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KRAPP'S LAST TAPE and THE ZOO STORY. In a fifth-anniversary revival of this double bill, Edward Albee's Story is still provocative and dramatic, and Samuel Beckett's Tape has the true ring of a classic.
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ENTIRE WORLD AS SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF COLE PORTER REVISITED. Lesser known Porter tunes sparkle in this frisky revue.
RECORDS
Chamber Music
BARTOK: STRING QUARTETS 1-6 (Columbia; 3 LPs). The Juilliard String Quartet, after many performances of the works and a previous set of recordings, attacks each quartet with consummate skill and understanding. The musicians are warmly expansive in the romantic first quartet (1908), pungently Magyar in the second (1915-17), and harshly abrasive in the ugly, expressionist third (1927) with its abusive hammerings and pluckings, yawling glissandos and jerky rhythms. The strings sing again in the last three quartets, which in spite of some jagged polyphony, frequently dissolve into swaying melody. The result is an album of the finest chamber music of the 20th century.
SYLVIA MARLOWE: HARPSICHORD (Decca). The eminent harpsichordist looks to the future of her archaic instrument by commissioning new pieces by the dozen. Among them are chamber works by Ned Rorem and Elliott Carter, both contrasting the tangy harpsichord with bland woodwinds. Rorem strings together short, romantic "songs without words," while Carter builds a severe, towering structure out of tiny musical blocks. Highlight of the recording is the plangent Concerto for Harpsichord, Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Violin and Cello by Manuel de Falla.
SCHUBERT TRIO NO. 1 IN B FLAT (Columbia). Never have violin, piano and cello sounded more radiant than when played by the illustrious trio of otherwise solo virtuosos Isaac Stern, Eugene Istomin and Leonard Rose. Schubert's music kindles this continuous glow, for it is filled with sunlight, in contrast to the black Winter Journey of the same period, shortly before the composer's death at 31.
BEETHOVEN: SEPTET IN E FLAT MAJOR (Deutsche Grammophon). "I wish it were burned," said Beethoven of his early septet, because he hated to let its popularity overshadow his other works. He would surely set a match to the piece if he could hear this singable, danceable performance by the sonorous strings and woodwinds of the Berlin Philharmonic Octet.
BEETHOVEN: QUARTET IN A MINOR OPUS 132 (RCA Victor). This intricate work was written 25 years after the septet and sounds a world apart, especially in this crisp, exact performance by the Juilliard String Quartet. Technically, the Juilliard is superb; the pianissimo passages, for example, are feather-light and still warm, but the third movement, the "song of thanksgiving offered to the divinity by a convalescent," sounds curiously reserved.
BLOCH: QUINTET FOR PIANO AND STRINGS (Concert-Disc). Best known for his powerful and sensuous Hebraic music (Schelo-mo and Sacred Service), Bloch also wrote other works, like the 1923 quintet, that are not specifically of Jewish inspiration but are also lavishly colored and emotionally evocative. The floating violins of the Fine Arts Quartet properly take precedence in virtuosity, even over the shimmering piano of Frank Glazer.