Music: Off the Record

Alban Berg died 17 years ago, but no U.S. opera company has yet found the means or the courage to mount his second opera. So Lulu, an even bloodier yarn than Berg's Wozzeck, is having its American premiere in the latest fashion this week—on records.

Berg worked out the libretto of Lulu from two plays by the German actor-writer Frank Wedekind. It is a thing of violence and sensuality, set out in the glares and black shadows of fin de siecle romanticism. Singing in clipped, high-tension German, lustful Lulu causes one violent death after another among her helpless lovers. Then the pace slackens and she moves sonorously toward her own destruction hy Jack the Ripper.

At first, Lulu is pretty tough listening. The singers have few tunes and the orchestra squirms morbidly, almost as if improvising without a director. But the listener who sits through the first half gets his reward. In the calmer second half, the music becomes almost songful, with a kind of lyrical lassitude that might have been shown by a latter-day Wagner. When it is all over, the wildly scattered scenes fall together and make dramatic sense.

Among Berg's most ear-catching passages and devices: a chiming bell that interrupts erotic episodes, a long, slithering solo by Lulu herself (Soprano Ilona Steingruber), realistic effects of screams and falling bodies. The fine performance by the Vienna Symphony (conducted by the late Herbert Hafner) and singers of the Vienna State Opera was recorded for Columbia last spring. The arrival of Lulu on records is the equal of many a live premiere.

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Listeners are no longer surprised to hear important music on records before it is played in public. Concert seasons are usually short, and few conductors have the determination or the budgets to force novelties on their audiences. But in the record business — booming since the introduction of LP four years ago — a wide-ranging repertory has been inevitable.

From the beginning, Columbia Records offered to manufacture LPs for smaller companies. New labels blossomed like dandelions (127 at latest count). Since they had no hope of competing for famous-name performers with big powers like RCA Victor, smaller companies went scouting for unusual music and new names. The music lover got the breaks.

Today, to the limit of his pocketbook, the music lover can buy 128 complete recorded operas, from Mozart to Gershwin (the biggest U.S. opera companies can mount only about 20 a season). He can have song cycles by Mahler, rare tone poems by Strauss, tropical novelties by Villa-Lobos, and scores of other out-of-the-way pieces, many of them complete strangers to the U.S.

He can also, if he chooses, go to hear European artists who might never have crossed the Atlantic except for their record successes. London Records takes credit for popularizing Singers Kathleen Ferrier, Hilde Gueden, Irmgard Seefried, Paul Schoeffler; Pianists Clifford Curzon, Friedrich Gulda; Conductor Ernest Ansermet. Cloe Elmo, Ferruccio Tagliavini, Italo Tajo and Cesare Siepi were introduced to U.S. collectors by Cetra-Soria records before they were hired by the Metropolitan Opera.