As with The Record Collector’s annual CD issue, this release by its American counterpart is always a must-have. Not that all recordings will give you pleasure but still there’s much to discover and enjoy.
Let’s start with the one I did not enjoy at all and that was foremost Leopold Demuth’s extremely slow recording of Liszt ‘Es muss ein Wunderbares sein”. That’s one recordings out of 24. Not bad. Super are Josefina Huguet’s “la picadora”, an excellent transfer too from a 1903 recorded acoustic disc and William Robyn in Trovatore’s Misere live probably from NYC’s Roxy theatre in October 1923. Now here’s a real tenor at work and the old cliché returns : there is no tenor around today who can sing Manrico as Robyn does. French born Madeleine Bugg sings ‘Son pocchi fiori’ in the real Italian veristic trade and nothing in her singing betrays her French origin. A most interesting recording and absolute rarity is the cantorial recording of Moses Joshua Saitz. Like often cantorial music is not of the highest musical quality melody wise nor is the Hebrew prayer he sings here but we can take aural pleasure in an excellent healthy sturdy tenor voice and his wonderful technique. Spellbounding singing. The great Gaston Micheletti doesn’t need any introduction to tenor freaks and the Neapolitan song he sings here displays the very best of the Corsican. Brohly gives a fine French version of Schumann’s “ Ich grolle nicht” and Lucy Perelli is even more impressive in Leroux’s “Le Nil”.
Brussels’s born baritone Georges Villier has always been a great favorite of mine and as we are a Flemish website (Brussels is the capital of Flanders) we can only welcome this previously unavailable recording of Les couplets d’Ourrias, it’s simply also great singing and again there’s no French or Belgian baritone around today of this caliber. But there’s much more ranging from rarities by Sutherland (1951) and Lawrence Tibbett (1939) to Stracciari’s singing The lost Chord. If that’s not a vocal treasure cave I don’t know and we should all buy and support the organization.
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