RECORDS MUSIC

Northern Advocate, 20 February 1926, Page 9

RECORDS MUSIC

NEWS OP THE WEEK.

Chopin and Brahms are represents"! in the latest bracket from Alfred Cortot —the former's "Etude in A Vint Major" (Op. 25, No 1) and Brahm's "Cradle Song" (Op. 49, No. 4). In these two pieces Cortot reveals himself to us in an intimate mood. The graceful Chopin "Etude" receives sympathetic treatment; the wayward, romantic melody floats gently over the arabesques of an accompaniment which lends it the almost orchestral support that Chopin alone knew how to obtain ou the piano without forcing the instrument out of its true metier. Brahm's "Wiegenlied" is perhaps the most widely known of all his songs, and Cortot's treatment of it has all the freshness of an improvisation.

Another good pianoforte record is Una Bourne's Tschaikovsky bracket — "Waltz" (Op. 40, No. 9) and "Humoresque" (Op. 10, No. 2). We get some neat and sensitive playing from Una Bourne. After the Grieg which she gave us recently she has gone back to Tschaikovsky, a composer with whom she has often shown herself thoroughly in sympthy.

Within the limits of a double disc the Albert Hall Orchestra has succeeded in giving us both quantity and quality with its recording of the Mozart numbers, the '' Figaro,'' overture, and a minuet and two "Divertiments." The "Figaro' overture may be short in point of time compared, for instance, to a Beethoven symphony, but never has a composer compressed more significant matter into a small space. The "Minuet and Trio" possesses a charm of a different kind, and its graceful melody makes an immediate appeal which closer acquaintance only serves to enhance. It may safely be said that this is a record noVne will ever, regret buying.

An astonishing revelation of the achievements of the latest ideas in recording is the new Light Symphony Orchestra's "Malaguena" (a Spanish dance), (Mosskowski), and Goldmark's "Rustic Wedding Symphony" (intermezzo —"Bridal Song"). The expression "light music" covers a very wide field, embracing, indeed, a great deal that could quite legitimately be despribed as "classical," but which on account of its frank melodiousness or its vital rhythm is justly included in the former category also. It is pieces of tji,is kind that the New Light Symphony Orchestra has selected. There is plenty here to uharm the ear of the most fastidious, while, on the other hand, there is no demand for that close concentration which many, people find it so fatiguing to sustain in works of a sever 3 kind.

The Air Fore J Band has never done anything better than in the ambitious "Valkvrie" selection, which features the new list of records Just arrived. All the finest parts of the opera are here. We start with the motifs of Sieglinde and Hunding, then to Siegmund's song to Spring, and conclude the first side with a magnificent performance of the "Ride of the Valkvries." The second side, prefaced by a powerful statement of the Siegfried motif, gives us a liberal allowance from those wonderful last pages of the score that contains the superb "Fire Music."

"What does the modem girl know about the needle?" asks a writer. Well, for one thing, she knows that it should bo used only once on a gramophone record.

Paul Whiteman and his orchestra have introduced the yodel warbling cry into a gramophone fox-trot called "I Miss my Swiss." It is very unlikely that anybody has ever danced before to the music of the yodel.

It is not so long ago that the gramophone was considered an instrument of affliction. Now the work of the great gramophone manufacturers has brought both the records and the models . to such perfection that the daily papers are publishing weekly articles in their musical columns on the latest gramophone productions. Mr Percy Seholes has written two books on the subject. Dr. Walford Davies has long been teaching music via the gramophone in the schools of Wales. Let no one be surprised to learn, then, that a Cambridge University Gramophone Society is about to be founded.

A collection of gramophone records along with a portable gramophone form part of the ship's stores of the Discovery, now on her way to Antarctic seas by way of the Cape. Her ship's company consists of Captain J. R. Stenhouse, eight officers, six scientists, and 39 men, and as their study of the habits of the whale will occupy close upon three years, the ship's doctor considered it advisable, from the point of view of the health of those aboard, to take a gramophone with them. The records selected include John Gossc's "'Bio Grande," "A-Eovin'," and other sea chanties, the Savoy Orpheans' "Sea Songs Medley," John McCormack's version of '' "When My Ships Come Sailing Home," Jack Hylton's orchestra in the Sohara Fox-trot and "The Road Across the Sea," "The Night Watch" and "Coaling," sung by Peter Dawson.