The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 108

Sunday, December 20, 1992 New Recordings THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER Cuban rhythms; country for children; Bernstein's final concert 1. CECILIA BARTOLI If You Love Me (3 weeks at No. 1) 1. BRANFORD MARSALIS I Heard You Twice the First Time (9 weeks at No. 1) 2.

TONY BENNETT Perfectly Frank 3. HARRY CONNICK JR. 25 sending female chipmunks swooning when he stops by to help out on "Achy Breaky Heart" and Alan Jackson advising Alvin (to no avail) "Don't Rock the Jukebox." Waylon Jennings amuses by instructing the tots that rather then being outlaws, they should stay home with Mom and Dad, and Tammy Wynette takes the opportunity to amend her signature song. "I said, 'Stand By Your she says, "not stand by your weasel." Charlie Daniels, Aaron Tip-pin and Mary-Chapin Carpenter also appear, but this Chipmunks in Low Places is only half-cute the first time through. You'll live to regret this one.

Bernstein's last concert. He died two months later. VLADIMIR HOROWITZ: Discovered Treasures Vladimir Horowitz, piano (Sony SK 48093 Despite long, troubled periods when he could not play in public, Vladimir Horowitz continued to record. Because it was his'habit to record more than he needed for specific projects, Sony, heir to much of Horowitz's recording legacy, and the pianist's legions of fans must be reminded of the biblical story of the loaves and fishes. So much was left over from those musical feasts that three years after the master's death, new discs continue to materialize.

The music here was recorded between 1962 and 1972 and reflects some of his later enthusiasms. The six Scarlatti Sonatas were a lifelong challenge, but the four Clementi selections were a late discovery. The two Scriabin short works were old delights, as was the Bach-Busoni transcription, the Medtner Fairy Tale, and the short pieces by Chopin and Liszt. These performances are vivid reminders of Horowitz's towering pi-anism. The explosive rapid passages, the extraordinary singing quality of the legato playing, the clarity of articulation and the force of his interpretations leap from the recording.

His recordings resurrect an era, re-create a legend. How often does a recording do much more than recite the notes? The Clementi works here are such concert rarities that they command first attention. Two are rapid, two are slow; all are musical and glowing in his hands. In Scriabin's Feuillet d'album and Etude (Op. 65, No.

3), Horowitz sorts out the complexities to shape bold, brilliant music, and Liszt's Consolation in is a demonstration of songful pianism. These are not the farewell performances, but recordings taken from his high maturity. RICHARD STRAUSS: Arias from Die Frail ohne Schatten; Four Last Songs. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN: Ah, Perfido! Eleanor Steber, soprano, with Karl Boehm conducting the Bavarian Radio Orchestra; James Levine conducting the Cincinnati Symphony. (VAI Audio 1012 Soprano Eleanor Steber bowed at the Metropolitan Opera as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier, and she returned in heavier Strauss roles through her splendid but often troubled career.

The recording of the scenes from Die Frau ohne Schatten is, technically problematical, but the singing is worth hearing through the fog. She sings the Empress with tenor Set Svanholm, bass Otto Wiener and soprano Christel Goltz. The Four Last Songs is a better recording, and Steber's voice sends the autumnal chill of the songs straight at the listener. RATINGS: Excellent Good Fair Poor Classical albums are rated for performance and sound. Pop Reviewed by Tom Moon VARIOUS ARTISTS Diablo Al Infiernol Cuba Classics 3 (Luaka Bop The 1974 Irakere composition "Ba-calao con Pan," which opens David Byrne's third volume of Cuban music, begins with a wah-wah guitar cranking out a figure that could have come from American funk of the era.

It is vaguely psychedelic and slightly jazzy, and once the Afro-Cuban rhythm kicks in, the guitar line pretty much evaporates. Its mission to establish a link between Cuban music and Anglo rock is accomplished. Diablo Al lnfierno! is loaded with such evidence of culture cross hints that, though the political barriers remain in place, the musical ones are long gone. Cuba is acknowledged as one of the planet's musical hot spots, and this collection, which showcases less traditional practitioners, proves that the region that birthed much of what we know as salsa has not been stagnant under Castro. Much of the music is still drawn from Yoruba and Arara ritual.

All of it, even the work of influential singer-songwriter Carlos Varela, is notable for its rhythmic exactitude and dance-friendly sense of swing. Grupo Sintesis transforms chant melodies into a rhythmically intense, African-derived rock pulse on "Asoyin." On "Que Viva another group, the improvisational N.G. La Banda, uses rumbling funk signatures to offer an extended entreaty to the Yoruba god of lightning and thunder, Chango. On "El Baile del Buey Cansao," Los Van Van, another jazz-influenced outfit, embellishes traditional charanga with trombones and other elements of the Miami sound. And the a cappella Grupo Vocal Sampling applies the Take 6 treatment to "Congo Yam-bumba," a rumba made famous by the folklore group Los Munequitos de Matanzas.

EMF Stigma (EMI V4) Those of us who shook our heads at last year's low-wattage EMF hit "Unbelievable" have been vindicated. The new Stigma proves what we knew all along: These five Brits are third-rate poseurs unfit to shine anybody's Doc Martens. This is torture music: tuneless expanses of anguished, repetitive phrases that, in more accomplished hands, might be incorporated into iX Js jt ji 1. MANNHEIM STEAMROLLER A Fresh Aire Christmas 2. MANNHEIM STEAMROLLER Mannheim Steamroller Christmas 3.

VARIOUS ARTISTS A Very Special Christmas 4. NAT KING COLE The Christmas Song S. BARBRA STREISAND A Christmas Album 6. THE CARPENTERS Christmas Portrait 7. CROSBYSINATRACOLE It's Christmas Time 8.

BING CROSBY Merry Christmas 9. GEORGE WINSTON December 10. JOHNNY MATHIS Merry Christmas From Billboard magazine 121992 1992 music that has been underexplored. When he figures out how to get a band on-line, watch out. WRECKX-N-EFFECT Hard or Smooth (MCAFuture Producer Teddy Riley, whose magic hasn't exactly translated into critical success for Michael Jackson or Bobby Brown, needs a street-level hit right now for credibility, if nothing else.

The latest album by Wreckx-N-Effect, and its dopey single "Rump Shaker," will probably restore some luster (though it shouldn't, given the eloquence that other rappers have brought to discussions of the posterior). "Rump Shaker" is a vamp that outlasts its welcome. It boasts some passable rhymes, and an elastic beat that is pure Riley. But rather than develop the ideas and foster a little tension, Riley cranks out the loops, turning an expression of lust into a tired old refrain. This is what happens to rap when rappers want a pop hit but lack the craft to hammer one out.

The rest of the album is worse. Rappers Aqil Davidson and Markell Riley (Teddy's brother) offer a sequel to their 1989 hit "New Jack Swing," attempt to position themselves as Sensitive Males Me How You and then get graphic discussing their sexual exploits Even when they hit on a clever couplet, the Wreckx boys never make it pay off: Hard or Smooth is more of the same featherweight pop-rap that excites producer Riley and keeps Bobby Brown in new clothes, but leaves the rest of the world cold. Country Reviewed by Dan DeLuca VARIOUS ARTISTS Country Music for Kids (Disney What better way for country music to tighten the rope around baby-boomer parents than to lasso their kids at gift-giving time. Country Music for Kids targets the growing pre-teen music market with 12 tunes featuring a whole barnful of chart-toppers Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Emmylou Harris, Patty Loveless Classical Reviewed by Daniel Webster LEONARD BERNSTEIN: The Final Concert Leonard Bernstein conducts the Boston Symphony in Britten's Four Sea Interludes and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7.

(DGG 431 768-2 Leonard Bernstein's musical life was intertwined with that of the Boston Symphony, particularly ia its summer concerts at Tanglewood. He went there as a conducting student and returned year after year. When he went to Tanglewood in August 1990, Bernstein was 72 and sick. He had had to cancel other appearances, among them a two-week European tour with the Tanglewood orchestra, but this concert the Koussevitzky Memorial, in honor of former Boston Symphony conductor and Bernstein mentor Sergei Koussevitzky was too important to him to give away. The program cannot be read as a cosmic statement.

These were works that Bernstein liked, but that did not define his life in music. The Boston Symphony musicians clearly responded to his direction, playing with an intensity and suppleness that is above the norm. The Britten music proves the more arresting. In Four Sea Interludes, the symphony is especially alert, and Bernstein seems more deeply involved in shaping and clarifying the exacting writing. The moods and visual scenes are edged with high drama.

In the Beethoven Symphony No. 7, the conductor creates some ponderous tempos, some playing that seems overwhelmed by metrical patterns, and some deeply felt slow playing. This program, a reading full of thought and angst, proved to be she doesn't gun for radical change. Instead, Jannah is interested in delicate insinuation, in bringing wisps of new light to old traditions, in restoring grace to the carelessly interpreted classics of jazz vocal music one utterance at a time. 4 't 1 4.

CHARLIE HADEN QUARTET WEST Haunted Heart 5. THE LINCOLN CENTER JAZZ ORCHESTRA Portraits by Ellington 6. FRANK MORGAN You Must Believe in Spring 7. BETTY CARTER It's Not About the Melody 8. DAVID BENOIT Letter to Evan 9.

STANLEY TURRENTINE More Than a Mood 10. ELIANE EUAS Fantasia From Billboard magazine 1219,92 1992 and Chris Hillman, among others. Co-produced by bluegrass whiz (and Desert Rose Band member) Herb Pedersen, the project has a gleaming but not slick sheen, and delivers twangy takes on a mix of traditional and original children's songs. Old-timers Merle Haggard (who has a go at and Buck Owens (who sounds as sunny as ever on Pedersen and Jay Levy's "If You Can't Find a Reason to Be provide two of the nicest surprises, but there's also Carpenter singing Vince Gill and Guy Clark's "Jenny Dreamed of Trains," Loveless inquiring soulfully on "So Many Questions, So Little Time," and Harris sailing away "On the Wings of Horses." A lot of care went into this project, and it probably won't give you a headache even after you're forced to hear it a hundred times. What more can you ask? ALVIN THE CHIPMUNKS Chipmunks In Low Places (Epic Speaking of headaches, it was inevitable that some savvy marketeer would slap a Stetson and cowboy boots on toondom's most recalcitrant rodent and round up lots of dollars in the process.

Chipmunks in Low Places that's a play on a hit by Garth Brooks, who does not appear herein is largely a compendium of retread country hits, done in squeaky high and lonesome style by Alvin and the gang, accompanied by a few select guests, most of whom merely drop by to joke with their favorite furry pests. Thus, we have Billy Ray Cyrus steps. She envisions a more musical approach to the often rigid jazz vocal form, and the best thing about A Distortion of Love is the long instrumental solos and development sections between verses. There is understatement here, at least, and a post-bop mind-set that allows the group to linger over a song rather than march through it. But as a vocalist, Barber can't sustain the instrumental tension: It's as if she's relying on the musical proceedings to carry her thoughtful but hardly groundbreaking vocal treatments.

Jannah is the only singer of the current crop to meld Horn's musi-. cianship, Washington's ache and Vaughan's smooth virtuosity into something wholly her own. She, too, tackles "Willow Weep for Me," and her reading is full of a personal sorrow that separates it from other latter-day versions. Jannah's effortless scat chorus on "Pennies From Heaven" shows she's been influenced by Brazilian music as well as the jazz masters, and both the be-bop anthem "Groovin' High" and the Rodgers and Hart standby "My Funny Valentine" find this contralto gently injecting her personality into the songs. Aware that the material has been covered hundreds of times before, she doesn't go by the book, and 2.

KATHLEEN BATTLE Kathleen Battle at Carnegie Hall 3. IN CONCERT Carreras. Domingo. Pavarotti 4. KATHLEEN BATTLE AND WYNTON MARSALIS Baroque Duet 5.

VLADIMIR HOROWITZ Horowitz: Discovered Treasures 6. LUCIANO PAVAROTTI Amore 7. KEITH JARRETT Shostakovich: 24 Preludes Fugues 8. ARTUR RUBINSTEIN The Last Recital for Israel 9. KEITH JARRETT, MICHALA PETRI Bach: Sonatas 10.

UPSHAW AND LONDON SINFONIETTA Gorecki: Symphony No. 3 From Billboard magazine 121992 1992 genuine songwriting; noisy instrumental fanfares that need a big back-beat and get stiff little rhythmic bleats instead. SHAWN LANE Powers of Ten (Warner Bros. In the CD booklet that accompanies his debut Powers of Ten, Memphis guitarist Shawn Lane devotes a page to acknowledging his inspirations. The list, in no apparent order, includes composers Gustav Mahler, Maurice Ravel and Frank Zappa; guitarists Bill Frisell, Jimi Hendrix and Pat Metheny; filmmakers Woody Allen and Ingmar Bergman, and jazz improvisers Charlie Parker and Keith Jarrett.

The breadth and depth of the list offers a huge hint about Lane: This guy is serious. He's an immensely gifted instrumentalist he played all the instruments here, and did the recording and mixing. And, incredibly, he employs all that technique to execute the songs he's written: Using familiar cyclical forms and the sprawling through-composition of some classical pieces, Lane has created an accessible, if sometimes overly orchestral, approach to instrumental music. He's an upscale Joe Satriani, a composer comfortable deviating from the major themes, an improviser capable of expanding on already dense ideas with lines both virtuosic and tasteful. Not one guitar solo on this abum screams, "Listen to this." There's much beauty in Lane's approach, but there are limits, too.

His writing particularly "Illusion" and "Piano Concertino: Transformation of Themes" requires input from live rhythm-section players to be fully realized. Though the vast array of individual timbres is effective, there's too much synth padding. And some of the melodies babble until they're superfluous. Still, as the breathtaking (if heavy-handed) title suite makes clear, Lane doesn't want for musical ideas or ways to develop them. He's tapped into a powerful source, and has the potential to bring thoughtful, musically astute concepts to a type of of songbirds short, victims of unrealistic expectations and limited imaginations.

You can hear them striving: When Free-Ion scats the last phrase of "Stella by Starlight," a favorite since the '40s, she's not moved by the studio-orchestra setting or the final rush of emotion that sums up the lyric. She's just following the script. Its a common problem. Freelon, Rubin and Barber get the words right. They know how to suggest a coy come-on or a dejected glare.

But their best phrases are oversung, directed at a vocal coach and not a lost love. There's no sound of experience ringing through the songs, no sense that the rue in "I Fall in Love Too Easily" is any different from the pain in "Soul Eyes." It's all generic, with very little of the storytelling that Vaughan and Washington viewed as part of their jobs. The inflections that made Holiday's "Willow Weep for Me" arresting are used in a jumble, as if a randomly inserted moan will convey the same emotion that Holiday's carefully considered placement achieved. Freelon's ambitious debut, which FAG" FANS MATTRESSES A new flock follows a course that's been traveled ES8B SINGERS from L1 deviate slightly from established patterns. It's impossible to tell when these women, all blessed with pleasant voices, are paying tribute to their influences and when they're simply banking on nostalgia, in hopes that the Dinah Washington fans will appreciate a faithful treatment of a IMIIIIIIIIMIMIW familiar song.

The new singers are fighting a futile battle. The mind cherishes a well-sung song: Unlike an instrumental interpretation, which can be difficult to retain, a vocal performance can No matter how hard they try, the new singers fall short. i ft Mt 1 "-) Rjvprfrcrtf Dinner Theeln Dinner ThetirekJ Dtlavtaie ftvsr it Poplar Pnili 925-700 dboup miii iaias wtewriih. hmmic SMOKEY ROBINSON RINGS IN '93! December 31 January 1 2 Juniors at Rock Rolls restaurant at 11 p.m. with dancing till 3 a.m.

Tickets: $25 and include party favors and a midnight toast. Also, Jan. 1 2, 1 1 p.m.-2 a.m. Tickets: $10.00. DINNER 3 SHOW 20" is accompanied by notes from celebrated African American poet and author Maya Angelou, is full of such misappropriation.

Freelon has a thick, buoyant voice, but shows it off at every turn, thus devaluing its impact. She's never comfortable letting the song lead, and as a result "Skylark" and "Angel Eyes," songs that demand a certain understatement, sound stiff. And though she's obvi-ously more comfortable singing ballads, she never conveys a full understanding of much less commitment to the lyric. Rubin has a powerful voice, but her take-charge approach grows trying after a few songs: She wants to be the camp counselor of jazz singers. She hasn't learned to tiptoe.

She barks rather than glides through "Giant Steps." Her "Willow Weep for Me" is a carbon copy of Holiday's, and her scatting on "I've Got the World on a String" is derivative and lacking in imagination. Worse, "String's" scat chorus shows a painful disregard for pitch. This is no small quibble: No matter how sturdy the voice, if the singer's note-choice is reckless, the result is amateur hour. Rubin may invoke the masters, but her sloppiness mocks rather than affirms them. Barber, who also plays piano, is attempting to follow in Horn's foot FURNITURE Largest woodilov logs, Airtight Consolidated minutes from haunt for days, if not years.

The recordings of Vaughan and Billie Holiday, dotted with idiosyncrasies and anguished turns of phrase that could not have come from anyone else, stay with us. Every song is a compelling case, a piece of life history, an investment. Others are welcome to tackle this material, but their challenge is to offer more than a reminder of the original. No matter how hard they try to meet this gold standard through feats of athletic vocalism that Holiday, for one, would never have attempted the new singers fall Celebrate New Year's Eve with dancing at 9 p.m., followed by Smokey's concert at 10:30 p.m. Show package includes two beverages and party favors.

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