Music

ICCARDO CHAILLY CONDUCTS PUCCINI ORCHESTRAL MUSIC, with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (London). Try this as an entertaining supplement to the New York City Opera's Puccini Festival this summer. It's full of surprises. First of all, we don't think of Puccini as an orchestral composer, and then much of the music unearthed for this record doesn't sound like him. Puccini wrote most of these pieces when he was young. So when a recently published Preludio Sinfonico composed when he was eighteen turns out to sound a little like the prelude to Cavalleria Rusticana, it indicates that an individual style takes a while to form, and also that it's precisely an individual style that distinguishes a wonderful composer from one who's just good.

The rest of the disc documents Puccini's growth, from a sprawling Capriccio Sinfonico—the source of the cheerful music at the start of La Boheme (odd to hear it developed like a theme from a symphony)—to the youthfully morbid intermezzo from the third act of Manon Lescaut, in which at last we meet the composer we know. My favorite stops along the way are three minuets for strings, patronized in London's liner notes as "eighteenth century affectation," but to my mind a demonstration, instead, of the talent for theatrical mimicry that gives Puccini's operas their unmistakable sense of time and place.

Riccardo Chailly is better at shaping melodies than he is at refining the coarse growl of the Berlin Radio's brass, but as compensation there's recorded sound so unusually spacious that I'll give the producer a plug: he's James Mallinson, a name to remember if, like me, you're one of those old-fashioned people who think records should sound like real music.

GREGORY SANDOW

MOZART: THE SYMPHONIES, Volume 6, by the Academy of Ancient Music (L'Oiseau-Lyre). These performances use the instruments of Mozart's time, which make a thinner and at the same time tastier sound than the ones we're used to. Flutes are gentler, horns duskier; the clarinets and bassoons remind me of moss in the woods. High violins are edgy, but in their lower range they've got a liquid bounce impossible without—among much else—the gut strings violinists haven't used for generations. Each line of the music is distinct; quick notes in the lower strings move things forward without effort or strain; massed woodwinds, in modern orchestras a seamless choir, turn into something much more like a town meeting, in which each voice has a distinct rasp of its own. It's all delicious—and it's also as close as we'll ever come to the precise balance, color and weight Mozart would have expected his symphonies to have. If the performances were as good as the sound, I'd never want to hear this music on modern instruments again.

But the performances have problems. The members of the Academy of Ancient Music insist, as they should, on period phrasing to complement the period instruments, but they insist too much: sometimes they sound as if they care only about proving a point. They also insist on what they call an "objective, eighteenth-century point of view," which—to cite just one problem with their approach—turns a dramatic pause in the first movement of the Jupiter Symphony into nothing but blank silence. Why do I think it's a dramatic pause? Because that's what it would be in Mozart's operas, whose passionate theatricality demonstrates the human meaning of musical effects that these performances treat only as collections of notes. Earlier volumes in the series are better, because (as annotations to the present volume say) Mozart's earlier symphonies have less "artistic depth." Volume 5 is a mixture of simpler and more complex works: that's the one to try if you want to judge the Academy's sound and "objective" performance style for yourself. —G.S.

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G. S.

SIR COLIN DAVIS CONDUCTS BERLIOZ: Lelio and Tristia, with the London Symphony Orchestra (Philips). It's news that Sir Colin Davis has finished his Berlioz cycle for Philips, and also a continued demonstration—since Davis's style is so restrained and his performances are so eloquent—that what counts most about Berlioz is his classicism, not his flamboyance. But there is no use pretending that Lelio, at least, is anything more than a footnote to works like The Trojans and 'The Damnation of Faust. Without the narration (omitted here), it's nothing more than an anthology of music Berlioz wrote as a student, with two statements of the love theme from the smash hit Symphonie Fantastique added in a not very convincing attempt to turn the new piece into a sequel. A silly "Brigand's Song" is valuable only as an example of the nineteenth century's fascination with outlaws; the ''Fantasy on Shakespeare's The Tempest, " which comes at the end, isn't a tenth as fantastic as the "Queen Mab Scherzo" from Romeo and Juliet.

Tristia is another story. It too is compiled from separate pieces (all sad; hence the title), but this time they cut right to the heart, with the uniquely ornate simplicity of Berlioz at his best. The choral ballad "The Death of Ophelia" is placed, like a dove by a scythe, just before an implacable "Funeral March for the Last Scene of Hamlet." Berlioz thought the play was about "the nothingness of life"; with that concept—and music as good as the ballad and the march—it could have become his most astonishing opera. This isn't a record everyone will want—but there are things on it I'll never forget. —G.S.

G. S.

SPEAKING IN TONGUES, Talking Heads (Sire Records). When they released their debut LP, Talking Heads: If three members of this new-wave quartet seemed jike bright and purposeful young Americans on the move: keyboardist Jerry Harrison, bassist Tina Weymouth, and drummer Chris Frantz. But Scottish-born singer-guitarist David Byrne was something else entirely. He behaved like a stranger in a strange land. With his long neck, probing eyes, and nervously chirping voice, he was E.T. at CBGB. The lyrics to Byrne's early songs were full of wonder, the music infectious rock played very straight. In his later work, though, wariness began to subvert wonder, and the music turned taut and repetitive.

Judging by Speaking in Tongues, Byrne is once again a happy fellow, and Talking Heads is a better band for it. After a deliberately constricted year of music in 1979, Byrne, encouraged by former producer and "fifth head" Brian Eno, rummaged through the artifacts of third-world cultures, looking for fresh sounds and perspectives. Like Noah on a divine mission, he increased the Heads' lineup to two of everything—guitar, bass, keyboards, percussion, vocals—and steered this ensemble toward Afro-funk for 1980's Remain in Light, an incantatory achievement marred only by the high-minded theorizing that accompanied it. (The press kit, for example, included an explanatory letter and bibliography.) Speaking in Tongues, the group's first studio LP since then, is similarly sunk in funk. Just as ambitious, but not as prepossessing, it represents less one man's obsessive vision than a triumph of team spirit.

For the first time, the four permanent Heads share an album's worth of songwriting credits, and they've come up with an endlessly inventive sound that deftly balances dancefloor essentials with endearing idiosyncrasies. Byrne initially recycles images from his score for The Catherine Wheel, the Broadway production that combined his anxious worldgone-mad songs with Twyla Tharp's last-dance-for-mankind choreography; he takes care of the heavy stuff early on so he can get down to serious fun. "Making Flippy Floppy" and "Girlfriend Is Better" from Side 1 are mere warm-ups before the wild and crazy tour de force of Side 2: the bluesman burlesque of "Swamp," the loony dialogue of "Moon Rocks," and the flamboyant wail of "Pull Up the Roots." Byrne even gets to make a point on the lovely closing track, "This Must Be the Place." "Home is where I want to be," he confesses, then realizes, "But I guess I'm already there." The wordless falsetto at song's end suggests that Byrne is satisfied that this is a family affair. There's no need to be a stranger. Everybody is supposed to join in. So let's dance! -MICHAEL HILL

MICHAEL HILL

GIRL AT HER VOLCANO, by Rickie Lee Jones (Warner Bros.). Rickie Lee Jones can sound as bruised by circumstance as Laura Nyro or Joni Mitchell ever did. But if it seems that the characters inhabiting her two previous albums—Rickie Lee Jones, her 1979 debut, and Pirates, released in 1981—spent their lives drifting in and out of unpromising love affairs or sipping warm Miller on a street corner, they somehow got through it all still liking one another, never agonizing over having to grow up. With her tough-girl levelheadedness and a large measure of cool, Jones accepts the life she's led.

The new album (produced by Rickie Lee herself) is a sidestep away from the Beat-era imagery and storytelling of the earlier records. A collection of cabaret tunes and happy-hour ballads, Girl at Her Volcano combines live and studio cuts that have in common only an air of romantic resignation. The selection of material isn't nearly broad enough to give full play to Jones's vocal and emotional range. A glossy remake of the old Left Banke hit "Walk Away Renee" leaves you wishing it were Rickie Lee and a piano alone, without the synthesized strings and sparkles; her rendition of "My Funny Valentine," though misty-eyed and tender, doesn't make your clothes smell of cigarette smoke the way it should.

The biggest disappointment on Girl at Her Volcano is "Something Cool," available only on the cassette. Taped in 1979 in Amsterdam during Jones's first tour, the song features Rickie Lee purring in her best Billie Holiday style, giving us a glimpse of the sultry side of the street, a "feel of life from jazz and cocktails." But the recording is painfully low-fidelity, with a dense background hum that never disappears.

On the evidence of Girl at Her Volcano, the cabaret is too confining for Rickie Lee Jones. She needs all that room out on the street.

JOHN HOUSE

OLASSIFIED, by James Booker (Rounder). James Carroll Booker III, otherwise known as Little Booker, Emperor of the Ivories, Piano Prince of New Orleans, and the Black Liberace, may be the most gifted piano man from the Crescent City since Jelly Roll Morton. Booker in fact regards himself as the reincarnation of the ragtime genius of Storyville bordellos. His performances conjure up images of the delicate professor toiling in the parlors of high-toned houses of pleasure. Booker, however, impersonates not only Morton but the other great New Orleans piano legends who succeeded him: Tuts Washington, Roosevelt Sykes, Fats Domino, Professor Longhair and Allen Toussaint. And he tosses in a little Leadbelly and Beethoven for good measure.

Classified, Booker's second album for Rounder, offers no showstoppers that compare with his barrelhouse version of Chopin's "Minute Waltz" (called the "Black Minute Waltz") or with his theme song, "Junco Partner." Still, it's a characteristic collection of novelty tunes, bayou boogie-woogie, and fractured classics. Booker turns Roger Miller's hobo anthem "King of the Road" into a jaunty funk manifesto, proclaiming himself a "man of means by all means" who smokes "good reefer" instead of Miller's old stogies. "Swedish Rhapsody" becomes a brief back-street interlude, and "Hound Dog" becomes more of a stoic lament than an angry rock 'n' roll scolding. Best are an all too brief Professor Longhair medley and a seemingly three-handed version of his own "Classified." It's a shame Booker can't really sing; his voice at best suggests a lonesome caterwauling. But then Professor Longhair couldn't sing either; he was often accused of "swamp yodeling." As long as Booker can play the piano like an angel, he needn't sing like one.

CAROL FLAKE

0WORDFISH TROMBONE, by Tom Waits (Island). Can a blues man sing the whites? On his last eight albums Tom Waits often sounded like Louis Armstrong with laryngitis—and that was on the pretty songs. What Waits lacked in sweetness, though, he more than made up in sincerity, pathos, and enough spontaneous bop prosody to keep the ghost of Jack Kerouac hovering boozily over his mike stand. A repertoire of cool jazz monologues like "Small Change (Got Rained On with His Own .38)" and "inebriational travelogues" like "Nighthawk Postcards" brought him a cult following, while the Eagles' cover of his "OP '55" paid the rent.

On Swordfish Trombone Tom Waits tries everything from croaking to crooning, and gets away with most of it. This is his first self-produced album, and some of the rough edges may be unintentional, but Waits has been paying dues so long that even when he pulls something really bizarre—the Kurt Weill vocals and calliope of "Underground" take a lot of getting used to (not to mention the fake German accent)—he manages to keep our trust.

Between metropolitan melodramas like "Shore Leave'' and "Frank's Wild Years" and smalltown serenades like "Johnsburg, Illinois" and "In the Neighborhood," Waits covers a lot of ground. He may still sing as if his voice needs a shave, but there isn't much his music can't do. From black-and-white midnight tableaux to local off-color, the world "across town from Easy Street" belongs to Waits. With Swordfish Trombone his Nighthawks may finally have come home to roost. —D. D. GUTTENPLAN

D. D. GUTTENPLAN