Music: Composer Jean Sibelius, Nature Boy at 90

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World War I broke out—Varèse still takes it as something of a personal affront—and parted the Frenchman and the Austrian. After Varèse moved to New York, Stokowski premièred such cacophonic—but still nonelectronic—Varèse works as Amériques and Arcana with the Philadelphia Orchestra. At that time (the 1920s) one critic wrote that Varèse "thrusts up towers of steel and stone to scrape the clouds"; another found him "subterranean, cyclopean, as of blind tumultuous labors in the secret places of the earth." (Varèse still thinks they both meant well.) Later observers found his discoveries of utmost importance to the growth of music, and compared him to Bauhaus architects.

More tolerant than some modernists, Varèse does not think his new music ought to replace the old ("After all, you don't kill a horse because you ride a plane"). Nor is he too concerned with the fact that this music "won't sell"—he enjoys it so much himself. "It is fascinating," he says. "When I work, I promise my wife I will come to bed by 11:30. Pretty soon I think to myself, 'My God, I'm getting senile; I cannot stand up any more.' Then I look at my watch and it is 8:30 in the morning."

Years ago, Varèse predicted that music "will develop with engineers and composers working together." As he tinkers with his tapes, tubes and wires, he is obviously working happily with papa, the engineer.

New Records

With only a month to go before the crack of Mozart's bicentennial year, record companies are splitting their grooves to get ready. Most of Mozart's best has been recorded already, but recording directors (and critics) can always find enough flaws to justify new versions.

Don Giovanni, one of the finest, if one of the most unpleasantly peopled, of all operas, is now out in two new versions, on three Epic LPs (with George London, Walter Berry, Hilde Zadek and Sena Jurinac, and the Vienna Symphony, conducted by Rudolf Moralt) and on four London LPs (with Cesare Siepi, Fernando Corena, Suzanne Banco and Lisa Delia Casa, and the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Josef Krips). Both casts are of first quality, but the Epic version develops a more consistent ardor, a greater urgency of the kind that might have frightened Prague opera lovers in 1787. Tone on the London set is a bit tubbier, its performance a hair more routine.

Angel has turned out a new Così Fan Tutte (3 LPs) with an orchestra that sounds radiant, but with male singers (Rolando Panerai, Leopold Simoneau) who are spineless, even fearful, as they go about their sport. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Nan Merriman are more positive, but even they are no match for Herbert von Karajan's incredibly flexible Philharmonia Orchestra. Another modest-scale Mozart opera is the Abduction from the Seraglio (Decca, 2 LPs), written when the composer was 26. It is rich in broad, almost Schubertian melody, e.g., Joseph Greindl's robust first aria and Maria Stader's thrilling song of defiance. The RIAS Symphony Orchestra is not so well recorded as the Philharmonia, but talented Conductor Ferenc Fricsay whips it along at a stimulating rate.