New Records

Martin: Sacred Mass for the Kings of France (soloists and Les Chanteurs de Saint-Eustache conducted by the composer; Concord). One of the most elaborate of modern musical hoaxes in a reverent and earsplitting performance. Originally hailed as a newly discovered coronation Mass by 17th century Composer Etienne Moulinie, the work was presented in 1951 in Paris' Basilica of St. Denis before a distinguished audience as part of Paris' celebration of its 2,000th birthday (breathed one critic: "Perhaps the foreign visitors . . . were able to feel what the Kingdom of France once meant"). When a musicologist belatedly discovered that Composer Moulinie had never written a Mass, Father Emile Martin of Paris' Church of St. Eustache dutifully confessed that he had composed it in his spare time (TIME, Mar. 24, 1952). Widely performed in Paris, the Mass reveals Composer Martin, now 42, as a synthesizer whose sense of drama, love of trumpet and organ fanfares would do credit to filmdom's finest talents.

Killmayer: Missa Brevis and Harrison: Mass (Margaret Hillis conducting the New York Concert Choir and Orchestra; Epic). The Fromm Music Foundation, joint sponsor with Epic records of the excellent Twentieth Century Composers Series, takes a look at current choral writing. Young (29) Munich-born Composer Wilhelm Killmayer's Missa Brevis ripples with exciting, shifting rhythms and rises skillfully to a colorful series of blasting choral climaxes occasionally more reminiscent of the bandstand than the choir. Oregon-born Composer Lou Harrison, 39, found the inspiration for his moving, low-pitched Mass in the percussion-accompanied plain song of the Indians of Spanish California, later Europeanized it with "contrapuntal accompaniment based on medieval methods." Rhythmically supple, vocally unadorned, the Mass achieves a fine wedding of the primitive and sophisticated.

Kirchner: Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano and Sonata Concertonte for Violin and Piano (Nathan Rubin, George Neikrug, Eudice Shapiro, Leon Kirchner; Epic). Another Fromm-Epic collaboration, this disk displays Brooklyn-born Leon Kirchner, 38, at his ear-bending, brain-taxing best. Relentlessly driving, violently dissonant, Kirchner's Trio is broken by occasionally wistful lyrical interludes that give way unexpectedly to snarling climaxes. Equally busy and complex, the Sonata Concertante abounds in the strobe-lighted flashes of musical ideas that fitfully illuminate all of Kirchner's works.

Glinka: A Life for the Tsar (the National Opera of Belgrade, Oscar Danon conducting; London, 4 LPs). In this Communist-approved version of Glinka's 19th-century flag-waver, as in other current versions, attention has been directed away from the young Tsar and focused on the heroic popular leaders of the national uprising against the invading Poles in 1611-13. With that party-line emendation, the opera's melodramatic plot has been preserved intact. Weak in leading roles (Bass Miro Changalovich and Soprano Maria Glavachevich), the present version is thunderously impressive in its choral and ensemble passages, sung by the Yugoslav Army Chorus.

Weill: The Seven Deadly Sins (Lotte Lenya, Julius Katona, Fritz Goellnitz, Wilhelm Brueckner-Rueggeberg conducting; Columbia). Every bit as corrosive as it was when it burst on Paris in 1933, Kurt Weill's spare, angular Deadly Sins score alternates passages of lyric beauty with jeering climaxes that etch Lyricist Bertolt Brecht's weary commentary on human corruption. Singer Lenya (Composer Weill's widow), her voice alternately smoky and rasping, is magnificent in the double role of the schizoid "Siamese sisters," Anna I and Anna II, who sally forth from their Louisiana home to make their fortune, and in a career marked by blackmail and prostitution surmount the perils of sloth, gluttony, lust, etc.

Wagner: Die Goetterdaemmerung (Kirsten Flagstad, Set Svanholm, with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Norwegian State Radio Orchestra and Opera Chorus conducted by Oivin Fjeldstad; London, 6 LPs). The first full-length recording of the Ring's climactic drama has Soprano Flagstad's ringingly powerful voice and a strong performance by Tenor Svanholm to recommend it, but lacks the full orchestral sweep which Wagner's apocalyptic vision demands.

Verdi: II Trovatore (Maria Callas, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Rolando Panerai, with the La Scala Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Herbert von Karajan; Angel, 3 LPs). Recorded at La Scala, this fifth LP Trovatore is easily the best. Soprano Callas sings at the top of her form, and Tenor Di Stefano supports her in fresh and fervent style. The precisely balanced orchestra plays with fine lyric order, led by Austria's Herbert von Karajan with a gusto that suggests a taste for pasta as well as for his more accustomed schnitzel.

Mozart: The Abduction from the Seraglio (Lois Marshall, Use Hollweg, Leopold Simoneau, Gerhard Unger, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Beecham Choral Society conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham; Angel, 2 LPs). Mozart's busy, exuberant tale of the abduction of a Christian beauty by a halfheartedly barbarous Turk has been adroitly cut and rearranged by Conductor Beecham to maintain its pace in the places where it ordinarily flags. Canadian-born Soprano Marshall's water-fresh voice floats easily and accurately through the sweet arias, and Tenor Simoneau sings the hero's role with crystal diction and a sense of the fantasies which shadow the score.

Walton: Symphony (the Philharmonic Promenade Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult; Westminster). Mahogany-hued and somber, William Walton's first and only symphony develops its brooding ideas with economy and power, sounds occasional echoes of Sibelius but moves with a brassy pomp as basically British as a Guards regiment on parade.

Other noteworthy new releases: Mahler's Symphony No. 4 (Teresa Stich-Randall. with the Hague Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Willem van Otterloo ; Epic); Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra (Ernest Ansermet and L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande; London); Smetana's The Bartered Bride (soloists, Choir and Orchestra of the Slovenian National Opera. Dimitri Gebre conducting; Epic, 3 LPs); Prokofiev's Sonatas for Piano (Yury Boukov; Westminster, 3 LPs).

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