Dagmar Pecková is a Czech mezzo-soprano with a good technique, brains, and taste. The program she presents here is terrific: the Wesendonk Lieder and Zemlinsky songs are pretty common in recitals, but I know of no other recital disc where the “Song of the Wood Dove” from Schoenberg’s massive Gurrelieder appears, and the Brahms Alto Rhapsody is similarly rarely recorded outside of complete Brahms sets. Pecková, whose voice is a hair light for all the music here (she sings Rosina and Cherubino, and the lighter soprano role of Varvara in Katya Kabanova), does much of the program proud. She (aided by Jiri Belohlavek’s leadership of the Prague Philharmonia) finds just the right dreamy, ethereal, angst-laden quality for the Wagner and the gloom for the Zemlinsky, and that almost compensates for the true weight that’s needed for these songs. And the Brahms is nicely sung as well. But in the Schoenberg she sounds uncomfortable and displays a certain Slavic, unpleasant edge that’s all too apparent here. So, we get a mixed performance of a fascinating program–worthy, with imperfections.
