This five-disc compilation of selected Janet Baker recordings made between 1961 and 1979 for Decca and Philips captures her in her prime. That makes it a compulsory purchase for Baker fans and, along with various EMI reissues, a good starting place for everyone else. Baker had a unique vocal timbre, instantly recognizable. She can sometimes veer to the flat side of notes, and sometimes sound squeezed and scoop upward, but she’s always compelling, her voice beautiful, if not in the conventional sense. She put it to extraordinary use, with superb diction and a controlled intensity that cut to the heart of everything she sang. Few singers of her day matched her involvement and her ability to draw listeners deep into the music. Philips’ transfers are uniformly fine, the sound variable depending on date and location but never less than good and often first-rate.
Disc 1 features 18 Arie Amorose by various composers, touchingly sung. The arrangements and the playing of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields orchestra sound anachronistic today, but they’re more acceptable than the turgidly sentimental versions sung by some others of her generation. The same can be said for the excerpts from the famous Cavalli La Calisto recording with Raymond Leppard, whose treasurable Handel recordings with Baker are featured on Disc 2. These find Baker in her element, singing with fire and glorious vocalism. She’s even more glorious in the Bach cantata aria with Marriner and in one of the best renditions ever made of “Dido’s Lament” from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, a 1961 recording where she’s brighter of voice but with a mature subtlety beyond her years. Disc Three is devoted to Viennese classics–Haydn’s Arianna a Naxos and Berenice, a pair of Mozart arias, Beethoven’s “Ah! Perfido”, Schubert’s “Ständchen” D. 920 with chorus, and an aria from his rarely heard Lazarus.
Outstanding Rameau and Gluck appear on Disc 4, but honors go to Baker’s gripping Berlioz scenes with Colin Davis. She’s an unforgettable Cléopâtre, brimming with passion, and an equally intense Herminie, the whole rounded off with an excerpt from Béatrice et Bénédict. The Anglo-French final disc has her Ravel (3 Mallarmé Poems and the Chansons Madécasses) along with Chausson and Delage songs, awkwardly placed alongside scenes from Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, Owen Wingrave, and Phaedra, all sung with Baker’s customary passion and exemplary diction. Unless you already have most of this set in earlier incarnations, then you need this. The budget price will ease the pain of duplications and the lack of texts and translations, the latter an unforgivable obstacle to full enjoyment. [4/12/2004]
