An 'Army of Stars' at Christmas, 1949

This program comes from the long-ago time - 1949 - when the greatest stars of opera gathered to raise funds and awareness of the Salvation Army at Christmastime.

On this one-hour special, taken from a mint copy of the 16-inch transcription disc, some of the greatest voices of the 20th century are heard in both seasonal fare and operatic material - Lawrence Tibbett, Kirsten Flagstad, Set Svanholm, Licia Albanese and Jussi Björling among them.

This special program was a gift to the blog from Ernie Haynes, the Christmas music maestro, who as usual is making merry on his blog Ernie, Not Bert. Today he is featuring a great number of other records in the Salvation Army Christmas series, but he sent this one to me to transfer because my equipment can handle the old, oversize transcription discs.

Thanks, Ernie! It's a fascinating show in remarkably good sound that gathered the stars in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco for the occasion. Here is a rundown of the proceedings.

Lawrence Tibbett

After an introduction by the busy radio announcer Jimmy Wallington, the popular baritone Lawrence Tibbett (1896-1960) is heard in "Adeste Fideles." At the time, Tibbett had been with the Metropolitan Opera for 26 years, along with making appearances on radio and in films. Tibbett's grandmother was a Major in the Salvation Army, and his first public performance was as a youngster at a Army meeting in Bakersfield, CA.

Kirsten Flagstad

The supreme Wagnerian soprano Kirsten Flagstad (1895-1962) presents "Elsa's Dream" from Lohengrin. She is accompanied by the San Francisco Opera Orchestra under the company's director, Gaetano Merola. In 1949 the Norwegian singer appeared both at the Met and in San Francisco.

Jean Hersholt as Dr. Christian

In 1949, the Danish-American actor Jean Hersholt (1886-1956) was completing his twelfth year in the title role of the radio drama Dr. Christian, which would continue for five more years. He presents the story of the Nativity as related in the Gospel of St. Luke.

Winifred Heidt

Contralto Winifred Heidt (1906-90) had a varied career that took her from the Met to Broadway. That season she was appearing with the new NBC Television Opera Company. She presents a lovely version of "Silent Night" with organ.

Set Svanholm

Another eminent Wagnerian was the Swedish tenor Set Svanholm (1904-64), who at the time was in demand at the Met, the Vienna State Opera and Covent Garden. He presents the "Song to the Evening Star" from Tannhäuser. Gaetano Merola again conducts his San Francisco forces.

Licia Albanese and Jussi Björling

Following a message from Commissioner Ernest I. Pugmire of the Salvation Army, the program concludes with "O soave fanciulla" from Puccini's La bohème, a scene which is of course set on Christmas Eve. The operatic lovers are two great stars who often appeared together - Italian-American soprano Licia Albanese (1909-2014) as Mimi and Swedish tenor Jussi Björling (1911-60) as Rodolfo. The San Francisco Opera Orchestra is led by Karl Kritz, director of the Fort Worth Opera Company and staff conductor in San Francisco.

The "Army of Stars" series of programs lasted from the 1930s through the 1990s, bringing together some of entertainment’s brightest stars in support of the Salvation Army’s mission. The copy of the 1949 program that I transferred was broadcast in December of that year by WDHL in Bradenton, FL and WSPB in Sarasota, FL, as noted on the label.

Thanks again to Ernie for his generous contribution!

LINK

Ansermet Conducts Honegger's 'Christmas Cantata'

It's surprising that I have maintained this blog for 17 years and never featured the Christmas Cantata (Une cantate de Noël) by the Swiss composer Arthur Honegger (1892-1955). It's a beautiful, ingenious, even profound work that was the composer's last.

Today we have a fine 1961 recording led by the eminent Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet (1883-1969), who has not appeared on the blog before.

The cantata is backed by Honegger's Symphony No. 2, an apt companion because both works depict a journey from the darkness into the light.

FYI: also below are links to another performance of the Honegger Symphony, coupled with Menotti's Violin Concerto, and to the latter composer's Amahl and the Night Visitors, in the famed first recording.

Arthur Honegger

Honegger's Christmas Cantata

Honegger's cantata was actually sketched in some detail more than a decade before it appeared. He had meant it to be part of a Passion Play that he was writing for the Swiss town of Selzach, to a libretto by Cäsar von Arx. However, the war, the composer's own illnesses and the librettist's 1949 death meant the full passion was never completed.

Among the fully sketched parts was the birth of Christ. When Paul Sacher commissioned a work from Honegger for the 25th anniversary of the Basel Chamber Orchestra, the composer decided to edit and orchestrate those sketches into the work we know as the Christmas Cantata. The premiere was in 1954.

In his book on Honegger's music, Harry Halbreich has written: "The composition of Une Cantate de Noël provided his last moments of creative happiness and, although the work was based on much older material, it carries nonetheless a symbolic significance in bringing his life to an end on a note of hope - that hope 'which is the strongest.'"

The work starts in darkness with somber organ tones that gradually lead to choral passages taken both from the liturgy and from carols both in French and German. The latter perhaps signify both multilingual Switzerland and peace among nations following the war.

Honegger makes remarkable use of "Stille Nacht." As the critic Alfred Frankenstein noted in High Fidelity: "[U]ntil you have heard 'Stille Nacht' manipulated by a Honegger, you haven't heard it at all."

Ernest Ansermet

The work is scored for baritone (here, Pierre Mollet), organ (Pierre Segond), choirs (Choirs of Pro Arte, French Swiss Radio and Television and the College of Villamont, directed by André Charlet) and L'Orchestra de la Suisse Romande conducted by Ansermet.

The recording comes from the Victoria Hall in Geneva, famed as a recording location. Even so, the cantata is murkier than ideal, probably because of the organ. I've tried to clarify the sound.

Symphony No. 2

As mentioned, Honegger's Symphony No. 2 is another journey from darkness into light, remarkable in its optimism considering it was written during the Second World War. The symphony is famed for its peroration, with a trumpet breaking through the turbulence and strikingly changing the mood of the work.

As with the Christmas Cantata, the symphony was commissioned by Paul Sacher for an anniversary of his Basel Chamber Orchestra - its tenth, in 1937. The work was not premiered, however, until 1942, and that came with Sacher conducting the Collegium Musicum of Zurich, another organization he founded.

Sacher (1906-99), who was wealthy, also commissioned works by Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Bohuslav Martinů, Frank Martin, Hans Werner Henze, Richard Strauss, Elliott Carter, Witold Lutosławski, Henri Dutilleux and Harrison Birtwistle, among others.

This is a very good performance in excellent sound.

LINK to Honegger's Christmas Cantata and Symphony No. 2

Another Honegger Performance with Menotti's Violin Concerto

Another strong reading of the Honegger second symphony, by the Boston Symphony and Charles Munch, is available here in newly remastered sound. Munch was a huge supporter of the composer

The coupling is Menotti's neglected but lovely Violin Concerto with soloist Tossy Spivakovsky.

The Honegger is from 1953, the Menotti from a year later.

The Classic Amahl and the Night Visitors

Appropriate to the season, I had a request for Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors, which I first uploaded a number of years ago. I've now remastered the files, which have always sounded great; now perhaps a bit better.

This is the brilliant premiere performance under the young Thomas Schippers. It was the first opera written for television, presented on Christmas Eve 1951. More information is here.

The Jo Stafford Holiday Collection

Jo Stafford and Paul Weston

Considering my affinity for Jo Stafford's voice, it's surprising that her seasonal output has never made an appearance here.

I suppose that's because her holiday LPs are well known. Even so, I think it's time we presented the three of them - along with a surprising number of orphan tracks that have appeared hither and yon through the years.

Let's start with those 16 assorted numbers, which take us back to near the beginning of Jo's career. Then we'll get to her Happy Holiday, Ski Trails and The Joyful Season LPs.

Miscellaneous Christmas Tracks

Jo Stafford and the Pied Pipers

Stafford joined the Tommy Dorsey band in 1939 as the lead singer of the Pied Pipers, a popular and influential group. Their sole song with a seasonal connotation would seem to be "Winter Weather," a very good piece by Ted Shapiro that was popular in 1942. Jo would return to the song on her 1955 Happy Holiday LP.

Capitol News, December 1948

Stafford went solo in 1944, and soon was with the new label Capitol, whose music director was Paul Weston - formerly of the Dorsey band - whom she would marry in 1952. But it wasn't until 1946 that they began recording seasonal fare. That year, the label issued her coupling of "Silent Night" and "White Christmas" with the Lyn Murray Singers and Weston's orchestra. The Murray group had done a good Christmas album for Columbia in 1942. It's available here, newly remastered.

Then it took until 1948 for something that could be called a follow-up - the setting of the "Ave Maria" to a Schubert melody, oddly coupled with the musty "Smilin' Through" (not included here).

Stafford made up for the lack of holiday material the next year with several releases.

We start with her early album Jo Stafford Sings American Folk Songs, where we find the first of her three recordings of "I Wonder as I Wander," which did have a folk origin but was turned into the song we know by John Jacob Niles. Regardless of its origin, it is a haunting work both melodically and lyrically that Stafford and Weston handle beautifully.

Also that year, Capitol paired Jo with Gordon MacRae in a perfect partnership that has been featured on this blog several times - including their two Christmas medleys that originally came out on a 12-inch 78.

The final 1949 release was a beautiful version of "Gesù bambino," written by Pietro Yon in 1917 and later adapted by Frederick Martens. This was later added to the Stafford-MacRae medleys that had been issued on 78 to make the EP depicted above.

The next year, Jo was featured on CBS' Carnation Contented Hour radio show. (Carnation made canned milk, which it boasted came "from contented cows.") Jo sings "It's a Marshmallow World," a fun number that was new that year. Peter De Rose and Carl Sigman were the authors.

In 1952, Jo's new label Columbia paired her with a singer much different from MacRae, but just as simpatico - Frankie Laine. He and Stafford had a notable rapport that is immediately apparent in their superb singing on "Christmas Roses," a charming country-style song by the team of Hy Zaret, Alex Kramer and Joan Whitney.

Jo with Frankie Laine

The next year, her holiday offering was the excellent Sammy Cahn-David Holt song "Christmas Blues," also recorded by Dino and newly popular in recent years with recordings by the likes of Bob Dylan.

Stafford and Weston kept themselves busy with her two seasonal LPs for Columbia in 1955 and 1956, which are covered below. But one recording apparently made in 1955 was not included on those albums. It was a version of "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" that was not issued until a 1968 LP otherwise consisting of material from Jo's holiday LPs. This is with an unidentified organist. Thanks to Ernie Haynes, who alerted me to this number!

From there, we jump ahead to 1962 when another version of "I Wonder as I Wander" was included on her stereo remake of Jo Stafford Sings American Folk Songs, with the same arrangements as the first go-round. She must have liked the song - it also ended up on the Winter Weather LP below.

Stafford made a quick stop-over on the Reprise label for a version of "O Little Town of Bethlehem" that appeared on a Christmas compilation in 1963.

The next year Jo recorded a spot for the Marine Corps Reserve's "Toys for Tots" drive, doing a nice job with the tune and with the messaging as well. Jack Marshall conducted. This was presumably made during the sessions for The Joyful Season, covered below.

Stafford largely retired in the mid-60s, but we do have one more item, here presented out of chronological order because it is a New Year's song - "Auld Lang Syne," taken from Jo's 1956 LP Songs of Scotland.

LINK to miscellaneous Christmas tracks

Happy Holiday

Happy Holiday of 1955 is an entirely pleasing album, but doesn't display the generosity of the season, being short, repeating material that had appeared elsewhere - in new versions - and featuring two numbers that don't include the artist named on the cover.

What it does include are a few appearances by Tim Weston, the three-year-old son of Jo and Paul, who also shows up in the cover photo, bundled up for a winter storm of soap flakes and styrofoam. Jo made do without a coat.

As for the LP, it presents two versions of Irving Berlin's "Happy Holiday," which together last a minute and a half, and remakes of "Winter Weather," "I Wonder as I Wander" and "Silent Night." New to Jo's recorded repertoire were "The Christmas Song," "Let It Snow! (etc.)," "Toyland" and "Winter Wonderland." There also was a recitation of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" with Weston's musical backing.

Jo must have been out of the room for two numbers: "O Little Town of Bethlehem" is performed by an unidentified children's choir and "The March of the Toys" by Weston's orchestra.

All of this is not unpleasant, but, gee, let's hear more of Jo! 

LINK to Happy Holiday

Ski Trails

This parsimonious approach continued the following year with Ski Trails, which even repeated two songs from Happy Holiday - "Let It Snow (etc.)" and "Winter Wonderland." Meanwhile, the Norman Luboff Choir showed up with forceful renditions of "Winter Song," which seems to be an old choral item from Dartmouth College (Weston was a graduate), and "The Whiffenpoof Song" from Yale. Presumably Luboff's forces were portraying hearty fraternity fellows at an après-ski party.

For Stafford, the only remake seems to be "By the Fireside" (aka "In the Gloaming"), which she had recorded years before with Gordon MacRae. New to her recorded repertoire were "Baby, It's Cold Outside," "Moonlight in Vermont" (with lyrics adjusted to make it more wintery), "It Happened in Sun Valley" (from Glenn Miller's film Sun Valley Serenade), "I've Got Me Love to Keep Me Warm," "The Nearness of You," "June in January" and "Sleigh Ride."

So quite a few new items, just not as many as there could have been.

LINK to Ski Trails

The Joyful Season

So long as I am picking nits, let me start with the title - The Joyful Season really ought to be The Joyous Season, "joyful" relating to people and "joyous" to things.

But the important point to mention is that this 1964 LP features "the Voices of Jo Stafford," signifying that she sings in harmony with herself throughout the album, à la Mary Ford or Patti Page.

Jack Marshall

Together with the sparse arrangements of Jack Marshall, this gives the LP an aura that I have previously likened to an aluminum Christmas tree.

But that is too harsh. The album offers much to enjoy.

Again, there are songs Jo had assayed previously - that's hard to avoid with Christmas material. But there are new things under the tree as well - "Deck the Hall," "Silver Bells," "Little Drummer Boy" and "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town." 

Most notable are two new songs that Paul Weston wrote with Alan Bergman and Marilyn Keith Bergman - "Merry Christmas" and "Christmas Is the Season." Not classics, but worth hearing.

So overall, the set is much to be preferred to an aluminum Christmas tree, even one with a rotating color wheel.

LINK to The Joyful Season

The Season Begins with the Ray Charles Singers' 'Winter Wonderland'

When I write "the season begins," I mean the Christmas sharity season, not winter. That doesn't start until December 23, unless you are in the Southern Hemisphere.

Anyway, I imagine the many admirers of the Ray Charles Singers will be pleased to see their terrific 1955 Winter Wonderland on offer here. I recall writing at one point that I didn't think I had this record, only to discover that I have two copies. The condition of this one is pristine, as is the music making. And I love the very 50s cover of a very 50s ranch house in the snow.

Ray Charles

Winter Wonderland is not a Christmas LP per se. There are no carols, just paeans to the glories of "Snowfall" and such, even if the words of "Moonlight in Vermont" had to be tweaked to fit the season.

This album generally follows the pattern of others in the series. Vocally, the group tends to present the songs as if they were following a scenario, as on a television show. On the instrumental side, the lead instrument is usually Nick Perito's accordion or Tony Mottola's guitar. On a few songs, Dick Hyman on piano is featured, providing some variety.

For songs, there are the usual seasonal standbys - the title song, "Button Up Your Overcoat," "June in January," "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm," "Jingle Bells" and "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" 

Interspersed are less familiar items:

• Irving Berlin wrote "When Winter Comes" for Rudy Vallee to sing in the Sonja Henie twirler Second Fiddle. Charles himself has the solo on this LP. (Mary Healy, one of the stars of the film, recorded "When Winter Comes" - her version can be found here.)

• Claude Thornhill's "Snowfall" is well known as an instrumental, less so with the lyrics contributed by Ray Charles himself.

• Al Bryan and Alfred Gumble wrote "Winter" in 1910 and Charles resurrected it for this LP, counterpointing it with a melody of his own invention called "Theme for Indoor Sports."

• "When Winter Comes a-Callin'" is a relatively obscure song by Mack Discant and Joseph Meyer. The liner notes say was then of recent vintage.

• "By the Fireside" is also known as "In the Gloaming (By the Fireside)," "gloaming" being a Scots term for twilight. Jimmy Campbell, Reg Connelly and Ray Noble wrote it in 1932; Noble's band recorded it with an Al Bowlly vocal.

The vocalists on the recording are Lillian Clark, Kathleen Wallace, Lois Winter, Miriam Workman, Robert Bollinger, Jerry Duane, Edwin Lindstrom, Eugene Lowell, Arthur Malvin, Alan Sokoloff, Michael Stewart and Eugene Steck.

The sound on this record - and the performances - are excellent.

With Winter Wonderland we complete Ray's traversal of the seasons. Here are the others:

• Autumn Nocturne

• Spring Is Here

• Summertime

LINK to Winter Wonderland

A Homesick Thanksgiving 2025

Here is our annual Thanksgiving collection from the indefatigable and invaluable Dave Federman. Please read his touching essay, then find the link to his 32-song collection at the end.

Thanks, Dave - a happy holiday to you and to all!

Thanksgiving has long and maybe always been a national holiday that celebrates the peculiarly American longing for home. It has nothing to do with pilgrims and everything to do with pilgrimage. Its meaning lies in travel. Even in the most fractured families, members feel the need to travel back home or to invite family to their own for reunion. Hope springs eternal in these songs.

Going home has never been harder than it is now with air travel encumbered by massive traffic controller layoffs and shortages, plus severe aircraft age and safety problems. The skies have never seemed so unfriendly. And rail, the main alternate means of travel, has its own highly publicized problems.

So Thanksgiving 2025 has as much to do with yearnings for home as arrivals there. And these yearnings tap into deeper longings that are central to a nation that seems to have forgotten its refugee origins and relatively brief duration as a land of settlers. The natives, a good deal of whom were never really natives, are restless and want newer settlers banished. The dream of homecoming is suddenly more dream than reality.

This Thanksgiving has a kind of wartime quality to it. It’s as if we’re all on leave of duty and we can’t quite get to take that leave at home. Even many of those who make it home don’t feel at home when they get there. Maybe there’s too much uncertainty. Routes are no longer simple matters of maps and destinations. Once traveled to their end, many still feel a certain rootlessness. That rootlessness takes hold and intensifies the need to be home and truly thankful for lives more stressed and troubled than many of us haver eve known.

This medley acknowledges the homesickness gnawing at the hearts and hopes of many. Thanksgiving is no longer a cure for many who seek to celebrate it in its original contexts of reunion and gratitude. Many of the songs come from wartime and deal with yearnings for home and sentiments associated with them.

Strangely, four of the songs are Bing Crosby obscurities from either 1945 or 1950, both war years. Bing is America’s greatest troubadour of holiday songs. So how anthologists missed these recordings baffles me. His version of “Home Sweet Home” is the greatest I have ever heard and yet it is absent from every one of the numerous gatherings of his holiday recordings that I have found. Indeed, all of the four songs he sings have been denied candidacy for essential collections of his many holiday recordings. So, if this mix accomplishes nothing else, it gives the listener greater completeness of the incomparable Crosby corpus of holiday music.

A little past halfway, the music gets home and all sorts of iconic things give rise to music. But, again, much of the music has never been conscripted for holiday use. So here, too, the mix tries to remedy failure to include these recordings in CD collections or on streaming platforms at a time when they are needed most.

LINK

From the Back Room: Early Bob Manning

Big-voiced baritone Bob Manning became popular during his tenure with Capitol records in the 1950s, which has been covered here, here and here. But Manning (1926-97) made records and transcriptions before then, many of which have been assembled for this "From the Back Room" post.

These Back Room specials are projects that I put off for one reason or another, and which are now seeing the light of day, perhaps without the torrent of commentary that I usually produce.

In brief, Bob sang just as well at the beginning of his career with Ziggy Elman than he did later on. Today's post is the evidence, including all the materials I have been able to locate pre-Capitol - 13 songs in all.

With Ziggy Elman

The Ziggy Elman band: Bob Manning at left,
then Virginia Maxey and Ziggy with trumpet

As far as I can tell, Manning made only one commercial recording with Ziggy: the song "Ivy" that Hoagy Carmichael wrote for the 1947 film of the same name. It's an excellent performance, although the recording isn't very good.

Bob was on board for three ballads that Elman recorded for transcriptions, all first-class: "Maybe You'll Be There," "So Would I" and "To Me." These also date from about 1947.

"Maybe You'll Be There" (Rube Bloom-Sammy Gallop) was a hit for Gordon Jenkins with a Charles LaVere vocal. Parenthetically, LaVere is a "Back Room" candidate - I have 30-some recordings of him as pianist and vocalist.

"So Would I" is a fine Burke-Van Heusen song that was recorded by many artists back then but has fallen into something like obscurity.

Songs for the Click Label

Bob hailed from Philadelphia, and made three records for the small, local Click label in 1948. The first was a cover of "When You Were Sweet Sixteen," a turn-of-the-century ballad that Perry Como had revived. Nicely done, but only Como could pull off this sentimental stuff.

"The Miracle of the Bells" was the title tune of a 1948 film that featured Frank Sinatra as a priest ministering to coal miners. Frank managed to avoid the title song; instead he was tasked with a Polish dirge called "Ever Homeward."

Bob was backed by the Johnny Dee orchestra on "The Miracle of the Bells" and its flip side, "Strangest Feeling."

With Buddy Williams

Buddy Williams

Manning next recorded with the Philadelphia bandleader Buddy Williams, along with "His Golden Echo Music," whatever that term may signify.

Their first effort, for the Rainbow label, was "Margot," titled for the main character in the film noir Where Danger Lives, with Bob Mitchum as a psychiatrist (so the cast list tells us) entangled with a femme-fatale patient. The song is a gloss on "Laura," but none the worse for that. A very good record.

Next, another film song for Buddy and Bob: "Sea of the Moon," written by Freed and Warren for the Esther Williams flick Pagan Love Song.

"Sea of the Moon" was backed up by "Listen to the Band." The vocal here is credited to Manning, but it's actually by a vocal group.

With Art Mooney

Art Mooney

Manning also recorded three sides with Art Mooney's band in 1950. I posted these many years ago, but am including them to round out the set.

The first number is Hank Penny's country novelty "Wham Bam Thank You, Ma'am," which is a lot less salacious than the title signifies.

"There'll Never Be Another You" is not the Harry Warren song with a similar title but a song by Carl Bergner dating from the 1920s, and nicely revived by Bob, the Four Clovers and Mooney.

Finally, "To Think You've Chosen Me" is a good Bennie Benjamin-George David Weiss song that many artists recorded in 1950, including Manning with the Skylarks and Mooney.

Bob's next records were for Capitol.

LINK

Arrau Plays Schumann, Vol. 1

I recently had a request to re-upload a Myra Hess program that included Schumann's Études Symphoniques. It inspired me to transfer some other notable recordings by that composer. Today we begin with three relatively neglected pieces, as played by one of the great 20th century pianists, Claudio Arrau (1903-91).

Arrau's pianism was regal without being ponderous, qualities that were well suited to Schumann, although less perhaps in these pieces than some others. The recordings were made in 1967 and 1968. My transfer is from an original Philips pressing with excellent sound.

Claudio Arrau

Leading off the program is the Faschingsswank aus Wien, Op. 26, a title that is variously translated as "Carnival Jest from Vienna," "Carnival Scenes" or "Carnival Tales," etc. The work is episodic, so the latter two are perhaps more appropriate.

That work is followed by the brief and relatively popular Arabeske. The major work is the Humoreske, little played but very worthwhile.

Harris Goldsmith of High Fidelity was convinced of the pianist's merits in these works: "[Arrau's] approach to Schumann combines massiveness with lucidity, freedom with stringent literalness. Arrau has a big plushy tone capable of infinite color gradations and marvelous pianistic control that permits him to weight chords convincingly and articulate all configurations with complete clarity. He sometimes has an undue penchant for the affetuoso touch and the redundant Luftpause, although moments of metrical waywardness are kept to a minimum in these particular performances. Some may think Arrau's playing a mite too studied, though in this instance I found his performances to be an unalloyed joy."

Robert Schumann

The Gramophone's Joan Chissell was of two minds about the recording: "Arrau's playing is extremely searching. Some of the reflective interludes [in the Humoreske] are outstandingly expressive and beautiful. What I miss from time to time is a feeling of glistening, improvisational spontaneity - such as a youngster like Rubinstein would most certainly have brought to the work. Arrau is too serious for Schumann at this time in his life - still only 29."

I do think a few touches of fantasy might not be out of place in these works, but there is no denying that Arrau's pianism is still a source of wonder.

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