May Records

Some phonograph records are musical events. Each month TIME notes the noteworthy.

SYMPHONIC, ETC.

Columbia History of Music through Ear and Eye, Album 5 (Columbia: 16 sides).

Ten years ago the Oxford University Press and England's Columbia Graphophone Co. planned a joint history of music, stamped on records. Edited by the noted English music historian and lexicographer, Percy Scholes (TIME, Dec. 12), this history was to consist of short recorded examples of music typical of all periods from the loth Century to the present. The Columbia History's fifth and last volume gives a taste and a sniff of the 20th Century's principal musical styles, ranges from the romantic Schwarmerei of Richard Strauss and Mahler to the quarter-tone caterwauling of Kulturbolschewik Alois Haba.

Beethoven: Symphony No. I and Brahms: Tragic Overture (B. B. C. Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini conducting; Victor: 10 sides).

England's finest orchestra and the world's most famous conductor produce two top-notch performances.

Liszt: Concerto No. 2 in A Major for Piano and Orchestra (London Philharmonic, Leslie Reward conducting, with Egon Petri; Columbia: 6 sides).

Excellent first modern recording of a swashbuckling Romantic showpiece.

Schumann: Sonata in A Minor, Op. 105, for Violin and Piano (Adolf Busch and Rudolf Serkin; Victor: 4 sides). A slight, lyric, late Schumann sonata, superbly performed.

Joseph Haydn and Domenico Scarlatti: Piano Sonatas (Jacob Feuerring; Timely: 10 sides). Six light, early classics, well-performed, recorded like real life.

POPULAR

Fox Trots-of-the-Month, a tuneful bumper crop, were topped by Hang Your Hfcart On a Hickory Limb (Bing Crosby; Decca), Shoemaker's Holiday (Jimmie Lunceford; Vocalion), Sing, My Heart (Will Osborne; Decca).

Vocalist record-of-the-month: Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man (Vocalion), sung with great skill and taste by Nan Wynn, rising Negro chanteuse, and excellently accompanied by Walter Gross's band.

Oddities-of-the-month: Famed Guitarist Phil Lang's band v. Mozart on Counterpoint a la Mode (Brunswick); Joan Crawford, recorded for the first time, singing I'm In Love with the Honorable Mr. So and So (Victor).

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