What is it about these wonderful songs that tend to bring out the best in some of the world's finest sopranos?There are so many fine recordings of these songs.
The great Frederica Von Stade recorded a quite mesmerizing selection of the Auvergne songs at about the same time as Dame Kiri. There is the lovely recording by the legendary Victoria De Los Angeles, a selection of the songs many of us grew up on.
There is the seminal first complete recording (and then some, as I recall) by the late Natania Davrath, a much under-appreciated artist who, in many ways, is responsible for the popularity these songs enjoy today. Even Anna Moffo recorded a lovely handful of the songs in the 60s conducted by no less than Leopold Stokowski!
And then there is Dame Kiri. We know her. We love her. We have come to expect the best from her. We have come to always expect more from her, in fact, than from just about anyone else.
So unfair. We expect her to jump the musical hurdles of our emotional connections to music and art in a way we expect from few others.
And yet she so seldom disappoints. Is this the absolute best recording of the Chants d'Auvergne ever? Such a personal choice. Who is to say?
I can tell you this, once I heard this truly remarkable set, which has literally sent chills up my back since the the first time I heard it all those years ago, I knew my search for the recording of these songs I would keep near me forever was over.
Here is an interpretation combining, in equal measure, patrician elegance with almost peasant-like eloquence. She renders song after song, some deceptively complicated, with a divine simplicity that simply defies the imagination.
I don't know how Dame Kiri achieved this miraculous feat. It must have come from the heart, because it certainly goes to mine.
And finally, it would be unthinkable not to give credit to the exquisite playing of the English Chamber Orchestra and the always sensitive collaboration of conductor Jeffrey Tate.
