Who should hear this 10-disc set entitled Music -- The Universal Language: Selected Orchestral Recordings, Vol. II? Anybody who bought Vol. 1? Yes, certainly. For them, the chance to hear more Deutsche Grammophon recordings from the '50s, many of them CD premieres, will be irresistible. Anybody else? No, probably not. Listeners who revere
Ferenc Fricsay, the firebrand conductor who burned out too early, will probably already have the four extraordinary discs of recordings included here -- his scintillating
Stravinsky, his radiant Rimsky-Korsakov, his mammoth Mussorgsky, his thoroughly compelling Hartmann, and his wayward but fascinating Tchaikovsky. Of the CD premieres, listeners who know
Eugen Jochum's Bruckner will not be disappointed by his glorious Wagner included here, but they might find his Sibelius harshly unidiomatic and his Höller simply irritating, but then, so are the music's second-class modernisms. As for the premieres by
Fritz Lehmann, now remembered best for his recordings of Brahms and Bach's choral music, his Dvorák is oddly phrased, his Franck is strangely shaped, and his de Falla is just very strange -- as if he'd never seen Spain and could not image what its music could sound like. A third-rank conductor,
Otmar Suitner's Grieg is wetly atmospheric while his Liszt is faintly colorful.
Franz Konwitschny has a solid reputation and a few fine recordings to his credit, but his Sinfonia Domestica is patchy and prosaic and his Witt "Jena" Symphony is a historical footnote. Deutsche Grammophon's monaural '50s sound is reasonably clean, but absolutely honest.