SYMPHONIC, ETC.

Some phonograph records are musical events. Each month TIME notes the noteworthy.

Richard Strauss: Symphonic Domestica (Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy conducting; Victor: 10 sides). Composer Strauss' at his most realistic, depicts the pleasures, worries and bickerings of his own family circle, manages even to reproduce the gurgle of the drain in the family bathtub. Judged as music pure & simple, it is one of his finest scores, given its first (and a brilliant) recording.

Paul Hindemith: String Quartet No. 3 (Coolidge Quartet; Victor: 6 sides). One of the few recorded examples of atonality, this bleak, fleshless, post-War opus is more interesting historically than musically.

Deems Taylor: Through the Looking Glass (Columbia Symphony, Howard Barlow conducting; Columbia: 8 sides). A well-known, light, agreeable suite by the most successful of contemporary U. S. highbrow composers. U. S.-born Conductor Barlow makes his phonographic bow, does an excellent job.

Giordano: Andrea Chenier (Chorus and orchestra of the La Scala Opera, Lorenzo Molajoli conducting, with Linda Bruna Rasa, Luigi Marini and other singers; Columbia: 2 volumes, 26 sides). Giordano's melodramatic, French-Revolutionary opera shows signs of coming back into U. S. favor. The present recording is rich in marinara sauce.

Schumann: Concerto in A Minor for Piano and Orchestra (Myra Hess with an orchestra conducted by Walter Goehr; Victor: 8 sides). Finest recording to date of a popular Romantic masterpiece.

Beethoven: Quartet in E Flat Major for Piano and Strings (E. Robert Schmitz and members of the Roth Quartet; Columbia: 7 sides). An early but likable Beethoven item originally written, as Op. 16, for piano and wind instruments. The performance is well-tooled.

Schubert: Sonata in G Major, Op. 78 (Kurt Appelbaum, pianist; Musicraft: 8 sides). Remarkable example of fine piano-tone reproduction. German Pianist Appelbaum plays his Schubert sensitively.

Brahms Song Society, Volume I (Alexander Kipnis, bass, Gerald Moore, pianist; Victor: 12 sides). Fourteen of Brahms's best-known Lieder, including the Vier ernste Gesaenge, sung by an acknowledged master.

Buxtehude: Missa Brevis, and Johann Hermann Schein: Motet "Die Mit Tranen Saeen" (Motet Singers, Paul Boepple conducting; Musicraft: 4 sides). In 1700, grand old man of European music was a Swedish composer and organist named Dietrich Buxtehude. His quaint, archaic Missa Brevis is as deft and complicated as a Renaissance tapestry. Composer Schein's motet, added for good measure, was written about half a century earlier.

Alec Templeton: Musical Impressions, Satires & Improvisations (Gramophone Shop, Inc., 18 East 48th Street, Manhattan: 8 sides). Blind musical Satirist Templeton's one-man caricatures of Wagnerian Opera, Lieder singing, etc., have long been featured entertainment at Rockefeller Center's swanky Rainbow-Room. Their recorded versions are guaranteed to split the solemnest concertgoer's sides.

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