Rash of Rachmaninoff

And now it was Rachmaninoff.

The movies, the jukeboxes and the radio had taken first the works of Tchaikovsky, then of Chopin, strung puerile words to them, given them everything from a boogie beat to a lush 150-piece orchestral overcoating. What had been most melodic in Tchaikovsky's Fifth be came the most banal, and no steady listen er of radio could hear the Romeo and Juliet overture without trying to banish Our Love from his mind.

Last week few U.S. citizens got through the week without hearing the melody of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 at least once. Seven recordings of a sugared-to-taste version called Full Moon and Empty Arms were steady jukebox nickel-pullers. The theme was played more or less steadily through two current cinemas (Hollywood's Holiday in Mexico, England's Brief Encounter). Last week, Republic's I've Always Loved You made it three (see CINEMA).

Victor Records, remembering how Chopin sales boomed after A Song to Remember came out, released four Concerto versions at once, ranging from a "definitive" one by Artur Rubinstein and the NBC Symphony to a syrupy foxtrot by Freddy Martin, who also has Tchaikovsky's blood on his hands.

Already, many of Rachmaninoff's long time admirers felt the same way about the Concerto that the late composer-pianist himself felt about his much-mangled Prelude in C Sharp Minor. He once snapped: "They can play it any way they choose just so long as they do not play it where I can hear it!"

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