The lyric beauties of Schubert's Trout Quintet -- its elemental rhythms and infectious melodies -- make it a source of pure pleasure for almost all music listeners.
But for students of musical forms and would-be classifiers, the work presents its problems.
Since it requires only five players, it would seem to fall into the category of chamber music -- yet it calls for a double bass, an instrument generally regarded as symphonic.
Moreover, the piece is written in five movements, rather than the conventional four of most quintets, and this gives the opus a serenade or divertimento flavor.

The many and frequent performances of the Trout serve to emphasize the dual nature of its writing.
Some renditions are of symphonic dimensions, with the contrabass given free rein.
Other interpretations present the music as an essentially intimate creation.
In these readings, the double bass is either kept discreetly in the background, or it is dressed in clown's attire -- the musical equivalent of a bull in a china shop.
Recently I was struck anew by the divergent approaches, when in the course of one afternoon and evening I listened to no fewer than ten different performances.
The occasion for this marathon: Angel's long-awaited reissue in its "Great Recordings Of The Century" series of the Schnabel-Pro Arte version.
Let me say at the outset that the music sounded as sparkling on the last playing as it did on the first.

Whether considered alone or in relation to other editions, COLH 40 is a document of prime importance.
Artur Schnabel was one of the greatest Schubert-Beethoven-Mozart players of all time, and any commentary of his on this repertory is valuable.
But Schnabel was a great teacher in addition to being a great performer, and the fact that four of the ten versions I listened to are by Schnabel pupils (Clifford Curzon, Frank Glazer, Adrian Aeschbacher, and Victor Babin) also sheds light on the master's pedagogical skills.
Certain pianistic traits are common to all five Schnabelian renditions, most notably the "Schnabel trill" (which differs from the conventional trill in that the two notes are struck simultaneously).
But the most impressive testimony to Schnabel's distinction as a teacher is reflected by the individuality which marks each student's approach as distinctly his own.

Schnabel's emphasis on structural clarity, his innate rhythmic vibrancy, and impetuous intensity all tend to stamp his reading as a symphonic one.
Yet no detail was too small to receive attention from this master, and as a result the playing here has humor, delicacy, and radiant humanity.
This is a serious-minded interpretation, but it is never strait-laced.
And although Schnabel's pianism bristles with excitement, it is meticulously faithful to Schubert's dynamic markings and phrase indications.
The piano performance on this Trout is one that really demands a search for superlatives.

About the Pro Arte's contribution I am less happy.
I, for one, rather regret that Schnabel didn't collaborate with the Budapest Quartet, whose rugged, athletic playing was a good deal closer to this pianist's interpretative outlook than the style of the Belgian group.
From a technical standpoint, the string playing is good, but the Pro Arte people fail to enter into the spirit of things here.
The violinist, in particular, is very indulgent with swoops and slides, and his tone is pinched and edgy.
The twenty-five-year-old recording offers rather faded string tone, but the balance between the instruments is good and the transfer is very quiet.
There is a break in continuity just before the fourth variation in the "Forellen" movement, and I suspect that this is due to imperfect splicing between sides of the original Aj.

Turning to the more modern versions, Curzon's (London) offers the most sophisticated keyboard work.
Every detail in his interpretation has been beautifully thought out, and of these I would especially cite the delicious laendler touch the pianist brings to the fifth variation (an obvious indication that he is playing with Viennese musicians), and the gossamer shading throughout.
Some of Curzon's playing strikes me as finicky, however.
Why, for example, does he favor two tempos, rather than one, for the third movement?
The assisting musicians from the Vienna Octet are somewhat lacking in expertise, but their contribution is rustic and appealing.
(Special compliments to the double bass playing of Johann Krumpp: his scrawny, tottering sound adds a delightful hilarity to the performance.
)

The Glazer-Fine Arts edition (Concert-Disc) is a model of lucidity and organization.
It is, moreover, a perfectly integrated ensemble effort.
But having lived with the disc for some time now, I find the performance less exciting than either Schnabel's or Fleisher's (whose superb performance with the Budapest Quartet has still to be recorded) and a good deal less filled with humor than Curzon's.
Aeschbacher's work is very much akin to Schnabel's, but the sound on his Decca disc is dated, and you will have a hard time locating a copy of it.

The Hephzibah Menuhin-Amadeus Quartet (Angel) and Victor Babin-Festival Quartet (RCA Victor) editions give us superlative string playing (both in symphonic style) crippled by unimaginative piano playing.
(Babin has acquired some of Schnabel's keyboard manner, but his playing is of limited insight.
) Badura-Skoda-Vienna Konzerthaus (Westminster) and Demus-Schubert Quartet (Deutsche Grammophon) are both warm-toned, pleasantly lyrical, but rather slack and tensionless.
Helmut Roloff, playing with a group of musicians from the Bayreuth Ensemble, gives a sturdy reading, in much the same vein as that of the last-mentioned pianists.
Telefunken has accorded him beautiful sound, and this bargain-priced disc (it sells for $2.98) is worthy of consideration.

Returning once again to the Schnabel reissue, I am beguiled anew by the magnificence of this pianist's musical penetration.
Here is truly a "Great Recording of the Century", and its greatness is by no means diminished by the fact that it is not quite perfect.
This recording surely belongs in everyone's collection.
Must records always sound like records?

From the beginning of commercial recording, new discs purported to be indistinguishable from The Real Thing have regularly been put in circulation.
Seen in perspective, many of these releases have a genuine claim to be milestones.
Although lacking absolute verisimilitude, they supply the ear and the imagination with all necessary materials for re-creation of the original.
On the basis of what they give us we can know how the young Caruso sang, appreciate the distinctive qualities of Parsifal under Karl Muck's baton, or sense the type of ensemble Toscanini created in his years with the New York Philharmonic.

Since the concept of high fidelity became important some dozen years ago, the claims of technical improvements have multiplied tenfold.
In many cases the revolutionary production has offered no more than sensational effects: the first hearing was fascinating and the second disillusioning as the gap between sound and substance became clearer.
Other innovations with better claims to musical interest survived rehearing to acquire in time the status of classics.
If we return to them today, we have no difficulty spotting their weaknesses but we find them still pleasing.

Records sound like records because they provide a different sort of experience than live music.
This difference is made up of many factors.
Some of them are obvious, such as the fact that we associate recorded and live music with our responses and behavior in different types of environments and social settings.
(Music often sounds best to me when I can dress informally and sit in something more comfortable than a theatre seat.
) From the technical standpoint, records differ from live music to the degree that they fail to convey the true color, texture, complexity, range, intensity, pulse, and pitch of the original.
Any alteration of one of these factors is distortion, although we generally use that word only for effects so pronounced that they can be stated quantitatively on the basis of standard tests.
Yet it is the accumulation of distortion, the fitting together of fractional bits until the total reaches the threshold of our awareness, that makes records sound like records.
The sound may be good;
but if you know The Real Thing, you know that what you are hearing is only a clever imitation.

Command's new Brahms Second is a major effort to make a record that sounds like a real orchestra rather than a copy of one.
Like the recent Scheherazade from London (High Fidelity, Sept. 1961), it is successful because emphasis has been placed on good musical and engineering practices rather than on creating sensational effects.
Because of this, only those with truly fine equipment will be able to appreciate the exact degree of the engineers' triumph.

The easiest way to describe this release is to say that it reproduces an interesting and effective Steinberg performance with minimal alteration of its musical values.
The engineering as such never obtrudes upon your consciousness.
The effect of the recording is very open and natural, with the frequency emphasis exactly what you would expect from a live performance.
This absence of peaky highs and beefed-up bass not only produces greater fidelity, but it eliminates listener fatigue.
A contributing factor is the perspective, the uniform aesthetic distance which is maintained.
The orchestra is far enough away from you that you miss the bow scrapes, valve clicks, and other noises incidental to playing.
Yet you feel the orchestra is near at hand, and the individual instruments have the same firm presence associated with listening from a good seat in an acoustically perfect hall.
Command has achieved the ideal amount of reverberation.
The music is always allowed the living space needed to attain its full sonority;
yet the hall never intrudes as a quasi-performer.
The timbre remains that of the instruments unclouded by resonance.

All of this would be wasted, of course, if the performance lacked authority and musical distinction.
For me it has more of both elements than the majority of its competitors.
Steinberg seems to have gone directly back to the score, discounting tradition, and has built his performance on the intention to reproduce as faithfully as possible exactly what Brahms set down on paper.

Those accustomed to broader, more romantic statements of the symphony can be expected to react strongly when they hear this one.
Without losing the distinctive undertow of Brahmsian rhythm, the pacing is firm and the over-all performance has a tightly knit quality that makes for maximum cumulative effect.
The Presto Ma non assai of the first trio of the scherzo is taken literally and may shock you, as the real Allegro con Spirito of the finale is likely to bring you to your feet.
In the end, however, the thing about this performance that is most striking is the way it sings.
Steinberg obviously has concluded that it is the lyric element which must dominate in this score, and he manages at times to create the effect of the whole orchestra bursting into song.

The engineering provides exactly the support needed for such a result.
Too many records seem to reduce a work of symphonic complexity to a melody and its accompaniment.
The Command technique invites you to listen to the depth of the orchestration.
Your ear takes you into the ensemble, and you may well become aware of instrumental details which previously were apparent only in the score.
It is this sort of experience that makes the concept of high fidelity of real musical significance for the home music listener.
The first substantially complete stereo Giselle (and the only one of its scope since Feyer's four-sided LP edition of 1958 for Angel), this set is, I'm afraid, likely to provide more horrid fascination than enjoyment.
The already faded pastel charms of the naive music itself vanish entirely in Fistoulari's melodramatic contrasts between ultravehement brute power and chilly, if suave, sentimentality.
And in its engineers' frantic attempts to achieve maximum dynamic impact and earsplitting brilliance, the recording sounds as though it had been "doctored for super-high fidelity".
The home listener is overpowered, all right, but the experience is a far from pleasant one.
As with the penultimate Giselle release (Wolff's abridgment for RCA Victor) I find the cleaner, less razor-edged monophonic version, for all its lack of big-stage spaciousness, the more aurally tolerable -- but this may be the result of processing defects in my SD copies.