You have to be of a certain age to remember when the contralto voice was fairly common. Today, contralto parts are taken by mezzos or, in older music, by countertenors. The higher tessitura of the one and the insufficient depth and brighter timbre of the other fail to satisfy those whose ears ring with the memory of true contraltos like the great Maureen Forrester. She’s heard here in a Bach/Scarlatti program that includes a previously unreleased “Agnus Dei” from the Bach B minor Mass. It’s beautifully sung, as is everything on this disc. Some listeners may find it hard to accept a voice of this size, vibrato and all, in Baroque repertoire. Too bad for them, for they’ll miss the sheer thrill of Forrester’s big sound, tinged with melancholy and always alive to the meaning of the text, as in her touching reading of such lines as “To thee we sigh, moaning and weeping in this vale of tears,” from Scarlatti’s Salve Regina. In Bach’s Cantata BWV 170 she makes dramatic gems of the recitatives and gives thrilling renditions of the arias, her voice ranging from baritonal depths to ringing high notes. Noted for her Handel, Forrester even demonstrates a capable if necessarily slow-moving coloratura. She’s ably supported by conductor Anton Heiller in the Bach BWV 170 and in the Scarlatti, and by Antonio Janigro in Bach’s Cantata BWV 53 (“Schlage Doch”) and the “Agnus Dei”.
No allowances need be made for the sound, which is thrillingly immediate. In the mid-1960s when these recordings were made, Vanguard’s excellent engineering was masked by the deficiencies of its noisy vinyl pressings. With 24-bit remastering to digital the original sound is revealed in all its pristine glory, reproducing Forrester’s voice with three-dimensional reality and bringing out instrumental details buried on the original LP pressings. Good thing you can’t wear out CDs or my copy would be dust by now. [7/5/2000]
