Tchaikovsky: Puskay pogibnu ya 'Tatiana's Letter Scene' (from Eugene Onegin)

Filled with beauty, passion and drama, these Russian songs and arias go straight to the heart of the nation’s 19th century musical soul. Rachmaninov’s popular Vocalise is part of a line which includes songs of love and sadness such as Tchaikovsky’s Op. 47, two of which are included here, while yearning melodies, high drama and vivid orchestral colour are to be found in the operas of all three featured composers. Montserrat Caballé has described soprano Dinara Alieva’s rare talent as ‘the gift of Heaven’.

Born in 1888, the Russian soprano Oda Slobodskaya won a scholarship for secondary education but, having completed her schooling, to her displeasure, found herself working with her parents in a second hand clothes shop. Despite having no formal musical training, she travelled, at the age of eighteen, from her hometown of Vilno (then part of the Russian Empire) some 300 miles to St. Petersburg, to audition. She was successful. During the Russian revolution she was ordered to join other singers on obligatory tours to factories and farms to entertain the workers. At the invitation of Diaghilev she starred in the premiere of Stravinsky’s opera Mavra. The impresario Rabinoff organised for her to tour America as star soloist with The Ukranian Chorus and while there she made a successful solo debut at Carnegie Hall in New York. But, as a displaced Russian living abroad when appreciation of the Russian repertoire was minimal, Slobodskaya had difficulty finding a good manager. It was at this point that her career took a most unexpected turn. She was persuaded that as a stop-gap measure to earn some much-needed cash she might utilise her talents in the Variety Theatre rather than the opera house, and so under the assumed name of Odali Careno she made her variety debut in Baltimore in 1928. Dressed in a stunning eau-de-nile gown, she was a sensation, singing a mixture of familiar opera arias, ballads and popular songs.

Slobodskaya’s recordings are few and far between. A handful of Medtner songs with the composer at the piano were recorded early in the 20th century for HMV. In 1938 she recorded eight sides of Russian songs for a limited edition set of four 78s issued by the Rimington van Wyck record shop in Leicester Square. Slobodskaya had been heard on the radio by Mr. Frederick T. Smith, owner of RvW, and he was so overwhelmed by her voice that he paid for the records to be recorded by Decca. They were issued in May 1942 in a limited edition of 2000 in an attractive brown and gold album. Decca recorded her again in 1945 and 1946, and then in 1961.

The recordings are of cult status, much sought after by collectors of great vocal treasures, and this is their first issue on Decca CD. Andrew Dalton has compiled the collection and provided the liner notes, and the booklet is illustrated with all the album jackets as well as illustrations from program booklets, making this a real collector’s item.

This release marks the launch of an Eloquence series of notable recitals of songs and opera arias by some of the great voices of Decca and Deutsche Grammophon.

In her debut for Haenssler, the talented young soprano Juliane Banse is joined by Christoph Poppen. She has selected a highly intelligent recital including arias by Weber, Tchaikovsky, Massenet, Mozart and Puccini. She has distinguished herself not only for the beauty of her singing, but for the depth of her characterisations and deep empathy with the emotional world of the women she is portraying.

Barbara Hendricks' voice — particularly suited to Mozart, Debussy, Fauré, and the lighter roles of Puccini and Richard Strauss — has a warm, crystalline quality that has kept her in demand on stage and in recording studios. Her performances have embraced everything from contemporary music to popular standards, including songs of Duke Ellington and several world premieres. She has been careful with her choices of repertoire, avoiding roles that would overextend her essentially lyric instrument. Aside from music, she is deeply committed to humanitarian work, with a particular concern for refugees and those in war or poverty zones. She sang a concert in Sarajevo in 1993 while the city was being shelled, in which she had to wear a bulletproof vest and helmet.

Hendricks has appeared on nearly 80 recordings spread over a variety of major labels. Her first of many recordings for EMI was in the small part of the Celestial Voice in Don Carlo in 1978. For nearly twenty years her solo recordings have been made exclusively for EMI Classics

This CD includes Moussorgsky’s 6 Posthumous Songs, and the Letter Scene from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. Marianne Fiset has been hailed by critics and audience alike. She was recently awarded the title “Révélation Radio-Canada Musique 2008-2009”.

The ravishing Australian soprano Cheryl Barker has an important career in many major opera houses – English National Opera, Scottish Opera, Welsh National Opera and The Royal Opera Covent Garden among them – and concert halls. She is widely celebrated for her riveting performances. Pure Diva: is her very personal tribute to her teacher, the great Dame Joan Hammond, a disc, Barker says, “that feels as if it’s been a long time coming”.

The orchestral scenes are high drama from the first note to the last reverberation. Cheryl’s glorious lyric soprano rides the wave of Guillaume Tourniaire’s orchestral texture in grand operatic scenes, arias and songs made famous by Hammond. They include Tatyana’s Letter Scene, Dido's Lament, Desdemona’s Willow Song, and other arias by Verdi, Dvořák, Korngold, and Offenbach. Cheryl’s visceral portrayals of these operatic heroines convey the full emotional depth of these multi-dimensional characters in extremis.

The tributes with piano accompaniment (by Timothy Young) provide a contrast to the preceding drama, encore pieces beloved of Joan Hammond, the biggest selling recording artist during the war. Her recording of The Green Hills o’ Somerset became a best seller and Cheryl includes it as a homage here. The delightful rarity Shadows is a song written for Hammond by the Australian composer Ronald Settle.

Illuminating CD notes are by the late and great vocal commentator John Steane who was an insightful witness to Dame Joan Hammond (1912-96) and all the great singers of her era and those that followed.

Cheryl Barker’s relationship with Melba Recordings stretches back almost to the label’s beginning: Puccini=Passions (MR301085) was her acclaimed 2003 collection of arias with Richard Bonynge conducting Orchestra Victoria.

Although she came to international prominence in Italian and French operas, Krassimira Stoyanova is equally at home in the Slav repertoire, a point well illustrated by her European successes as Xenia in Dvořák’s Dimitri under Sir Richard Hickox and by last year’s triumphant performances as Rusalka at the Zurich Opera.

She has also appeared frequently in one of the most famous rôles in Russian opera: Tatyana in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. All of which is a good enough reason to present scenes from all these works as part of her new recital for Orfeo, an album in which she appears with the Munich Radio Orchestra under Pavel Baleff.

This varied compilation also includes such rarities as Parashkev Hadjiev’s Maria Desislava and Veselin Stoyanov’s Hitar Petar, two operas from Stoyanova's Bulgarian homeland. Both are 20th-century works, and the soprano arias that are taken from them reveal a high degree of originality in their handling of the orchestra and their melodic writing. With every breath Stoyanova brings out all the elegance, beauty and radiant colour of these two very different pieces. Maria’s lullaby from Mazeppa provides a tragic and profoundly affecting dénouement to the action and is sung with the requisite simplicity, making its impact all the more intense. The same may be said of Mařenka in Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, whilst Lisa’s aria from The Queen of Spades, reveals all its dramatic potential. Finally, Krassimira Stoyanova displays her world-class credentials in scenes from Prince Igor and from Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden and The Tsar’s Bride, allowing her uniquely varied vocal facets to flash like diamonds, while building to an impressive climax.

With her Mimì, she conquered the world. Mirella Freni’s extraordinary career lasted for over 30 years, and she never lost the enchanting youthfulness of her voice. She said farewell to the operatic stage in 2005 as a celebrated soprano in full possession of her vocal skills. Recordings from three Sunday concerts by the Münchner Rundfunkorchester document Mme. Freni in arias that reveal the many different facets of her artistry. The program ranges from her key role, Mimì, all the way to Tatyana in Tchaikovsky’s Evgeny Onegin.

Previously unreleased recordings by Mirella Freni.

Documents from the popular Sunday concerts by the Münchner Rundfunkorchester from the 1970s and 80s.