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- .v»ruenDergs vionn concern, neneiz ana L/maun rniinarmunn;. 3iicha ‘ Heifetz and San Francisco Weber: Konzert stueck, for piano Symphony. and orchestra, Robert Casadesus.•ALL THIS AND PINZA TOO, INJ'SOUTH PACIFIC' RECORDINGSmj\ Probably the most popular album fust now is Columbia's ‘South Pacific, with original cast from the Broadway show, and one suspects that the glamorous presence of Ezio Pinza is largely responsible.The recordings, of course, are no substitute for the show. Tunes and lyrics are mostly run-of-the-mill musical comedy, and they need the visual impact of Pinza and Mary Martin and the rest, in the stage setting and in their dramatic situations, to distract from the sugary sentimentality of many of the songs.This latter doesn’t apply to a couple of rousing male choruses— “Bloody Mary and There Ts Nothing Like a Dame, which arc cf the hard-boiled variety anddidn't qualify for the radio. They ere among the high spots of the album.PINZA IN FORMPinza is in good voice, if not altogether favorably “miked. He, sounds a little pretentious in such 1 simple lyrics as Some Enchanted! £vening, as if he were still thinking in terms of arias.Best solo song is Bali JIa'3, already recorded by several com-Japies. Juanita Hall docs well by It jn the Columbia album, although, taken as a song by itself, detached from context, some may feel that such singers as Mercury’s Anne Vincent are more in Its dreamy tropical spiritBarbara Luna, who j5 only 12, has a cute number, Dites-moi pour-quoi, in which she tends to fudge on the pitch. ____enough off center to throw off the tone-arm of such sensitive instruments as RCA Victor's model 0-W-105, and had to be played on simpler apparatus.UNUSUAL CHORALSMercury comes up with two unusual items on a single disk— a Christmas Pastorale by Jirik Jgnac Li nek and a Christmas motet by Frantisek Xnver Jirixi, both Czech composers, contemporary v/ith Haydn. These arc sung beautifully in Czech by the choir ,of St. Jacob’s Church of Prague, with organ and orchestra. Both have a delightful freshness, Linck's with a lively touch of Czech folkmelody. There is a fine baritone solo In the middle of the Linek piece. Were it not for the language difficulty, these work* should interest some of our own choral directors.An outstanding violin-piano recording of a contemporary work is RCA Victor’s album of Bela Bnr-tok’s first sonata, played by Yehudi Menuhin and Adolph Bailor. The artists bring rich beauty out of the somber, dense idiom of the score.Ljuba Welitsch, sensational soprano of the Metropolitan’s Sn-j Inmo,” sustains her reputation rea-isonably well, if a bit unevenly as to I detail, on a Columbia recording of■ WJr nnhle mir der Schlummer!from Weber's “Freischutz.” The Accompaniment by the London Philharmonic, conducted by Walter Susskind, j* delectable.Licla Albanese, whose singing is so familiar here, is thoroughly at home In Deh vieni” from “FigarotrpSt
Newspaper Details
Oakland Tribune
Oakland, California, US
Sun, Jun 12, 1949
Page 47
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MI, USA 08 Mar 2018
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