Madame Bovary: Ivanhoe: Plymouth Adventure (126zsa). Music from the soundtracks. MGM Studio Orchestra conducted by Mikins Rdzsa. Polydor MGM 2353 095 (f2.11). Electronic stereo.

When MiklOs ROzsa joined MGM in 1949 he exchanged the murk of the American underworld (Criss Cross, The Naked City and others) for the more cosmopolitan shows of yesteryear; and MGM's handsome series of historical pageants and romances brought forth some of his best scores. Three of them are represented on this, the latest in Polydor's valuable series of MGM reissues. For many the highlight of the disc will be the spectacular Madame Bova?), Waltz (in its original, uncut version), a neurasthenic tour-de-force which gives an inevitable passing nod in Ravel's direction but is certainly no mere carbon copy. The Prelude too is very successful in conveying the claustrophobia, desperation and mat du siècle inherent in Flaubert's novel. Ivanhoe draws on a number of authentic medieval melodic sources, but (and this is one of the distinguishing marks of a real composer) R6zsa absorbs them all quite painlessly into his own musical bloodstream; the result is a fiery, colourful score with a genuine historical resonance (no pseudoarchaisms). Plymouth Adventure is more austere, and fittingly so, for the thematic mainstay is the 136th Psalm Tune, taken direct from the one music book the Pilgrim Fathers are known to have had on board when they sailed from Plymouth in 1620. Elsewhere R6zsa again finds little difficulty in adapting the musical idiom of the seventeenth century lutenists to his own purposes, very movingly in the case of "Dorothy's Decision", i.e. Dorothy Bradford's suicide. These scores were all composed and recorded between 1949 and 1953; in view of its age the sound is remarkably good. C.P.