From the ridiculous to the sublime

How could I resist this?

Dorothy Dorow performs Music For Coloratura Soprano, Flute & Piano. I picked it up because the spine was intriguing, but it was the cover — and the bargain price — which clinched it.  Regrettably, the recording itself is only intermittently as hilarious as the cover. As I understand it, it was in modern music that Dorothy Dorow spent the bulk of her career; I can only hope she responded better to that repertoire than to this. In a series of 18th, 19th and 20th century coloratura showpieces, she is resolutely dull and mechanical; the fun only comes when the music gets so ridiculously frilly that her solemn execution of it is hilariously incongruous. My favourite track is her own composition, "Dream". The text, also by Miss Dorow consists of the word "Dream". The piece is a pastiche of various modern styles; it involves some moaning, some snapping of fingers, even a bit of bossa nova. It could almost be a joke but her comments in the liner notes and her straightfaced rendition suggest it is not. I'd love to give it to Patricia Petibon to sing, though — she'd turn it into an uproarious masterpiece. Otherwise this is just mindbogglingly boring, really. It's all very well to treat these as essentially displays of technical mastery, but that doesn't mean they can't be aurally appealing too. Hitting all the notes is no fun if you do it so charmlessly. Compare and contrast Dorow's Morse Code treatment of Eva dell'Acqua's "Villanelle" to Natalie's fluid, shimmery recording of the piece on her Vocalise; or her dry, tedious "Lo! Here the gentle lark" with the version on Yvonne Kenny's Homage to Melba, sung with a spring in her step and a smile in her voice; indeed, when she finally makes it through the very last flight of fioratura, you can hear her laughing. Now that's the spirit in which this kind of repertoire needs to be sung.

And if I couldn't resist that, I certainly wasn't going to say no to this.

This is pretty early for Anne Sofie — the recital dates from 1989. The contents aren't quite as bleak or as unrelentingly wintry as the Oh So Sibelius cover art, though the lyrics certainly contain their fair share of snow and longing. There's the odd sliver of jubilation too, though. I don't need to tell you how well suited Anne Sofie is to this repertoire. She's in gorgeous voice, but then, when isn't she? Her singing here doesn't quite attain the utter lusciousness of, say, her Grieg songs; but it's also free of the (dare I say it?) occasionally offputting idiosyncracies of her more recent recordings — the Abba CD (I know, I know, it's mostly not Abba, but I still have to call it that) and her Music for a While; not her Terezin, though, because that is an out-and-out masterpiece. She reaches surprisingly operatic heights here, but as usual it's still that perfectly formed and ever expressive middle of her voice which provides the true thrills. The dramatic "Flickan kom infrån sin älsklings möte" has long been a favourite song of mine — I learnt most of the words (phonetically, that is) from Karita; Barbara Bonney's has been known to quite literally stop me in my tracks when appearing on Shuffle. Anne Sofie, true to form, sings it magnificently; but to be honest, on this CD, I like her best in lilting, languid mode. Hers is a voice to bask in. And luckily this recital offers plenty of opportunities to do just that.