superior to many of today’s pallid products.nAnd the performances themselves,nafter delighting, must appall byntheir revelation of what has been lostnby an insistent puritanism and reductivenabstraction. The ideology of modernismnkilled the spirit of music, whichnwill be recovered by a return to thenroots — and by a study of recordingsnsuch as these.nThe best of Friedman’s legacy is twonseries of Romantic jewels, nine ofnMendelssohn’s Songs Without Words,nand twelve Chopin mazurkas, withnduplications. His recordings of thesenpieces are unquestionably the best evernmade: the Mendelssohn is fresh, spontaneous,nsweet, and restrained. Thenmazurkas are exuberant, tender, andnsurprising, with a squeeze-box or taffypullnrubato that makes these perhapsnthe most kinetic of all piano recordings,ninsinuating miracles of imaginationnand insight. And for these two seriesnalone, the Pearl collection is mandatory.nBut there is much more. Friedman’snuncanny recording of Chopin’s Nocturnenin E flat Op. 5 5 No. 2 has oftennbeen called the greatest recording ofnany of the Nocturnes. Vladimir Horowitznthought that his version of thenChopin Etude Op. 10 No. 7 in C wasnunsurpassed. Friedman’s renditions ofnvarious Etudes deserve comparisonnwith those of Cortot and Lhevinne.nAnd besides these and others, there is an”Moonlight” sonata, an unsuccessfulnCrieg concerto, and a host of characternpieces and minor items of great appeal.nIt’s no accident that Friedman can putnover pieces on the piano made famousnby charmers like Fritz Kreisler andnRichard Tauber.nThere is one Friedman recordingnnot included in the Pearl set, and it’s anmajor one: his only piece of chambernmusic, his only collaboration with anpeer. Bronislaw Huberman recordednthe “Kreutzer” sonata with Friedmannin 1934. Paired with Huberman’sn1930 recording of the Beethoven violinnconcerto conducted by GeorgenSzell, it’s available on silver disc (EMInCDH 7 63194 2). Such a weight ofnBeethoven will no doubt attract thosenmusic lovers who care about Friedmannand Huberman, as well as those whonwant to have one of the greatest recordingsnof the greatest violin concertos.nThus Ignaz Friedman’s pianism hasnbeen preserved in a new medium, onenthat should last “forever.” Though hisn19th-century spirit clashes with thencomputer age, still it’s nice to know,nwhile relishing his sometimes rollickingnperformances, that you don’t have tonturn the 78 over every three minutes.nIn that sense, the compact disc returnsnus to a more relaxed approach to musicnand a less hurried sense of life itself. Innsuch a state, we can marvel at Friedman’snpowerful ability to project thenlyric, the dramatic, and even the terpsichoreannelements of music.n/.O. Tate is a professor of English atnDowling College on Long Island.nExodus From thenEastnby Tomislav SunicnImmigration in EuropenUntil recently everybody thoughtnthat the threat of the Soviet Unionnlay in its strength; today everybodynwisely claims it lies in its weakness. Fornalmost a century the sheer weight andnsize of the communist monolith madenus shudder with fear. Nowadays thenmonolith is breaking up into parts that,nlike comets, threaten to slam into Westernncapitals. Once upon a time we werenappalled that the communist wallsnbarred the route to the promising West.nToday we are worried that out of thennncrumbled walls roads may be constructednfor the exodus from the East. Thenmillions of East Europeans and Sovietsnscrambling out of their homelands maynsoon make us regret the passing of thenworid that emerged out of Yalta.nAccording to Claude Chesnais, fromnthe Paris Institute of DemographicnStudies, between three and twenty millionnSoviet immigrants will flood Westernncountries within the next threenyears, a prospect that Bruno Tietz, thendirector of the Institute for EconomicnResearch at the University of Saarlandnin Germany, already calls the largestnVolkerwanderung since Attila. Sovietnimmigration is only the tip of theniceberg, considering that the decadeslongnAfrican and Asian immigration tonEurope is nowhere near an end. Withnits open-door policy Western Europe isnpoised to change its ethnic profilenbeyond recognition.nOf all European states Germany isnin a particularly difficult position. Althoughnthe German quota for politicalnasylum seekers is among the lowest innthe Western world, Germany is thenvictim of a legal system that makes itnvirtually impossible to deport thosenwho reside without permit on its territory.nLast year alone 193,063 foreignersnrequested political asylum in Germany,nof whom only 6,500 obtainednthe status of political refugees. The restncontinue to linger in numerousnGerman facilities in the hope of findingna legal loophole for obtaining permanentnresidency. Still reeling from itsn”unsuppressed past,” Germany seemsnto be in no position to close its doors tonEast European economic migrants, ornfor that matter to expel dozens ofnthousands of Polish and Balkan Gypsiesnon the grounds that they are ineligiblenfor the status of the politicallynpersecuted. Moreover, with its decliningnbirthrate, the lowest in Europentoday, Germany, in the decades toncome, is likely to become the hub ofnforeign immigration. The GermannQuestion may finally be resolved —nonce and for all.nHow the mass exodus from east andnsouth will square with the cozy picturenof the common European home is notnvery clear. The optimistic scenariosnabout Europe 1992, conjured up bynEurocrats from Bonn to Brussels, mayndrown in the rising tide of foreigners,nwith unintended consequences for thenJULY 1991/51n