The Music Box

With the quest for the American dollar at a new pitch of intensity, cities all over the United States are beginning to fill up with European goods of all shapes and varieties--not the least of them being phonograph records. Imported records, traditionally the province of two stores in New York City, have suddenly been made available to Bostonians and even to residents of the Harvard Square area.

As far as Cambridge is concerned, two of the Square's music shops are already selling unusual foreign records in limited quantities, and the flow is expected to increase. Briggs and Briggs has on hand a few copies of some Cetra (Italian) releases and is daily expecting a shipment of HMV discs; McKenna's has already received 1000 HMV records, including such choice items as the Schnabel Beethoven Sonata Society sets, the Fischer recordings of the Bach 48 Preludes and Fugues, and songs from the Wintereisse sung by Gerhard Husch; and both of the stores have the Polydor version of the Missa Solemnjs, performed by the Berlin Philharmonic and chorus.

While the English discs are exceptionally worth-while from any musical standpoint, it is the two Cetra releases currently available at Briggs which are the most unusual and striking in their contrast to the ordinary American clasical product.

First of the two sets is the Mozart Requiem Mass, a work which despite its important position in the composer's creations and among all the works in the Mass form has been available heretofore only in an inferior and abridged Victor version by the Pennsylvania Bach Choir. In this Cetra recording of the Requiem a superb orchestra and tremendous chorus combines with such soloists as Ferrucio Tagliavini, thrilling young tenor who will soon appear with the Met, to produce an effect altogether superior to that of the American set. Particularly outstanding is the recording technique: the more than 120 voices and oversized orchestra performed the mass in a huge cathedral on the 150th anniversary of Mozart's death, and the records capture the immense and somehow ecclesiastical sound in a way never achieved by U. S. or British choral recording.

The other Cetra set is even more distinctive, being the first recording in the world of the Haydn oratorio, The Seasons. Another fine technical job features this set, which every lover of Haydn should at least hear, for its appealing simplicity and melodic beauty. The arias are like those of Mozart operas, the choral numbers serene, the orchestration surprisingly rich.

With these and other foreign records as samples of what to expect, Americans seem to be in for a period of record prosperity. Foreign companies are catering to the U. S. market even to the unheard-of extent of making pressings in automatic sequence, and if buyers can meet the higher prices, they will be in for some lush musical treats.