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The Sea Hawk, the Classic Film Scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (National Philharmonic Orchestra of London, Charles Gerhardt conducting; RCA, $5.98). In the days when almost everyone loved Hollywood for its epic swashbucklers, almost everyone in Hollywood loved Erich Wolfgang Korngold for his epic, swashbuckling film scores. Starting in 1935 with Captain Blood, Korngold pretty much set the pattern—virtuoso tone poems that reinforced character with melodic motif, heightened situation with orchestral effect and commented relentlessly on just about everything taking place on screen. Such gems as The Constant Nymph, Kings Row, Juarez, Anthony Adverse and The Sea Hawk followed.
All these and more are handsomely recorded on this LP under the supervision of Korngold's producer son George. The record is also the only stereo document currently available of a composer who was one of Europe's most brilliant prodigies half a century ago. When Korngold was 13, Artur Schnabel was playing his piano sonata in Vienna and Berlin. Four years later Conductors Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer were doing his orchestral works. In 1921, when Korngold was 24, his opera The Dead City was mounted at the Metropolitan Opera, and legendary Soprano Maria Jeritza made her debut in it. Korngold promised much, but he kept that promise, sad to say for the world of serious music, in Hollywood, where he died in 1957.
Bach, Italian Concerto, English Suite No. 2, French Suite No. 6, Fantasia in C Minor (Pianist Alicia de Larrocha; London, $5.98). Once best known for her exquisite interpretations of fellow Spaniards like De Falla, Turina and Granados, De Larrocha has been cutting a new Continental image for herself in recent years. That includes some scintillating Chopin and Mozart, and now this disk, which is breathtaking in its dramatic separation of contrapuntal lines, ravishing ornamentations and sheer pianistic delight.
Beethoven, The Five Cello and Piano Sonatas (Cellist Pierre Fournier, Pianist Artur Schnabel; Seraphim, 2 LPs, $5.96). Whether darkly probing his psyche or demonstrating sheer joy, Beethoven was a composer who believed that music should be dramatic and expressive. So, fortunately, do Fournier and Schnabel, in this historic collaboration dating from 1948, now issued in its entirety for the first time on an American LP. It is hereby recommended as an antidote for today's "cool" and bloodless school of Beethoven interpretation.
Wagner, Tristan und Isolde (Tenor Jon Vickers, Soprano Helga Dernesch, Soprano Christa Ludwig, Baritone Walter Berry, Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan conducting; Angel, 5 LPs, $29.90). What a cast of performers! What a disappointment! Given Karajan's past flair for Wagner, not to mention stalwart Tenor Vickers as Tristan, this could well have been, the stereo statement of Wagner's endless paean to adultery. Instead, it is merely a smooth, workmanlike job, hampered by Dernesch's inability to make Isolde alive enough so that her death is significant. The record is also marred by the cavernous, "first-row-of-the-balcony" acoustics that Karajan seems to enjoy these days. The 20-year-old Tristan, starring Kirsten Flagstad and Conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler, incomparable and still available in excellent mono, remains the set to have.