New Records

Dohnanyi: Suite in F Sharp Minor (Philharmonic Orchestra of Los Angeles, Alfred Wallenstein conducting; Decca, 6 sides). Disjointed but pleasant melodies by Hungary's 68-year-old Brahmsian. The recording is a bid for the symphonic big league by Decca Records and the Los Angeles orchestra. Performance: good.

Mozart: Violin Concerto in A Major, No. 5 (Adolf Busch and the Busch Chamber Players; Columbia, 7 sides). Violinist Busch and his relatives play sternly but without much of Mozart's spirit. Performance: fair.

Elie Siegmeister: Ozark Set (Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, Dimitri Mitropoulos conducting: Columbia, 4 sides). A pretentious hillbilly suite, which goes over well in the U.S.S.R. but not in the U.S. Performance: excellent.

Ibert: Escales (Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York, Artur Rodzinski conducting; Columbia, 4 sides). A romantic Frenchman's orchestral travelogue with stop-offs at Palermo, Tunis, Nefta and Valencia. Performance: good.

Manuel De Falla: El Amor Brujo (Argentinita and the Ballet Theater Orchestra, Antal Dorati conducting; Decca, 6 sides). An unusual recording by the late, great Spanish dancer. Here for the ear alone are Argentinita's dazzling heeltapping and castanets and her not so dazzling voice. Performance: good.

Square Dances (Carson Robison and his Pleasant Valley Boys, Lawrence V. Loy, calling; Victor, 8 sides). New England Square Dances (Ralph Page, singing caller; Disc, 6 sides). The fiddling is better in Victor's Irish Washerwoman and Spanish Cavaliero but there's more real alfalfa in Disc's Monadnock Muddle and Ladies' Whirligig ("How you trade, your new wife for my old maid"). The two sets of how-to-do-it diagrams are equally confusing.

Esquire's All-American Hot Jazz (Esquire Magazine's 1946 Award winners; Victor, 4 sides). It's an event to get Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington together, and a pity that they couldn't have played something old, borrowed and blue. Instead they dutifully falter through an "original" by Esquire's ubiquitous jazz critic Leonard Feather. Best piece (though without Louie or the Duke) is Gone with the Wind, the only one not written by Feather. Performance: fair.

Three collectors' items:

Baron von der Shpik (State Jazz Orchestra, U.S.S.R.; Stinson Trading Co.). America's 1937 schmalz hit, Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen, Sovietized into the saga of a Nazi sad sack at Stalingrad.

Prokofiev: Overture on Hebrew Themes (Vivian Rivkin, piano, David Weber, clarinet, with string quartet; Disc). First U.S. recording of a straightforward little piece which Prokofiev wrote in The Bronx in 1919. Performance: good.

John Philip Sousa: The Stars and Stripes Forever (NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini conducting; Victor). Something to be heard.

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