(3 of 4)
STRAVINSKY CONDUCTS CANTATA, MASS and IN MEMORIAM DYLAN THOMAS (Columbia). In 1952, Stravinsky worked a near miracle by writing a cantata based on four dirges by anonymous Elizabethan poets. The poems were to be sung at wakes, but they are essentially joyful, expressing a happy vision of death as "a place eternally to sing." Stravinsky's Mass is less successful, partly because it was written in reaction against what he called the "rococo-operatic sweets-of-sin" in Mozart's masses. Most musical tastes will find it dry and detached, though others will find this characteristic a virtue. Dylan Thomas died just before he was able to write a proposed libretto for Stravinsky; the composer set "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" to uncompromisingly sad music in honor of his friend.
A RICHARD STRAUSS SONG RECITAL: MONTSERRAT CABALLE (RCA Victor). This album offers little opportunity for either Caballé or Strauss fans to cheer. Caballé's forte is the Spanish and the bel canto repertory, where she can spin out her show-stopping pianissimos. However interesting it is to hear Strauss's songs, he was more compelling in the composition of his horror-ridden yet beautiful grand operas.
CINEMA
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS. In this story of a young man beginning life as a train dispatcher, Czech Director Jirí Menzel mixes the real and the surreal, ribaldry and pathos, comedy and tragedy, yet keeps the film on the track all the way.
THE THIEF OF PARIS. Jean-Paul Belmondo plays a burglar in turn-of-the-century France, manages only to steal the picture, which, because of its disjointedness, just misses being worth the effort.
THE BIG CITY. Director Satyajit Ray expertly dissects a slice of Indian life and shows how a young Bengali couple copes with Calcutta's modern realities while bound to an ancient morality.
UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE. Sandy Dennis is expert, as always. But it is the kids themselves (recruited from the New York City streets) who give the ring of truth to this glossy rendering of Bel Kaufman's novel about a teacher's problems in a slum-area high school.
THE BIRDS, THE BEES AND THE ITALIANS. Adultery—Italian style, by Divorce—Italian Style Director Pietro Germi. Virna Lisi supplies the sugar and spice. Really quite nice.
BOOKS Best Reading
RANDALL JARRELL, 1914-1965, edited by Robert Lowell, Peter Taylor and Robert Penn Warren. A posthumous appreciation of a minor poet and major critic written by his friends, most of them eminent writers whom he served as unofficial custodian of artistic conscience.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË: THE EVOLUTION OF GENIUS, by Winifred Gérin. This biography of the most prolific and active of the Bronté sisters plumbs the sources of
Charlotte's strength (her realism) and her weakness (sentimental romanticism).
THE COLD WAR AS HISTORY, by Louis J. Halle. A clear, compelling study of U.S. and Russian maneuvers from 1945 to 1962 by a former State Department aide who strips away the participants' emotions to observe the heart of one of history's most significant conflicts.
A HALL OF MIRRORS, by Robert Stone. A first novelist writing about low life in New Orleans shows a particular gift for well-developed characters and dialogue.