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HAMP tries a British youth for deserting when the blood and din of World War I overwhelm him. Though innocent of evil, he is guilty of breach of duty, and must be condemned. Robert Salvio is movingly effective as the frightened Private Hamp.
RECORDS
Orchestral
A TOSCANINI TREASURY OF HISTORIC BROADCASTS (RCA Victor; 5 LPs). Lest we forget that the maestro of maestros was born 100 years ago, RCA has released this album of some of his legendary performances. Haydn, Mozart, Brahms and Sibelius are all represented, but the album's hit is the U.S. premiere of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, which was composed in 1941 in honor of the besieged city of Leningrad. A microfilm of the score was soon whisked out of Russia and into Toscanini's hands. Conducting his NBC Symphony, he draws forth all the pity, terror and courage in this powerful sound picture of the Nazi invasion of Russia.
VARÈSE: ARCANA (RCA Victor). Jean Martinon and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra attack the late Edgard Varèse's exciting, if twitchy, rhythms. Arcana was completed by 1927, but it still sounds avantgarde, because it makes "absolute music" with a heckelphone, coconuts and more than 120 other instruments. Intriguing though it may be, Arcana sounds more like warring fusillades than music.
NIELSEN: SYMPHONY NO. 6 (Columbia). While Varese was wholeheartedly knocking coconuts, Danish Composer Carl Nielsen was less jovially contemplating the death of romanticism. In Nielsen's bitter, instructive and humorous Sinfonia Semplice, sweet strains are brutally harangued by sneering trombones and the icy tinkles of glockenspiel and triangles. In spite of the symphony's warning of the long winter's night ahead for music, Eugene Ormandy and his Philadelphia Orchestra succeed in realizing Nielsen's hope of making it "as lively and gay as possible."
BRUCKNER: SYMPHONY NO. 3 (Columbia). Bruckner's favorite instrument, an organ in an Austrian monastery, stands over his grave. Viennese wits maliciously commented that his music sounded as if he had been buried by an organ long before he was dead. But Wagner compared Bruckner's ideas to Beethoven's, and Bruckner dedicated his Third Symphony to his mentor at Bayreuth. The Cleveland Orchestra is Szellously conducted through Bruckner's poignant lyricism—but somewhat banal melodies.
SCHUMANN: "SPRING" SYMPHONY (Angel). Schumann composed his First Symphony in honor of his honeymoon year with Clara, and it is one of the happiest works by this tragic composer. Otto Klemperer's exuberant conducting helps to make this recording another ideal series of melodies for spring.
MOZART: SYMPHONIES NOS. 39 AND 36 (Deutsche Grammophon). Frozen souls and frigid spirits can always warm themselves before the fire of Mozart's impudent joy. The master may never have heard his own 39th Symphony played, because he probably composed it for a private concert that never materialized, but it has since become one of Mozart's most welcome though familiar works. Karl Bohm and the Berlin Philharmonic give it, and the less often played "Linz" Symphony on the other side, their exacting due.
CINEMA