Bin Browsing - sound recordings - Buyers Guide

National Review, March 5, 2001 by Jay Nordlinger

The record stores are bulging, as usual, and, again as usual, they are offering a mixture of the old-which is to say, the reissued-and the new-which is to say, the freshly recorded. Being conservatives, we will start with the old.

Beverly Sills is thought of today mainly as a celebrity, but she was a formidable singer. We see this in the re-release of her "Three Queens" (on Deutsche Grammophon) and in a delightful new anthology, delightfully entitled Sillsiana (from Gala). The three queens are those of Donizetti-in Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda, and Roberto Devereux-and they helped establish Sills as a queen of bel canto. These discs bring it all back: the clarity, the silvery tones, the head-spinning technique. On top of everything else, Sills had a sure musical sense, informing everything she did. She has been rather underrepresented on CD-this new crop is a recompense. The broad from Brooklyn was an artist.

EMI has reissued the complete symphonies of Vaughan Williams, along with several of his other orchestral works, conducted by Adrian Boult. The recordings come in a box of eight CDs. Boult was one of a grand triumvirate of British conductors, with Thomas Beecham and John Barbirolli. He had a lifelong association with Vaughan Williams; indeed, he premiered many of the composer's works. These recordings are, of course, authoritative, but they are also on the blunt side. Boult's Vaughan Williams is less probing than, for example, Barbirolli's-less reflective, less beautiful, less Mahlerian, in a way. But they have their own excellence, and it is good to have all this Vaughan Williams-a superb corpus-under one roof.

On the subject of conductors linked to particular composers: EMI has also boxed up the complete symphonies of Bruckner, led by Eugen Jochum. The German maestro is rightly acknowledged as the supreme exponent of Bruckner, not only for his disciple-like devotion to him, but for his astounding ability to bring out all that is great in him. Jochum was more than a champion; he was a kindred spirit. Bruckner conducting requires, above all, a sense of architecture, of musical space; otherwise, we are lost in these long, and long-visioned, works. Jochum has this quality, and everything else that is needed. Every composer could use a Jochum in his corner.

Talk about completeness: The organ works of Bach-in toto-appear in a set of 18 CDs (again, from EMI). The organist is Werner Jacob, a competent musician, although not one to stir the blood or transport the soul. It is hard to fathom that this extraordinary output-the Bach organ oeuvre-is merely a portion of the extraordinary output that is all of Bach. And, as with the Vaughan Williams, it is bracing to contemplate this mighty catalogue in one place. That by itself is enough to stir the blood, transport the soul.

Part of the EMI line-and, by the way, all the rest of the recordings discussed here, save one (and that indicated), will be from that label: It is the Great Mother of classical-music CDs-is the Introuvables, or "Unfindables," series. This series takes rare, often yearned for, gems from the company's vaults and places them in the bins, where buyers can get at them. The latest is a seven-disc set devoted to Verdi singing, in this centenary of that composer's death. There are 126 items here, most of them fascinating. They start at the very dawn of recording-1903 or so-and extend to about 1950. Many of the singers are well known, like Enrico Caruso, Frida Leider, and Jussi Bjoerling (who sings "Di quella pira," that fiery aria, with his usual, glorious Swedish cool). More important, there are dozens of worthy singers whose names have been allowed to collect dust. Seldom does a boxed set provide so much: a banquet of singing, a walk through history, and a chance for those who had died to live again.

Nathan Milstein enjoyed a long life: He was born in 1903, died in 1992. And for most of that time, he performed before the public. He played everything well-the entire violin repertory was his oyster-but some of us reserve a particular admiration for his Bach. It was elegant, insightful, unforgettable. Now his traversal of the unaccompanied sonatas has been reissued. Milstein's Bach is not "correct," by the lights of today's "period" fanatics, but it is unfailingly musical, which is always correct. It is clean, but not sterile. It can be lush, but is never overly so. It is vigorous, gentle, lyrical, imposing- whatever the composer wants. And through it all there is Milstein's incomparable sound-both masculine and lovely-and his deep musical intelligence. This is model playing. A violinist who had an all-too-short life was Michael Rabin, who died in 1972 at 35. He is one of those tragedies of music: a performer who did not have the time to develop into the complete musician he almost surely would have been. Rabin was a phenomenal virtuoso, as evidenced by his conquest of the Paganini caprices, recorded when he was 22. His playing is tight, assured, and fearsomely accurate. He does not produce an especially beautiful sound; it can be abrasive, or cold. But sound is not necessarily the game in these devilish pieces. It seems that Rabin is in the same position as William Kapell, a pianist who died at 31: frozen forever as a young buck with a ferocious technique and a bold musical personality. There are worse fates.