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MARK TWAIN TONIGHT! With a finger's twitch, an eye's mischief, a tongue's tartness, a mind's unblinking sagacity, Hal Holbrook evokes the memorable presence of America's fabled humorist.
PHILADELPHIA, HERE I COME! is the affecting portrait of a young Irish emigre struggling to free himself from the womb before he can enter the jet. Brian Friel paints him with sensitive shadings and honest brush strokes.
SWEET CHARITY. As a dance-hall dolly whose heart is leaden but whose feet are mercury, Gwen Verdon is effusive. The slickness of Bob Fosse's choreography is suffusive. What there is of Neil Simon's book is elusive.
CACTUS FLOWER. French sex farces center around a door. Through it, one lover rushes. Behind it, the other lover hides. When it creaks open, it suggests suspicion. When it slams, it declares the end of the affair. In this latest Paris import, Actors Barry Nelson and Lauren Bacall and Director Abe Burrows make frequent and funny use of it.
RECORDS
Orchestral
CARL NIELSEN: SYMPHONY NO. 4 (Decca). Written in 1915, when the composer was deeply depressed by the grinding horror of trench warfare, this is at once more soulful and more fiery than most of Nielsen's work. It opens and closes with stupefying crashes and eerie shudders—and in between are slow somber passages from which the characteristic Nielsen touches (Scandinavian folk songs and dances) are absent. Max Rudolf and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra give a clear, energetic performance that is, if anything, a bit too brisk.
IVES: SYMPHONY NO. 1 (RCA Victor). Ever the unawed Yankee, Charles Ives referred to Wagner as "Richie" and thought he was a phony, but Richie was hovering at Ives's elbow when he wrote this early work. So was Brahms. Impeccably played by Morton Gould and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, this first recording makes pleasant listening for admirers of late 19th century orchestration, but it takes a sophisticated ear to recognize that Ives would shortly after push the frontiers of music out so far that modern composers are still colonizing his territory.
MOZART: EINE KLEINE NACHTMUSIK (Deutsche Grammophon). There have been airier recordings of this classic, and subtler ones as well, but there haven't been any that communicate so fully the joy of genius and the marvel in a masterpiece. Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic sound as if they had discovered it in an attic just last week.
STRAVINSKY: AGON; SCHULLER: SEVEN STUDIES ON THEMES OF PAUL KLEE (RCA Victor). Schuller's Themes are a delightful example of the eclecticism that enlivens the modern arts. From seven different Klee canvases, Schuller has distilled seven musical moods, from a scarifying "Eerie Moment" to a twittering "Twittering Machine." As plunked out by the Boston Symphony strings, this is a fine way to absorb youngsters in the zany ways of modern harmony. On the other side, Conductor Erich Leinsdorfs reading of the classic Agon is as plastic as the dance itself.