UNIKAT
https://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/music/0304/classical/livingpresence.htm After several years without a Mercury reissue from Classic Records, we are treated at last to four from Speakers Corner. Three of these are contained in the present set; the fourth, not reviewed here, is SR90213, Music of Ravel & Debussy with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Paul Paray. It is hard to imagine that a company as sensitive to music as Mercury would have conceived of the Speakers Corner box as a set. While the title is apt, the music of Schuller and Fetler has little in common with that of the three titans of the New Vienna School--other than, in this context, its conductor and record label. In the first decades of the last century, Schoenberg and his disciples Berg and Webern were major players in the concert music tradition — and they still are. Schuller and Fetler were passing intrigues in 1958-59 when their music was composed — and still are. More important than the relative significance of these composers is a huge difference in style. It’s like lumping Beethoven and Bob Dylan into the same program-- I might find it amusing in a live performance, but an uncomfortable stretch on a recording. As it stands, the Schuller/Fetler record is conspicuously out of place in the company of such giants.