Reissue Fever Hits Compact Disc Market

The compact disc reissues keep on coming, with the major labels offering irresistible price incentives to persuade the consumer to discard any thought of ever again listening to, let alone purchasing, an LP.

RCA Victor, for instance, now has three cut-price series: Papillon, worthy stuff, for the most part, dating from the 1960s; Blue Seal, which also deals in valuable ‘60s material as well as some older items (its latest Heifetz reissues are to be found here); and now Victrola, geared to the Classical Top 100 audience, appears as the first low -priced line: $6 to $7 per CD.

Report should be made as well of CBS, whose curious notion is to offer less music for less money: e.g., you can get the George Szell-Cleveland Orchestra Dvorak “New World” Symphony alone at mid-price, or at top dollar with another 20-odd minutes of Dvorak and Smetana added.

Note too the MCA mid-price “Double Decker” (whatever that may mean) series, in which are to be found performances of dubious “historical value” from the old Westminster catalogue, often in substandard sonics, by the likes of Hermann Scherchen, Artur Rodzinski, Pierre Monteux (an especially wretched and unrepresentative Berlioz “Romeo and Juliet”) and the teen-aged Daniel Barenboim.

EMI/Angel, however, offers extraordinary value and top-quality material in its new mid-price reissue line called, with pardonable immodesty, “Great Recordings of the Century.” The initial GROC release comprises a dozen CDs, all from monophonic originals (and, for once, clearly labeled as such), sonically spruced up with uncanny skill by the EMI engineers.

Among the instrumental treasures here are Walter Gieseking’s 1954 recording of the Preludes, Books I and II, by Debussy, eternally bewitching for their combination of rhythmic acuity and sensuous piano tone (7610042).

Nor should any listener fail to make the acquaintance of the four Mozart Horn Concertos as played by Dennis Brain, who in this 1953 recording provided a model of suavity and technical aplomb for all future practitioners, with the Philharmonia Orchestra under the vital, elegant direction of Herbert von Karajan (7610132).

Then there is an overdue first American release of Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto wherein the jubilant, driving pianism of Edwin Fischer finds a sympathetic, unfussy collaborator in Wilhelm Furtwangler, who leads London’s Philharmonia Orchestra (761005, with Fischer’s appealingly muscular Beethoven Sonata in D, Opus 10, No. 3).

Other keyboard classics include a revival of the first recording ever (Paris, 1933) of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations--along with his “Italian” Concerto and Chromatic Fantasy--by the legendary harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, whose interpretations may strike modern ears as excessively lush but whose importance as a prime mover in the revival of interest in her instrument and of Baroque music in general cannot be overestimated.

New to this listener was Claudio Arrau’s splendidly forthright, technically dazzling Chopin Etudes--all of them--briefly available in this country when first issued about 30 years ago (7610162).

The vocal GROCs contain two indispensable re-releases: the 1951 Mahler “Kindertotenlieder,” sung with glorious opulence of tone and near-unbearable poignancy by Kathleen Ferrier, with Bruno Walter leading the Vienna Philharmonic (7610032, with a Ferrier song-and-aria miscellany) and Hans Hotter’s sublimely bleak 1954 version of Schubert’s “Winterreise,” with Gerald Moore’s masterful accompaniment (7610022).

Then, too, there is Elisabeth Schwarzkopf’s celebrated, if highly mannered, first version (1953) of Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs, with the final scene from “Capriccio” and highlights from “Arabella,” with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Otto Ackermann and Lovro von Matacic (7610012).

Considerations of Baroque style become irrelevant when confronted by Kirsten Flagstad’s monumental portrayal of Dido and Schwarzkopf’s deliciously bubbly Belinda--high points of the 1952 Mermaid Theatre production of Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” conducted by Geraint Jones (7610062).

Victoria de los Angeles’ admirers will doubtless revel in her exquisite singing of Villa-Lobos’ popular “Bachiana Brasileira” No. 5, but there isn’t much to love in the four additional, strictly instrumental “Bachianas,” leadenly conducted by the composer in these late-1950s recordings (7610152).

Ljuba Welitsch addicts should welcome an operatic miscellany (7610072) recorded during the late 1940s and featuring the eccentric, fabulously gifted Bulgarian soprano in prime pure-cum-sexy fettle in arias from “Eugene Onegin,” “Tosca,” “La Boheme” “Freischutz” and “Aida” (“Ritorna vincitor,” conducted with unconscionable insensitivity by Josef Krips) and a thrillingly sung “Salome” final scene--the princess for once really sounding like a debauched teen-ager--from a wartime Austrian radio broadcast in which the orchestra is reduced to a dim, distant rumble.

Finally, the oldest material offered: a compendium of basso Feodor Chaliapin’s recordings, made between 1908 and 1931: scenes from “Boris Godunov,” “Prince Igor” and “Sadko,” among others, rendered with glorious solidity and clarity of tone and a bigger-than-life dramatic style that still manages to burst through the loudspeakers (7610092).