New Records

Rossini: Overtures (NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini conducting; Victor, 8 sides). Italy's great kettledrum-banging composer is heard with appropriate thunder on unbreakable plastic records, which catch the crescendos without the mushiness of ordinary records. Best is Toscanini's job on La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie). Also in Victor's second plastic album are the overtures to The Barber of Seville, La Cenerentola (Cinderella) and Il Signor Bruschino. Performance : excellent.

Mozart: Quintet in C Major (Budapest String Quartet with Milton Katims, viola; Columbia, 8 sides). One of Mozart's most beguiling scores played in the grand manner by men who know their Mozart. Performance: excellent.

Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B Flat Major (Rudolf Serkin and the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy conducting; Columbia, 12 sides). A pretentious old warhorse in new harness. Serkin plays it louder but not better than Horowitz did with Father-in-Law Toscanini in Victor's 1941 recording. Performance: fair.

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 6 (The Pittsburgh Symphony, Fritz Reiner conducting; Columbia, 9 sides). The Pittsburgh's finest recording and one of Columbia's cleanest. Performance: good.

Schubert: Songs from Winterreise (Lotte Lehmann; Columbia, 6 sides). A great soprano concludes for Columbia a haunting series of songs about rejected love, which she began for Victor in 1940. Performance: excellent.

James Melton: Operatic Arias (Victor, 6 sides). The Metropolitan Opera tenor comes off better with two arias from Wagner, which he does not sing at the Met, than with two Mozart and two Massenet arias, which he does. Performance: good.

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