Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 for voice and at least 8 cellos

“One of the most delicate, sighing, judiciously used women’s voices one might ever hear.” That was the verdict of the tenor Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, writing in his fascinating study of the leading singers of his time, Voci parallele (Bologna ed. 1977). “Licia Albanese,” he says, “would move on stage purposefully, with precision, painting her tones with careful control of her means and a clear perception of their end”. Audiences were captivated by an effect of modesty, simplicity and tenderness but behind that effect was a solid mastery of her art. He, the senior artist, is full of admiration. But he has a warning: we should not suppose that these fixed, fossilised, mummified objects we call records can convey the individuality, the true character of such singers. So: caveat emptor. Lauri-Volpi had his own way of putting things (that adjective ‘sighing’ surprises us, not so much in itself as in its placing, second among the primary characteristics of the singer he is describing, and one may well object that records, however ‘fixed’, can at least sing to us, which is more than fossils and mummies can do). There is still something in what he says. He is thinking of Albanese’s particular kind of art: that delicate, ‘sighing’ quality which he hears inwardly, summoned up in a memory that is visual as well as aural and which is scarcely to be ‘fixed’, held still. Its essence lies in the moving, breathing individual. He speaks of her strong intuitive faculties. She knew what she was going to do next, vocally and dramatically – but what the audience experienced was the sense of an assured spontaneity. In the theatre you felt that her singing and her movements might take any number of forms: in a recording it will always take one. The living being is caught, pinned-down, captured; and that’s not the way she was.

Extract from the booklet note John Steane, 2008