GRAMOPHONES

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 102, 21 July 1927, Page 12

GRAMOPHONES

The July H.M.V. list of new records presents a representative group of good things, for all tastes. We have a Beethoven Symphony and Schubert”s’ "Unfinished Symphony,” a Brahms Quartette, choral music, vocal and instrumental items, from strict "highbrow" down to the wildest irresponsibilities in jazz music. Altogether a very fine list, which gramophonists, according to their tastes, should sample.

It is stated that the profits of £180,442, which do not include income from foreign investments, have been realised this year by the Columbia Gramophone Co. A final dividend of 32J per cent, has increased the dividdend for the 12 months to 40 per cent. The shares are now quoted on the market at 745. The influence of the company is stated to be largely increased by the purchase of a controlling interest in the Nipponophone Co., the largest gramophone and record manufacturing concern in Japan.

Two H.M.V. discs with the “Tannhauser” Overture and the Dance of the Apprentices from "The Mastersingers,” play by the Symphony Orchestra conducted by Albert Coates, are certain to be often turned on. The solemn grandeur of the Pilgrim’s Chorus and the sensuous strings of the Venusberg have got a flaw-less recording. There is another record from

“Tannhauser,” very good, too, the Apollo Choir with orchestra in the Pilgrim's Chorus and in the Anvil Chorus from “11 Trovatore.” the latter with very realistic clanging effects.

Comparatively speaking, yesterday the gramophone spoke and sang and played to the world through a metallic nasal organ, and excepting where volume drowned mechanical discord, all that is pure and fine in music and singing was rarely achieved. To-day new' ideas and inventions give us Everyman’s music in pura naturabilis, so to speak, and now at the tail end of to-day we have chamber music at fox-trot prices! The Catterall Quartette, through Columbia. open this wonderful new era with a lovely issue of the Beethoven Andante Cantabile from his Quartet in A major (9141). and follow’ it with a second—a record of Russian music (9156)—a polka by Sokolown, Glazounov and Liadow, and a Berceuse bv D’Osten-Sacken.

Of all the pianoforte records we have ever heard none has been so exactly and beautifully recorded as the exquisite performance of Percy Grainger by the new Columbian electric process of Chopin’s "Sonata in B Minor.” Until recently, the piano has been the most difficult of all instruments to reproduce. The simple sound-wave only too often allowed the creation of false echoes w’hich set up a noticeable "blast” whenever the resonances rang out too loudly and there was always something metallic about the upper register. To those who have been disappointed in piano reproductions these Columbia records will come as an astonishing surprise. They compare for perfect fidelity with anything recorded and far surpass any previous piano r^C^I ds ‘. The Sona ta in B Minor is one or Chopin’s three piano sonatas, and is the product of his later and greatest

period. Though he has sacrificed none of the melodic felicities which have won him a unique place among musicians, he shows a depth of feeling and a grander sense of form, of the "architecture” of music, so vital to longer works. The new 11.M.V. records include one of the best reproductions of chamber music that I have ever heard, says an enthusiastic reviewer. It is the Brahms "Quintet in F minor,” played by Harold Bauer and the Flonzalev Quartet. I think much of the credit must go to Bauer. Not only is his tone on the piano exceptionally good, but his remarkable musicianship seems to hold the whole thing together. This quintet, with its beautiful slow movement, is one of the most attractive pieces of music that Brahms ever wrote, and the record is worthy of it both as regards delicacy of contrasts and virility of rhythm. A GREAT ARTIST A record one should not be without is "Quanto e Bella” ("L’Elisir d’ amore,” Donizetti); “Mandulinata A Napule” (Tagliaferri), sung by Beniamino Gigli (H.M.V., DA797). I heard, says a reviewer, Gigli sing "Quato e Bella” to a vast audience in the Hippodrome in New- York about a

month ago. It is such an inspiriting lesson to hear great artists like Gigli, who must haye struggled and w’orked and sacrificed a good deal before they had achieved the popularity which means the filling of a theatre as large or larger than the Albert Hall. In his concert singing, the slight nasal quality, which comes out in the record, was not evident. But it is a record I shall play many a time to remind myself of his exquisite art. The man who has bought Kreisler’s record of the Beethoven violin concerto unconsciously slips into the proprietorial attitude, and becomes as susceptible to praise of that magnificent record as if he, and not Beethoven and Kreisler between them, had made it. It has become to him what that splendid reproduction of Alma Tadema was to the preceding generation of his family. He really owns that masterpiece of Beethoven in the same sense as those others owned a picture bv Leighton or any other great artist. And he talks—boasts, if he is of that temperament—in full accordance with this new’ attitude of mind. For music it is all to the good, for it heralds the end of that apathy of which so many musicians have been complaining. Only philosophers can be completely indifferent to their possessions or immune from the human sin of pride, and philosophers are as rare as, in time, music lovers of this new’ type will be numerous.