I do so wish that record companies, understandably eager to market their products, would not devalue language. Undemandingly agreeable listening as the present lightweight works make, it is decidedly stretching the meaning of words to describe them as ''rarely heard masterpieces of the 20th century'' when not one of them merits so extreme a term; and it is unfortunate that they talk of ''this unique program'' when two of the five works have appeared in recordings by Ronald Corp's New London Orchestra (Le bal de Beatrice d'Este and the Aubade—Hyperion (CD) CDA66347, 10/89). Music and Arts' presentation needs a good shaking-up: they carelessly omit to list the Ibert suite on the jewel-case; they misleadingly refer to the Milhaud as ''Symphony No. 5'' (which leads one to expect the 1953 work composed for the Italian Radio) instead of as the Dixtuor for wind instruments; and their insert-notes, though giving a potted background to the composers, say absolutely nothing of any use about the music being played and get other details wrong (e.g. Ibert did not write his Italian straw hat for Rene Clair's film but for a stage production of the play). While I'm finding fault, it's worth pointing out that to anyone with a respect for terminology a Harmonie-ensemble means a wind ensemble, whereas two of the works here include strings.
In fact, it's a little ironical that the most brilliantly written, Ibert's entertaining and witty suite (drawn from incidental music to a play by Jules Romains), is one of those two. It's a fun piece which includes, among other sound-pictures, ingeniously onomatopoeic impressions of a Paris metro train and of a steamship's engine; and it is played with great verve and sparkle by this New York team. Its wind players have a chance to shine in Milhaud's ''pocket symphony'' (which lasts all of six minutes): their crisp attack is specially notable in its violent finale.
I have heard more ingratiating performances of Ibert's Concerto for cello and wind—the present soloist, though technically accomplished (as he shows in the cadenza and the ebullient finale)—does not seem to have the most attractive tone; but the surmise that this may partly be due to the recording is fortified by the unpleasant harshness of the piano sound in loud passages of the Poulenc Aubade. Nevertheless, Votapek is an excellent soloist in this, the performance in toto is admirably neat, and for once the balance between piano and orchestra—which has often been troublesome in previous recordings—is quite right. It's a pity, though, that the instrument Votapek had to play had such a miserably poor top octave. Hahn's sixteenth-century quasi-pastiche does not, I find, wear well; and in the Trio of the Courante the canonic strands could have been better matched.'