Although Marilyn Horne was 58 years old at the time of this concert, no weakness clouded the beauty of her voice. Among the recordings over the course of Horne's career, there are many Rossini operas. This all-Rossini program shows that she could convincingly dominate the smaller forms as well.

REVIEW:

Little needs be said about Marilyn Horne, one of the greatest singers of all time, with a highly distinctive voice, immediately recognizable and colorful, a deep sense of musicality, and a vocal technique that is awe-inspiring. No ornamentation, no roulade, no trill, not the longest phrase, were beyond her phenomenal breath control. Add to this her almost magical personality.

Liederabend does need a word of explanation. The Liederbands (Liederabenden) were an extensive series of vocal recitals (over 60 years) performed at the Schwetzingen South- West Radio (Germany) Festivals. For all its touting as a Liederabend Horne’s program is all-Italian, all-Rossini (a Horne specialty). 19 songs, early and late, familiar and unfamiliar; all musical delights. Among the better known are ‘La pastorella’, ‘Bolero’, ‘La molinara’, the arias ‘Cruda sorte!’ (Italiana in Algeri and ‘Di tanti palpiti’ Tancredi. A few from ‘Sins of my Old Age’ are included.

Here is a great singer at the top of her form with most entertaining music. No texts, but a biography of Horne and a history of the Festival are included.

-- American Record Guide

Prokofiev’s great ballet scores for Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella have become firm favourites in both the concert hall and the repertory of ballet companies worldwide – ‘The Montagues and Capulets’ from Romeo and Juliet, for example, features regularly at major sporting events, something Prokofiev probably never envisaged!

The earliest of the ballets featured here is Romeo and Juliet, commissioned in the mid-1930s, soon after Prokofiev returned to the USSR from self-imposed exile. Drawn from the main events of the ballet, the music of Suite No.2 ranges from the grand, formal music of the ball and sounds of a popular holiday to the tragedy and despair of the story’s end, illuminating Prokofiev’s commitment to communicating the depths and intricacies of Shakespeare’s play.

Cinderella followed Romeo and Juliet in the 1940s, with a score of rich and sophisticated music that rewards audiences of adults and children alike.The Suite No.1 features some of the ballet’s best-loved music, including ‘Cinderella’s Waltz’ and the brilliant Mazurka.The Stone Flower was the last of Prokofiev’s Soviet ballets, dating from 1948, and is based on a folk tale from the Urals. Although it will perhaps be the least familiar of the works on this disc, its score contains music of great beauty, with soaring tunes that are as memorable as anything in the two ballet scores that preceded it.

OTHER INFORMATION:
• Recording made in 1997.
• Includes booklet notes.

The voice of this lovely singer is now in its freshest full bloom. These years, the early middle period, of a singer's career ought to be cherished and relished like the fine days of our fickle summer. Yet we have an ungrateful way of passing them over with a forward look towards the things of autumn, the mellow fruitfulness of the mature interpreter, the ripeness of art that knows all shades of expression from the most playful to the most profound. Listening to this record, I find the critical habit urging me on to commit this kind of folly. In the very first song, Dowland's Come again, one is already preparing to go and look for Janet Baker's record (HMV HQS1091, 7/67); in Liszt's Die drei Zigeuner the ineffaceable memory of Schwarzkopf interposes. And it is true: there are limitations to the success of this delightful record. By comparison with Schwarzkopf there is something passive and underlit about the story-telling in that song; just as Baker's exceptionally strong projection and rhythmic vitality make von Stade's singing of Conte again seem placidly hymn-like, wanting sharpness of flavour (and sometimes of consonant also). There is a limit, too, to the success of The Blessed Virgin's Expostulation, the dynamics less imaginatively judged than in Britten's edition of the piece, and with a rather square regularity in the pacing of recitative. But how sad if because of this one were to miss the tender absorption of von Stade's performance here, or the lovely pianissimo of such phrases as "flattering hopes, farewell". What a loss, too, if the second side of the record were to go unheard because of the qualified success of the first. The Bilitis songs have the most winning feminity, "La chevelure" drawing from the singer a richer, more sensual tone, while a new darkness colours the satyres' obituary in the last song (and, if reassurance is needed, it should be added that Martin Katz accompanies more sensitively than he did in the recording by Marilyn Home some years ago—Decca SXL6577, 6/74). Then comes the set of four French folk songs arranged by Canteloube of the Auvergne: magically evocative, and bolder in the projection of personality. Finally, a touching, quite simple American song, addressed to Jenny Rebecca ("four days old"), serves as an encore piece, allowing the voice to settle and linger graciously in the mind. Von Stade is already an accomplished recitalist, though she will no doubt come to communicate more vividly and imaginatively on record. Meanwhile, here is one of the finest singers of the younger generation, her voice in that precious early summertime condition, fresh-toned and beautifully placed: a fine, admirably recorded, first song recital, and, one hopes, the first of many.

– Gramophone [11/1978]

The music of John Jeffreys is an absolute delight - overtly Romantic and non-modernist, very much in the tradition of Delius, Warlock and Vaughan Williams. Here a number of delicious orchestral works of stunning beauty are accompanied by fine dramatic vocal works and a Suite of Variations for piano. This CD is essential for anyone interested in the English pastoral tradition - or just in exquisite music.