Capitol Records' Los Angeles engineers were used to musicians, including longhairs, who loosened their collars, rolled up their sleeves and lost their tempers, but this recording session was something new. The violinist, pianist and cellist were women, and they would have been longhairs but for the fact that their hair was out of sight. Three sisters, they were also sisters of Los Angeles' congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and they had been performing together since 1931, when the youngest was five, the eldest nine. Their Capitol debut in Schubert's Trio No. 2 in E flat, Opus 100, marks the latest step in the musical career of a remarkable trio.
Pianist Sister Mary Mark and Violinist Sister Mary Denis entered California's congregation of the Immaculate Heart in 1942, Cellist Sister Mary Anthony three years later. Teachers rather than performers most of the year (the congregation has 43 grammar schools in the West), they fulfill a packed, 16½-hr. daily working schedule during the academic term, with no time for concerts. But last year the trio played a successful 24-concert tour (since their rules forbid them to be out at night or up after 10 p.m., they played most concerts in Catholic schools or colleges where they spent the night). Capitol's new record, frankly released "experimentally," reveals none of the Seattle-reared sisters (nees Zeyen) as a real virtuoso, but Sister Anthony, before taking the veil, played for three seasons in the Los Angeles Philharmonic, one year in the 20th Century-Fox studio orchestra, and Sister Mark holds a Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music. Few trios now performing can surpass their exquisitely unified ensemble playing. Tempi they keep brisk and tense. During the recording session, one of the three sisters said crisply: "Let's take it faster. We can't sound like three old women." They don't.
Other new records:
Mahler: Symphony No. 2, "Resurrection" (Emilia Cundari, Maureen Forrester, Westminster Choir; New York Philharmonic, conducted by Bruno Walter; Columbia, 2 LPs). An invaluable record of a mammoth mixture of mysticism, romanticism and folklore by a composer often rated alongside history's greatest, conducted by his disciple, close friend and most inspired interpreter.
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. I (Sviatoslav Richter; Soviet State Radio Orchestra, conducted by Kurt Sanderling; Monitor). Thanks to skillful transfer of technically mediocre Soviet tapes to high-quality American matrices, this record stands out as the best yet released in America of fabled Sviatoslav Richter (TIME, June 16), probably the most versatile, widest-ranged pianist alive. Equaling Horowitz's technique, Rubinstein's poetry, Serkin's sensitivity, he makes even Saint Saens' Piano Concerto No. 5, on the other side, seem vivid and important.
Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring (New York Philharmonic, conducted by Leonard Bernstein; Columbia). Few top-drawer conductors are younger than Stravinsky's 1913 masterpiece, but Bernstein (b. 1918) is one of them. With all his life to absorb and assimilate the jagged rhythms and excruciating dissonances, he has achieved probably the most exciting performance of this work ever released on records. The blazing, barbaric recorded sound is up to the performance.