RCA's feature release this month is the Brahms Double Concerto for Violin and Cello, played by Heifetz and Feuermann with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Ormandy (Album M-815). The Double Concerto was Brahms' last essay in the symphonic form. After finishing it he turned back finally and for good to the smaller forms in which he seemed to be more at home, the chamber sonata, the song, and the piano lyric. And I don't think that I am reading things into the music when I say that the Double Concerto has about it a sort of tiredness with the orchestral medium. Even more than in his other works, one senses a continued striving to meet the demands of the symphonic form (as Brahms conceived them), rather than a perfectly natural and creative use of the form. Instead of using the orchestra as an instrument of expression, Brahms makes it the goal itself. This point I have belabored before, I know, but previously only with regard to general thematic development. Here the themes themselves seem cut from harsher rock, deliberately hewn out in large chunks to satisfy a standard of bigness.

Still, some of the old fire flashes through the Double Concerto. The first movement has a grand fervor and sweep, and the new recording communicates these qualities superbly. Unfortunately there was no opportunity to compare it side by side with the old one of the work, made years ago by Thibaud, Casals, and Cortot conducting Casals' orchestra. That set, one of the oldest in the Victor catalogue, has been recalled. However, it is safe to say that the performances in that version can hardly have excelled those in the new one. And both soloists and orchestra in the new set are reproduced with a brilliance and fidelity that represents the best in modern recording.