Recordings

Dedicated Wagnerites and neophytes alike will find ample cause to rejoice in the first available complete LP recording of Das Rheingold (London OSA 1309). Not only is it superbly performed; stereo seems to have been meant for this sort of operatic grandeur and spaciousness, and the full exploitation of its potentials as utilized here – with virtually no yielding to the temptation of overdoing stereo effects (well, maybe a little on the anvils) – comes as close to recording perfection as we've encountered. The seldom-heard opera, first in the tetralogy called The Ring, resounds with a Gothic splendor wonderfully suited to the Norse and Teutonic myths from which Wagner drew his epic of dwarfs, giants, gods and goddesses, Rhine maidens and mortals in the heroic mold. An impressive cast, under the direction of Georg Solti conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, seems to have been inspired to do its best: Flagstad, lured out of retirement last October especially for this session and singing a mezzo role as Fricka, has never sounded better in any recording – or any live performance of hers we've heard; Claire Watson (Freia), Gustav Neidlinger (Alberich), Walter Kreppel (Fasolt), Paul Kuen (Mime) and Set Svanholm (Loge) pour forth in full-voiced fervor yet with total control; George London as Wotan is expectably impressive, though he seems a bit out of his metier now and then (a small matter, really), and Eberhard Wachter, a comparative newcomer who sings Donner, quite obviously has a rich Wagnerian career ahead of him. If all this sounds like a rich layer-cake of superlatives, it's no more than this great three-disc offering deserves.

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Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone is the title of one tune in the latest posthumous Lester Young album, Laughin' to Keep from Cryin' (Verve 8316). But talk about him we must, since on one side of the disc Lester makes a rare appearance as clarinetist. Alas, we can't speak as kindly of the results as we'd have liked. The brutal truth is, Prez didn't practice, and obviously was operating under a severe technical handicap. The tracks on which he reverts to tenor show him in better though far from optimum form. His fellow horn men on the date carry much of the weight; the Roy Eldridge and Harry Edison solos are consistently hundred-proof. As usual, Verve neglected to name the rhythm section accompanying this fine front line. Our spies tell us they were. Herb Ellis, guitar; Mickey Sheen, drums; plus Hank Jones and Ray Brown on one date, Lou Stein and George Duvivier on the other.

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Johnny Mathis delivers himself of a heavenly set of ballads on Heavenly (Columbia CS 8152), as smooth and soothing as anything he's recorded to date. You know the style, and if you dig it (as we do), you can settle back to a gentle 45 minutes of charming chestnuts (More Than You Know, Stranger in Paradise, etc.) and fresh fare (I'll Be Easy to Find, Misty, etc.), each one done to a tasty turn. Chris Connor Sings Ballads of the Sad Cafe (Atlantic 1307) is another sniffly set of slow numbers, including some of the least heard but best ballads ever scripted (Glad to Be Unhappy, Lilac Wine, Good Morning Heartache, The End of a Love Affair, among others). Chris cuddles up to them all with warmth, intensity of feeling and fine phrasing that add up to a delightful experience throughout. She's backed variously by three groups of modern jazzmen, all of which help make this disc a best-of-breed winner.

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Teddy Wilson, after playing jazz on assorted pianos for 30 years, isn't moved by faddish pursuits. With Jamesian (Henry, not Harry) concern for precision and discipline, Wilson continues to bring a rare, wondrous dignity to jazz. In These Tunes Remind Me of You (Verve 8299), he sails through a dozen standards with an artistry and confidence that disintegrate the automatism of his many imitators. Compatibly supported by bassist. Al Lucas and drummer Jo Jones, Wilson caresses Imagination, briskly revitalizes The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise, and whips the hell out of Whispering and Just One of Those Things, to cite a few of the many well-tempered, delightful moments in this set.

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Now that Mr. and Mrs. Steve Lawrence are both affiliated with ABC-Paramount Records, we can look forward to some wild collaborations. Until that inevitable bash occurs, however, both members of the Lawrence household are well represented on separate biscuits. Steve's latest outing, Swing Softly with Me (ABC-Paramount 290), is just that – a relaxed, but moving, set. He makes a few changes on There'll Be Some Changes Made, turns tender on The One I Love Belongs to Somebody Else, and generally flatters a batch of standards. Mrs. Lawrence, Eydie Gorme, belts her way through a comparable set of standards in Eydie Gorme. . . On Stage (ABC-Paramount 307). Her Taking a Chance on Love is a fleet flight and her. All Right, OK, You Win, while not exactly Joe Williams-ish, is appropriately bluesy. In fact, she doesn't stumble once throughout the dozen-tune package; her voice – flexible and moving as ever – is a joy. A Steve-andEydie cooperative venture could be the LP of any year. We hope it happens soon.

By all odds the oddest title of the month is Get Those Elephants Outa Here! (Metrojazz 1012), with a cover shot showing seven pachydermatous backsides. It turns out to be a combo date starring the Mitchells: Red (playing tasty piano as well as bass), his brother Whitey (leader and alternate bassist) and Blue (no relation, but a hell of a trumpet man). And the title, it develops, is an injunction Red and Whitey's mother screamed at them when they first brought their basses into the living room. Andre Previn (whose name is unfairly given equal billing with the Mitchells) only solos on two of the eight tracks, but this doesn't keep the set from swinging all the way, and the items that feature ping-pong harmony ideas by the two bassists make piquant stereo listening. (But don't get the monophonic version – the basses are underrecorded and half the points is lost.)

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Mr. Jon Hendricks – of Lambert, Hendericks and Ross – appears solo as a sort of versified moderator on an instrumental album entitled New York, N.Y. (Decca DL 79216). The music, arranged, and for the most part composed, by brilliant young George Russell, contains much excitement in this most un-bern-steinesque, un-Gordon-Jenkinsish, un-Rodgers-and-Hartean approach to the five boroughs. The portrait is drawn, as the notes point out, in terms of Russell's basic jazz orientation, and he employs his own musical theory, which he calls the Lydian Concept of Tonal Organization. Technically too complex to explain here, it means in essence that Russell has unearthed a way to make music about as far out as one can get from the conventional harmonic concept, and at the same time to keep it essentially close to jazz and make it swing. The soloists – Art Farmer, Benny Golson and Bob Brookemeyer, among others – seem to have an empathy for this writing and are provided with dramatic, provocative contexts in which to blow. This one requires many playings before you can dig it thoroughly, but it's worth the effort.

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Last April, Harry Belafonte presented samples of his vast repertoire to two packed benefit houses in Carnegie Hall; it was his debut in that revered auditorium and is preserved on Harry Belafonte at Carnegie Hall (RCA Victor 6006). Few debuts anywhere have been as notable. Accompanied by a 47-piece orchestra conducted by Robert Corman, and his own folk group, Belafonte offered three acts-worth of song – Moods of the American Negro, In the Caribbean and Round the World. The opening group included Darlin' Cora, John Henry and a tender spiritual, Take My Mother Home. The Caribbean set consisted of such Belafonte properties as Day O, Jamaica Farewell, Man Piaba and Man Smart. The closing act offered songs from Israel, Ireland, Haiti, Mexico, America, and a wild, audience-participation version of Matilda. A compelling, projecting stylist. Belafonte mastered the material and the audiences with equal ease. It's all preserved in this worth-owning package.

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David Oistrakh and Pierre Fournier have got together with Alceo Galliera and the Philharmonia Orchestra to put on wax a stereo version of Brahms' Double Concerto in A minor, Op.102 (Angel S 35353), his last orchestral work. Fournier's cello comes through rather better than Oistrakh's fiddle, which tends to get lost in all the sonorous uproar. Nonetheless, it is good to have this great but seldom-heard work on a stereo platter of high technical quality.

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It's always unpleasant to sense a man squirming, but that's just what happens to Frank Sinatra on his latest album, No One Cares (Capitol 1221). Encased in so-called "rich backgrounds" by Gordon Jenkins, Frank sounds like he was inhibited by a too-tight raincoat during this session. He's lethargic and doesn't manifest that let's-call-a-broad-a-broad vigor. The tunes (it's a ballad set) are well chosen, with such jewels as A Cottage for sale, Stormy Weather, I can't Get Started, Just Friends and I'll Never Smile Again among them. The Jenkins background undulations, however, tend to erode Frank's performance, and the result is not happy. It's true that so-so Sinatra is preferable to good efforts by most other singers, but faithful, knowing fans of Frank deserve better than this. Sinatra, we've discovered, is more at home in Nelson Riddle's house than in any Manhattan tower.

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Things to Come (London 3047) is Ted Health's rebuttal to the critics' charge that his band is more polite than poll-winning. For this down-the-middle jazz outing, Heath augmented his crew with several former sidemen (including tenor man Don Rendell and baritone man Ronnie Ross) who have gone on to other, more solidly jazz-oriented British groups. The tunes include a handful of standards – I'll Remember April, sometimes I'm Happy, Stompin' at the Savoy, Just You, Just Me and Out of Nowhere – a brisk Johnny Keating arrangement of Ernesto Leucona's Taboo, and three originals: Four Fours and Ringside Suite by Ronnie Roullier, and Waterloo Bridge by Ken Moule. The sounds fall short of the Ellington-Basie level, to say the least. The arrangements too often are brief trifles, and the soloists, with a few exceptions (Rendell and Ross are among them) are weak. This time around, however, the Heath kit does contain jazz components throughout and the section work is wondrously precise and shames most. American jazz bands. It's pleasant to hear an in-tune, disciplined orchestra.

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Mort Sahl leaves few icons untrampled in his latest verbal attack on western civilization. Mart Sahl: A way of Life (Verve 15006). Beginning by bludgeoning Las Vegas, this unholy humorist glibly makes his way through doctors ("I go to this doctor . . . He's got 13 people waiting to see him, three of whom are patients. Ten are salesmen from Squibb and Cutter Lab. . .") and drugs, the Academy Awards, Hedda Hopper, Henry Luce, religion, the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, missiles, interservice rivalry ("World War III will be between the army and navy, with the marines as ushers"), actors, vice, Yalta, the DAR and Israel. Although this isn't the best of Sahl, the pointed monolog undoubtedly will carry away his fans, and they are legion.

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Unalloyed charm radiates from Horace Fitzpatrick's playing, on antique valveless instruments, of Music for Hunting Horn (Golden Crest 4014). The sharp, tart tone of these old horns (Fitzpatrick calls it "honestly eccentric") calls up images of long-ago countrysides, of lords and ladies dead and gone. There are 19 authentic hunting calls dating from 1561 to 1840 (To Uncouple the Hounds, Death of a Duck, Queen's Fanfare, Riding-home Fanfare, etc.) plus a short, peppy, little-known Horn Sonate by the young Beethoven, an adagio movement from an obscure Haydn concerto, and five Divertissements pour un Comedic Italienne by Mouret, a contemporary of Lully. Truly, the "Antient and Noble Art of Horn-blowying" nobly served.

Jazz fans planning to dig the European scene should make a note to pause in San Remo, Italy, if III Festival Dell Jazz – San Remo (Verve 2007) is a sample of what they serve up. This LP surveys the Italian-bred modern jazz performed at the 1958 bash. Though the names aren't familiar (composer-clarinetist Bill Smith, who sits in for one tune, is the only American present), the sounds are as stimulating as much of the jazz being lined out in our own fair land these days. The cats we'd like to hear at greater length are tenor man Eraldo Volonte and trumpeters Sergio Fanni, Oscar Valdambrini and Nunzio Rotundo. The tunes include a mixture of U.S. standards (This Is Always, Lover Man, Memories of You and Fine and Dandy), and several tunes composed by the jazzmen. One fact is apparent throughout: these musicians, like others in Europe, play their instruments with rare technical skill. What is even more alluring – most of these Italians don't feel compelled to imitate American jazzmen.

Audiophiles may cringe at the cellar-low fidelity of The Oscar Peterson Trio at the Concertgebouw (Verve 8268), but genuine jazzophiles will not give a hoot. The LP was recorded during a concert in Amsterdam in 1958 by a fan who happened to bring his tape recorder along. He then presented the tapes to Norman Granz, who decided to release the sounds. The decision was a wise one, despite the technical recording limitations; Peterson, Ray Brown and Herb Ellis rarely have played better. Moved by audience response, the trio pulsates vigorously in the best sense of the term "swing." An earthy Bags' Groove, a frantic Lady Is a Tramp, a balladic we'll Be Together Again, and a medium-tempo I've Got the World on a String account for some of the kicks, but there are glistening minutes on every one of the eight tunes explored by the trio.

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The album title No Count Sarah (Mercury 20441) is a tricky way of saying that Sarah Vaughan joins forces with the Basie band minus the Count. The fruits of the collaboration are less tricky as Sarah wails and sighs in front of the bluesy Basie band (with Sarah's pianist Ronnell Bright and bassist Richard Davis sitting in). Despite some overly coy and harsh moments, she manages to inject life into a string of ballads, including Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Darn That Dream, Moonlight in Vermont, Stardus and Bright's appealing Missing You, plus several swingers, including Horace Silver's Doodlin', a flashy Just One of Those Things, a funky No 'Count Blues, and a bustling Check to cheek.

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Baroque Sonatas for Flute and Harpsichord (Washington 407) is misnamed: of the four represented (C. P. E. Bach, Tele-mann, Couperin, M. Blavet), only Couperin qualifies to any extent as baroque. The rest are well within the rococo tradition – charming, witty, gracile music these pieces are, instinct with esprit rather than deep emotion. Wisely the makers of this platter have resisted any temptation they may have felt to get on the stereo bandwagon: monophonic sound makes perfect sense for these homophonic streams of melody. Movement flows into movement and composer into composer; the lights should be dim and conversation need not be interrupted. Jean Pierre Rampal tootles a flute of unusual purity and fullness of tone, which is competently backed by Robert Veyron-Lacroix on harpsichord, playing his own realization of the figured bass. It is reprehensible that the record (our pressing, anyway) is married by an occasional ghost and other flaws.

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While many of his embittered young contemporaries growl angrily at a world they never made, alto saxophonist Lee Konitz continues to sound the cool, contented call. He soars in pensive, pastoral form throughout Tranquility (Verve 8281), cushioned tastefully by the pretty sounds of guitarist Billy Bauer, bassist Henry Grimes and drummer Dave Bailey. Among the contemplative moments in the eight-tune set are a lovely Konitz ballad, Stephanie; a sprightly warm-up on People Will Say We're in Love; a relaxed, understated Sunday; and a soft but speedy How High the Moon. Non-angry jazz buffs will dig every tranquil moment.

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Teenage piper Johny Nash has a Mathis-like voice, and is an incredibly swinging pro to boot. Not wholly allied to the choir-boy clique, Nash is an earthy, flexible singer with rhythmical phrasing that places him above most singers his age (17), and he's obviously spent some of his years digging the blues. On his latest LP, I Got Rhythm (ABC-Paramount 299), he's backed by a crackling studio band and aided by refreshing Don Costa arrangements. Nash powers his way through a dozen tunes, including a unique version of the title tune, a rapidly flowing 'S Wonderful, a Latinized And the Angels Sing, a smooth I'm Beginning to See the Light, and a revitalized I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles ("All these groovy little bubbles," wails Nash). It's a groovy little album. And watch out for Nash; he's on the move.