The Vocal Retrospective
May 2021

Ralph Moore

Mike Parr

A series of monthly musings by two members of the MusicWeb International review team who share a deep fascination with opera and vocal music in general. Each month we shall take a glance back at something of interest that appeared on commercial CD from the accumulated history of classical vocal recordings.

Caballé in Recital

We look at two recordings that document the recital career of Montserrat Caballé.
 

Mike: This month I suggested looking the recital work of one of my favourite singers, Montserrat Caballé. Now that she is no longer with us attention seems to be focused on her operatic triumphs to the detriment of her excellent recital work. It occurred to me that it was time to take a second glance at that aspect of her career. My choice was her earliest recordings, a series of Spanish song recitals that were recorded from 1963 to 1965 by a long dead Spanish company called Vergara Records, with which she seems to have had her first solo recording contract. Eventually BMG acquired these master tapes and released a double CD compilation of them for RCA France entitled “Récital espagnol”.

Ralph: When you suggested this, Mike, I was slightly taken aback as it is completely new territory for me. As much as I love Caballé, I have never been much taken by Spanish/Catalan songs, although I do enjoy similar things like the “Chants d’Auvergne “(see my survey) and these songs seem to me to be close cousins to their Languedoc counterparts in terms of language, subject matter and music. Obviously, one difference is the prominence of the guitar in these songs.

Mike: I have the impression that the orchestral arrangements of both the Toldra and Granados songs are not by the composers. They seem to be uncredited orchestrators that replicated the chamber orchestra style of Joseph Canteloube. Having heard the Granados Tonadillas cycle many times accompanied by piano I was struck by how beautifully these guitar parts worked with these songs. In fact I am prepared to state that some enterprising musician should transcribe all of these songs for guitar accompaniment rather than the usual piano version of the composer. However, I should point out that the orchestral playing in all of these recitals leaves much to be desired in terms of accomplishment.

Ralph: Apparently, Caballé championed this music throughout her career. These recordings were made in the mid-60’s when her voice as at its freshest and virtually flawless, so there is little of the edge which crept into high notes as time went by and she already “floats a note” like a dream; just occasionally, though, a coup de glotte obtrudes.

Mike: The Toldra recital is the earliest from 1963. There is a youthful freedom to her voice here that I find utterly captivating. I am also considerably impressed by the fullness and warmth of her lower register at this early stage in her career.

Ralph: Beginning with “La Rosa als Llavis”, a cycle of Toldra songs set to six poems by Joan Salvat-Papasseit, some, like “i el seu esguard” are just tiny little vignettes of brief duration - 90 seconds or so - yet can still aspire to operatic passion – although am I allowed to find I’ll be in your room, my friend a tad creepy in the context of our modern awareness of stalking?! It’s otherwise very delicate, poetic repertoire, as the music is set to poems of quality – something which cannot always be taken for granted no matter how good the singer or the music.

Mike: I find her interpretations of “Maig “ (May)and “Cancio de Bressol “ (lullaby) to be utterly hypnotic. These are balanced by other selections such as the exuberant freedom which she flings out in the “Cancio de Grumet “(Song of the Cabin Boy)

Ralph: The CD release was briefly reviewed by Christopher Howell back in 2003. He rightly ponders why the songs are not as popular as the “Chants d’Auvergne” and partially ascribes that to the absence of texts and translations from the Spanish and, especially, the Catalan for this “little-known music”; the CD provides none but considerably more have since become available online on a number of websites, such as here for the Toldra songs, which even includes the score: Songs - Eduard Toldrà i Soler (eduardtoldrasoler.info)

Mike: The Mompou recital, in which she is accompanied on the piano by the composer is by far the most intimate of the four albums. I was immediately struck by the rather strange recording setup where Mompou’s piano is coming only from the right speaker and Caballé emerges from the left. I don’t recall ever encountering something like that before.

Ralph: Some songs seem naïve and even trivial – or perhaps just childlike and simple – but others touch deeper metaphysical depths, both in terms of the music and the text. One such song is “Maig” (May). I find it fascinating how comprehensible Catalan is to anyone who is like me, an amateur student of languages with fairly fluent French, some Italian, schoolboy Latin and a nodding acquaintance with Spanish and Languedoc or Occitan, as Catalan looks just like an amalgam of all those - as one might expect of one of many Romance languages deriving from a common Latin origin, I suppose. The songs are charming, but for me there is a touch of “when you’ve heard one, you’ve heard ‘em all” and for all the beauty of Caballé’s voice, attempting to digest them all at one sitting is ill-advised.

Mike: I must agree with you there Ralph. It’s as if there is too much languid beauty hanging in the air on these discs. It would be far better to intersperse the numbers perhaps with the Zarzuela arias which are considerably livelier.

Ralph: In the Granados recital I was particularly struck by the beauty of the lovely lament “Llorad Corazon” (Cry from the Heart) but I find the chromatic wanderings of the three “La maja dolorosa” (The Grieving Girl) songs most eerie and unsettling.

Mike: In Granados’ “Tonadillas” song cycle it’s noteable that Caballé performs them in a completely different order to that of the more familiar recordings by Victoria de los Angeles. There is a goodly amount of drama in the Maja Dolorosa songs which require a certain kind of vocal power which Caballé definitely delivers. This reminds me that it is in this particular recital that I think the engineers have placed Caballé just a little too close to the microphone compared with the others recitals on the CD. There are times that she seems overwhelming but then the lovely guitar solos will re-emerge from the orchestra and set things in balance again.

Ralph: The Zarzuela excerpts are as beautifully sung as everything else here, except she will occasionally indulge in those stylistically rather ugly glottal breaks and the occasional sour top note, and try as I might, I don’t find the music all that interesting – some is charming but some is - dare I say? – verging on a bit trivial, with more than a touch of Hispanic G&S about it to my ears! I don’t actually think the music suits her voice as well as the soulful ballads and folk songs, but that’s just me.

Mike: Ralph, this is where you and I part company. I find her use of glottal emphasis to be one of the most thrilling aspects of her singing. She used it with abandon in her earlier years and then some time in the early 1970’s she started to use it more sparingly.

Ralph: Cuando esta tan hondo from El Barquillero (The Wafflemaker) is almost like a caricature of the tropes we recognise in Spanish laments – particularly the wailing melismas and strong rallentandos  - but then it morphs into something akin to a Viennese romp like something out of Die Fledermaus – quite odd.

Mike: I have come to love these Spanish operetta songs over the years. When I travelled through Spain I should have taken the time to go and see one of them but I was too overwhelmed by the architecture and history to even think of it.

In this album, which was the last to be recorded in 1965, I note that her voice and interpretive skills have developed into something more imposing. She almost has too much voice for these songs which would normally have been sung by performers with lesser vocal resources. She is most impressive in the song from Los Bohemios (The Bohemians). She sparkles effervescently in her version of De Espana Vengo from El Nino Judio (The Jewish Boy), which is one of the most often recorded zarzuela “hits”. However, despite her excellence I find that I miss the delightfully earthy quality that Teresa Berganza brought to this same aria on her Zarzuela recital disc.

Ralph: Looking further ahead in her career I have suggested we also listen to her recital album of Italian songs that was released on the French label in Forlane in 1984.

Mike: This particular recording had a rather confusing journey over the years that took me a while to sort out. It was first recorded in 1978 for Decca and released as an LP entitled “ Arie Antiche”. In the CD era it was first released in this issue by Forlane. In 2004 BMG acquired the rights to this and another recital of Italian Songs that had also been released on Forlane. They combined them into a 2 CD set on RCA called “Italian Opera Arias and Lieder” . Even later in 2012 RCA Japan released the same 2 disc set with a different title of “Caro Mio Ben”.

Ralph: I chose it especially as it included one of the supreme displays of her vocal accomplishment`, Sposa, son disprezzata from Vivaldi’s pasticcio Bajazet - now known to have been written by Geminiano Giacomelli. It was a favourite concert item for Caballé and contains the most extraordinary example of sustained breath control in an opportunity which the Iberian songs cannot offer. In this most plangent and plaintive of operatic arias, as Caballé repeatedly holds and swells ten-second-long, five-bar phrases, ending on the most faint and delicate of trills, the second and third times ornamenting them exquisitely.

Mike: I had often seen the Decca LP in record shops during my younger days and had always passed by it. I am grateful to you for suggesting this as I had no idea of the vocal riches that are contained on this disc. Caballé is voice painting here with an even more exquisite palette than on the Spanish recitals. Miquel Zanetti strikes me as an ideal accompanist for a recital such as this.

Ralph: This is music which moves me profoundly, as opposed to that on the other album, which charms and entertains me. There is of course a host of other items on the Italian disc which also offers more variety in that its music spans the work of composers from both the baroque and the early Romantic eras over 150 years, whereas the Spanish recital is necessarily restricted to works from the first half of the 20^th C, so hasn’t the same stylistic range.


Mike: The delicacy and lightness that she brings to the brief aria from Vivaldi’s Ottone in Villa is enough to stop one’s heart from beating. I had a similar reaction to the gorgeous Quella Fiamma Che M’Accende by a composer previously unknown to me, Benedetto Marcello.

Ralph: This Italian recital contains several quite well-known canzoni, particularly those by Pergolesi : Se tu m’ami, Giordani: Caro mio ben , and four by Bellini, so there is a mixture of the more familiar and lesser-known. Only the greatest artists like Pavarotti and Schipa sing these songs with the same elegance as Caballé.

Mike: In Paiseillo’s Nel Cor Piu Non Mi Sento she demonstrates a jewel box of perfect vocal techniques which is even more remarkable when you consider that at the time this was recorded she was starting to venture away from bel canto into heavier operatic roles such as Turandot. A glimpse of this can be seen in Donizetti’s La Zingara where the power of her voce threatens to overwhelm the acoustic of the recording studio.

Ralph: As you can tell Mike, I admit to deriving considerably more satisfaction from Caballé’s Italian repertoire, although I know she was keen to bring the Spanish songs to broader notice and I can understand why.

Mike: Ralph, I think that we have reasonably demonstrated that there is so much more to appreciate about the Montserrat Caballé’s art than the grandiose opera diva side of her.

Récital espagnol (rec 1963-1965)
2003 (studio, stereo)
RCA/BMG France 82876511882
Orquestra Sinfónica de Barcelona – Rafael Ferrer
Frederico Mompou- Piano
Orquestra de Camara – Rafael Ferrer
Orquesta Sinfonica- Eugenio M. Marco

This recording is available for download from the Presto Classical Store or via the Quobuz Store. Streaming is also available from various sites such as Naxos Music Library or Spotify

L’Art de Montserrat Caballé Vol 1 (rec 1978)
1984 (studio; stereo)
Forlane UCD 10902
Miguel Zanetti-Piano

This recording is unavailable at present for download or streaming. Its various incarnations on CD are still obtainable on the resale market.