FALLA. (a) The Three-cornered Hat—Ballet.

VILLA-LOBOS. (b) The Little Train of the Caipira from Bac.hianas Brasileiras No. 2. London Sym- phony Orchestra conducted by (a) Enrique Jorda and (b) Sir Eugene Goossens. Item (a) with Barbara Howitt (soprano). World Record Club el T164: 0 ST164 (12 in., 29s. incl. PT.). World Record Club, Parkbridge House, The Little Green, Richmond, Surrey.

Three-Cornered Hal:

Madeira, VSO, Remoortel (2(62) Q GBY1-1020: 0 STGBY511920 Berganza, Suisse, Ansermet (3/62) LXT5659: Q SXL2296

The LSO we know to be an orchestra of quality, and Jorda has the right ideas about this Falla score; but this record shows evidences of being distressingly underrehearsed and hastily made. How otherwise to account for the large number of small blemishes, ranging from slips, wrong entries (e.g. the 'cellos in the interruption to The Grapes), and poor intonation by the singer at the opening, to scrambled leads (e.g. the run-up leading to the reprise of the Miller's wife's fandango) and points of ragged ensemble (abundant in the finale), than on the supposition that there was no time for re-takes ? This general roughness of performance is the more the pity since the essence of an idiomatic recording can be sensed behind it all, and some parts are, in fact, well done. More care evidently needed to be taken over the session generally—the singer is (wrongly) on-stage at the beginning, but well off-mike, with an excessive blur, at her second entry; and Side 2 sounds for all the world as if it had been started before the microphone had been fully opened up. In the mono version there is a lot of surface roar on Side 1. This performance of the Falla, I am afraid, is only for those to whom low price is the paramount consideration; though at that it is better than the utterly wrong-headed Remoortel version.

The fill-up must be regarded as a write-off. Goossens takes this entertaining trifle far too slowly and seems not to have known how to interpret some of the effects (e.g. the clarinet smears, which can be heard correctly done in the recording directed by the composer, HMV mono ALP1603). The result lacks the necessary onomatopoeic humour and becomes a series of orchestral effects which don't cohere properly (the stereo separation if anything heightens this loss of cohesion) : instead of a gay little Brazilian train it sounds rather like Dr. Beeching's un-merry men working to rule. L.S.