Schubert, Mozart, Dvorak, Mahler, Strauss: Lieder / Lucia Popp

This is a recording to enchant both ear and heart. Lucia Popp's voice is bright but warm, pure, perfectly controlled; her intonation is impeccable, her phrasing poised, leisurely, elegant. Though a distinguished opera star, she brings to these songs a wonderful immediacy and simplicity, identifying with mood and character without overdramatizing or exaggerating, and inflects and colors her voice only for expression, never for effect. Her program, recorded live at two different recitals, is varied and imaginative and includes several unfamiliar songs, such as four "Canzonen" by Schubert, sung in Italian, and three songs by Dvorák, two of them from the cycle Cypresses, which he later arranged for string quartet, sung in Czech. Unfortunately, the producers apparently expect the listener to be equally multilingual and provide no texts or translations. However, Popp can put a smile, a tear, tenderness, love, ghostly dread, and ardent ecstasy into her voice, giving it an eloquence beyond words. Her pianists are admirable, though Gage's playing in the Mahler songs is too fussy, and in Strauss's "Morgen!" the violin obbligato is sadly missing. --Edith Eisler