Music: May Records

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Charles T. Griffes: Poem for Flute and Orchestra (Eastman-Rochester Symphony, Howard Hanson conducting, with Joseph Mariano, flutist; Victor). Griffes was a music teacher at the Hackley School for Boys in Tarrytown, N.Y. Since he died in 1920, at the age of 35, critics have rated his small, carefully tooled output among the finest U.S. compositions. His Poem is fragile and impressionistic and is certainly one of his best works.

Ravel: Rapsodie Espagnole (Cleveland Orchestra, Artur Rodzinski conducting; Columbia; 4 sides). One of Ravel's most vivid pieces brilliantly, if somewhat inelastically, performed.

Fauré: Incidental Music to Pelléas and Mélisande (Boston Symphony, Sergei Koussevitzky conducting; Victor; 4 sides). High polishing of some lustrous bits composed for Maeterlinck's play while Debussy was at work on his monumental opera on the same subject.

Borodin: Symphony No. 2 (Minneapolis Symphony, Dimitri Mitropoulos conducting; Columbia; 8 sides). The most popular of Borodin's exhilarating, lightweight Slavic symphonies handsomely played but harshly recorded.

Tchaikovsky: Manfred (Indianapolis Symphony, Fabien Sevitsky conducting; Victor; 14 sides). Excellent first recording of a mixture of Tchaikovskian wind and melody.

Beethoven: Quartet in E Flat, Op. 127 (Budapest String Quartet; Columbia; 10 sides). The first of Beethoven's five great "last quartets" in a version less rugged than the Busch Quartet's (Victor), but superior in suavity and finish.

Beethoven: Concerto No. 5 ("Emperor") (Chicago Symphony, Frederick Stock conducting, with Artur Schnabel, pianist; Victor; 10 sides). Schnabel, as usual, gets inside his man.