Music: Some Classic Small Packages

From Beethoven to Stravinsky, the best of the new CDs

Face facts: compact discs, or CDs as they are known, have arrived. No longer mere technological curiosities, the tiny (4.7 in. in diameter) shiny records have rapidly proliferated since being introduced to the U.S. market little more than a year ago. Today the majority of new classical releases are issued as LPs, cassettes and CDs. At $15 to $21 apiece, not to mention the $550 to $800 or so required for a compact-disc player, an investment in CDs is considerable. But the outlay is well worth it.

Digital sound, recorded by a computer and played back with a laser beam, offers brighter highs and truer lows than conventional analog recording techniques, and eliminates compression and distortion as well. The CD medium has several other practical advantages: most players can be programmed to select cuts in any sequence or repeat a favorite indefinitely; the discs never wear out, since only light touches their surface, and with up to 74 minutes of music on the one usable side, they never have to be flipped over. Finally, they are as easily stored as tapes, yet offer amenities (liner notes, opera librettos) similar to those of regular records. Already there are more than 800 titles available in the U.S. and even more in Europe and Japan. Among the best: Bizet: Carmen (Agnes Baltsa as Carmen, José Carreras as Don José, Berlin Philharmonic and Paris Opéra Chorus, Herbert von Karajan, conductor; Deutsche Grammophon; 3 CDs). Karajan's earlier Carmen, with Leontyne Price and Franco Corelli, was a full-throated spectacular in the grand-opera tradition. This one, 19 years later, reflects his current preference for smaller voices in an almost chamber-like setting. Baltsa, a splendid Greek mezzo, who is not heard often enough on this side of the Atlantic, makes a sultry cigarette girl, and Spanish Tenor Carreras an ardent Don José. The intimate nature of the tragedy is enhanced by the use of spoken dialogue, which Bizet intended.