*HINDEMITH : POULENC. Sonata in D, Op. ii, No. 2. Sonata ,(To the memory of Garcia Lorca). Louis Kaufman (violin), Artur Balsam (piano). Capitol CTL700t (12 in., 39s. 6d.).

The two sonatas on this disc form an interesting contrast to each other, and are useful additions to the catalogue. It says much for the musical perception and versatility of Louis Kaufman, an artist I have not previously heard, that he seems equally at home in both, bringing to the Poulenc a performance of sensibility and good taste not without a certain impersonality and a wholly French avoidance of excessive sentiment, and to the Hindemith just the right admixture of angularity and lyrical warmth for the somewhat divergent atmosphere of that work. Kaufman is admirably supported by the American pianist-accompanist Artur Balsam, though the recording tends to favour the violin at the expense of the piano, which at times becOmes rather woolly. My 'copy of the Hindemith is marred by a crackly surface, though the other side is reasonably quiet.

The Hindemith sonata is one of the four for stringed instruments which 'make up his Op. : it appeared in 1920 and is thus one of his earliest published works, revealing the composer still at a formative stage. The opening Lebhafl is the most individual part, a wild and impetuous movement of bold harmonic conception, and with angular phrases which alternate with a more flowing second subject. Thereafter the style is less personal : the very romantic slow movement looks backwards to Brahms, both in the broad dignity of its main theme and in its treatment; and the finale (" in the style of a lively dance ") is even less characteristic, though it does not cease to hold the interest.

There is quite a gur in musical values between even the early Hindemith and the Poulenc sonata, written in 1942-3 and first performed by the late Ginette Neveu with the composer. The dedication of the work to the memory of the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, shot by Fascists in 1936, seems to be an act of admiration rather than deep feeling ; or else it is that Poulenc's essentially slight idiom is incapable of powerful emotions ; for in spite of the numerous markings of Pres violent and the indication Presto tragic° for the finale, the expression of tragedy appears to lie beyond the composer. The opening Allegro con fuoco is a loosely-constructed rhapsodic movement in which I, for one, get rather tired of the two-bar lengths in which Poulenc constantly works : why Tatiana's letter comes into the middle of it all I cannot imagine. In the second movement, sub-titled Intermezzo, and headed by a quotation from Lorca, "La guitare fait pleurer les songes," there is some use of the chord formed by the guitar's open strings : a sombre coda is added on a new theme. The finale ends similarly with a coda marked douloureux, but for the rest Poulenc's inability to write a phrase of any length becomes more and more apparent, and some of the thematic ideas are dangerously near banality. For those listeners who like to follow the score, I should mention that there are four tiny cuts which, as they make no difference to the structure in general, were probably inserted by the composer after the sonata was already printed. L.S.