March Records

A by-product of Leopold Stokowski's 1940 pilgrimage to South America with his Youth Orchestra came to light this month: a pair of lively albums (Native Brazilian Music, Vols. 1 & 2; Columbia; 8 sides each) made in Rio by native groups under the platinum-haired maestro's guiding hand. Local orchestras play sambas (the best most danceable to date) and macumhas with dizzy cross rhythms. Pixinguingha, a 250-pound Negro medal winner of the Brazilian National Academy of Music, puts in some featherweight flute-playing. Two sides are emboladas: as folkish to Brazilians as Frankie and Johnny is to Americans. Of the fascinating chants by Indian singers, one has so strangely Gregorian a flavor that it seems to show the hand of the Portuguese fathers who braved the Amazon jungles three centuries ago.

With his All-American Youths Stokowski took a crew of Columbia recording engineers, mainly to make symphonic discs on shipboard. But while the ship was docked at Rio, Conductor Stokowski lined up Brazilian talent. In one mad session lasting a whole day and night, native groups filed on & off the boat. Results: these two albums.

Other records of the month:

Debussy: Iberia (Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra conducted by Fritz Reiner; Columbia; 5 sides). Magically scented music of old Spain, performed with rare imagination.

Gretchaninoff: Songs (Maria Kurinko, soprano; Victor; 6 sides). Eleven of the venerable Russian's most telling songs, plus one of his best credos, sung with warm-voiced artistry by a Russian noted for her Gretchaninoff, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky. Composer at the piano.

Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique (Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Artur Rodzinski; Columbia; 12 sides). For all its old-hat grotesqueness, this underrated masterpiece well deserves the pulsing performance which Rodzinski gives it, also merits a better recording.

Beethoven: "Emperor" Concerto (Rudolf Serkin, pianist, with New York Philharmonic-Symphony conducted by Bruno Walter; Columbia; 10 sides). This noble old warhorse, often recorded before, is freshly revealed in its full grandeur, thanks to a finely conceived performance, a finely balanced recording.

Loeffler: A Pagan Poem (Eastman-Rochester Symphony conducted by Howard Hanson; Victor; 6 sides). A tireless champion of U.S. composers turns here to an adopted son: bearded, Alsatian-born Charles Martin Loeffler, the Boston Symphony's assistant concertmaster for 19 years. Loeffler's Debussylike masterpiece is played with shrewd feeling for climax.

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