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PHILADELPHIA, HERE I COME! When a man leaves home and country, he buries part of himself, and he is not likely to stand beside that grave dry-eyed. Patrick Bedford and Donal Donnelly are excellent as the public and private selves of a young Irishman on the eve of departure for Philadelphia and the New World.
SWEET CHARITY. As a dance-hall dolly whose heart is leaden but whose feet are mercury, Gwen Verdon is effusive. The slickness of Bob Fosse's choreography is suffusive. What there is of Neil Simon's book is elusive.
CACTUS FLOWER. In a sex farce from France, a seasoned playboy dentist (Barry Nelson) loves nothing more than to cut the mustard. His plain nurse (Lauren Bacall) puts an end to all that with relish.
RECORDS
Piano
BACH: CONCERTO IN D MINOR; CHOPIN: CONCERTO NO. 2 IN F MINOR (London). Vladimir Ashkenazy's technical brilliance is enough by itself to rivet the listener's attention, but it is only one factor in a superb performance. He moves across the glittering surface of the Chopin like moonlight on a windswept lake, and gives the popular Bach concerto an almost hearty treatment that displays to perfection the gaiety in its baroque adornments.
BEETHOVEN: DIABELLI VARIATIONS (RCA Victor). Thirty-three variations on a waltz by the Austrian composer Anton Diabelli pose a formidable test for the virtuoso talents of 32-year-old John Browning. Much talked about but seldom performed, they strain the pianist's technical mastery and his emotional ambience. Browning, who is one of the best of the "percussive" school, passes the technical trials splendidly, but in the melancholy later variations, when he should be exploring Beethoven's darker nature, he appears to be marking time before the florid finale.
JOHN CAGE: VARIATIONS IV (Everest). Composer Cage arranges a curious counterpoint to the playing of David Tudor by splicing a variety of noises into the staccato piano theme: the sound of traffic on the street outside, a patrician English girl chattering nervously, a chanteuse, a coloratura, a boy soprano, Florence Foster Jenkins murdering high D at the end of the Queen of the Night's aria from The Magic Flute. Oddly but irresistibly, they add up to a cry from the heart.
MOZART: CONCERTOS 14, IN E FLAT MAJOR, AND 17, IN G MAJOR (Columbia). The elegant flowers of Mozart's genius are tended with loving care by Rudolf Serkin. He does particularly well at portraying the shifting moods of the G Major Concerto, which begins like one of the composer's opera overtures with a triumphant flood of sound, then grows increasingly introspective. Serkin's careful hands hold the balance, and the listener hears one of Mozart's most poignant statements.