. He is also Brander Matthews Pro- fessor of Dramatic Literature at Colum- bia University and, on the side, something at the LP312 of a dramatic director himself: 12" LOUDSPEAKER time of this writing, he had just launched NET: $49.50 an off -Broadway production of Berthold Brecht's Private Life of the Master Race. in translation by Eric Bentley. He has guest- directed in various European theaters as well. As author he is responsible for A Century of Hero Worship, The Play - u -right as Thinker, Bernard Shaw, and In Search of Theater; as editor, for The Im- portance of Scrutiny, From the Modern Repertoire, and Naked Masks, a collection of Pirandello plays. He is consultant and /or contributor to numerous periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic. George Jellinek, who stands up for bel canto on page 52, was born in Budapest and began playing the violin before he was six, which he says isn't surprising in Budapest. Eleven years later, having con- vinced his family he was no second Szi- geti, he stopped. At languages he showed TWEETERS COMPONENTS more talent, so that he now makes a side- SPEAKERS line (his main job is with a music agency) When you select a loudspeaker, your ear is the final judge. After you have read of translating Italian, German, and Spanish the manufacturer's claims and specifications, you listen...