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MENUHIN AND SHANKAR: WEST MEETS EAST, VOL. 2 (Angel). More improvisations with Ravi Shankar on the sitar and Yehudi Menuhin on the violin. Though these ragas are obviously Indian music, it is easy to understand Menuhin's empathy for them. To the Western ear they sound remarkably like the gypsy fiddling of the violinist's beloved Rumania. Whatever the reason, the raga brings out the wild man in Menuhin. "Real art is always of the moment—of improvisation," he likes to say. "I play with clearheaded abandon."
MOZART: SONATAS FOR PIANO, NOS. 330, 333 AND 336 (Westminster). This is a composed, almost complacent performance in the Romantic vein by the youthful Daniel Barenboim. Though never insipid, Barenboim is so careful to avoid excess drama that he sacrifices some excitement in the process. Recent recordings of the sonatas by Glenn Gould and Lili Kraus are more radical and compelling, but many Mozart lovers may prefer Barenboim's intelligent, less egotistical approach.
CINEMA
ISABEL. Directed by her husband Paul Almond, Geneviève Bujold plays a young girl passing unsteadily into womanhood. For background there is the chilling, often bleak landscape of Quebec's Gaspe" Peninsula.
INADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE. Nicol Williamson is John Osborne's 39-year-old London solicitor to the life, possessed by the terrifying realization that he is mediocrity itself and that what lies ahead for him is meaningless.
ROSEMARY'S BABY. Roman Polanski transforms Ira Levin's bestselling chiller about the powers of darkness at work in a Manhattan apartment into a bewitching film that demonstrates the impressive acting ability of Mia Farrow.
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER. Poetry always suffers in translation, and Carson McCullers' poetic novel is no exception to the rule. Yet the film has some worth while aspects: Alan Arkin's portrayal of a mute whose silence is deafening, and Sondra Locke as a poignant antiheroine.
THE BRIDE WORE BLACK. In his homage to Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut tells the story of a vengeful bride in a manner that mirrors the old master's style as
Jeanne Moreau tracks down a handful of murderers. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Director Stanley Kubrick attempts to create a new language to describe the future on the screen. His grammar is faultless, his pronunciation beautiful, his message obscure.
BOOKS
Best Reading
THE CASE AGAINST CONGRESS, by Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson. Under the rolled logs and pork barrels, the political columnists find plenty of muck and a depressing number of congressional rakes.
THE DANCE OF GENGHIS COHN, by Romain Gary. A mordantly funny allegory about the ghost of an exterminated Jew who haunts an ex-Nazi.
HAROLD NICOLSON: THE LATER YEARS, 1945-1962. The concluding volume of reminiscences of the late British writer-politician reveals a man of deep sentiment and candor, and one of the century's finest memoirists.
THE AMERICAN CHALLENGE, by J.J. Servan-Schreiber. One of France's best-known journalists warns that his nation must institute sweeping educational, technological and managerial changes if it hopes to be influential in the modern world.