*DEBUSSY : RAVEL. La Mer ; Ma Mere L'Oye. Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (Ansermet). Decca LXT2632 (12 in., 39s. 6d.).

Is this (one wonders) the recording by the same conductor and orchestra which Decca issued in April 1949 ? I well remember it— a fine performance not among the finest reproductions by that company. Unless both my memory and my earlier review elsewhere are wrong, this LP version is a good deal better. One of Ansermet's great qualities as a conductor of modern music is his sense of a composer's throughand-through plan ; he does not allow his feeling for design to be disturbed by making high points of colour too important. He never wastes time on irrelevancies, but carries the music on firmly to the end. In this reproduction Ansermet is given good scope for his bigness of mind. The full orchestra sounds really splendid, and the whole will take considerable volume and pleasantly fill a large room. The third of these "symphonic sketches" is almost better than the other two.

The only rival recording of Ma Mare L' Oye that I personally know is that issued by Decca in February 1948 with Sidney Beer conducting the National Symphony

Orchestra. Beer's was both an un authoritative and an unimaginative performance ; but it happened to be reproduced in Decca's most brilliant and successful pre-LP style. The Ansermet performance on the back of La Mer is somewhat the opposite— a superb performance not entirely happy in reproduction. Playing the two sides on the same machine on the same morning I found the Ravel would take more high overtones than the Debussy, but less volume ; and even at the same volume, the sound from the wax is less pervasive, less filling of a big space. This is clearly a good LP for small rooms. The pressing I was sent was full of dubieties and waverings of pitch ; they improved with a large acoustic load, and definitely were less obtrusive after I had played the softer passages three times. But they never quite disappeared. Otherwise, the recording is clear with good orchestral tone. As extra measure, Ansermet gives us a Prelude et Danse de Rouet, which does not appear in the ordinary score of these " Five Children's Pieces." It is effective Ravel, orchestrally, if not with any great significance—just lovely to the ear. H.F.