There comes a time in each great singer’s career when they are at the peak of their form: artistry, voice, confidence, everything is at the maximum. I would suggest that where Dame Janet Baker is concerned, that happy coincidence was in the years from 1967 to 1971. On the opera stage, her Dido in Les troyens, her Lucretia, Octavian, Dorabella and finally Diana in Calisto showed us her range of dramatic and comic skills. On the concert platform, working with Barbirolli, Szell, Giulini, Boult, Boulez and Barenboim, everything she did seemed well-nigh perfect.
This two-CD selection from her EMI recordings opens with her famous performance of Ravel’s Sheherazade under Barbirolli, recorded in December 1967. Of the song-cycles they recorded, this is perhaps the least regarded – Baker’s voice never had quite the sensuous quality one is hoping for in this piece; but the security, the joy in the sound of her voice as she sings of Asia, and the right pace all add up to a very fine recording. What is missing can be noted in the final line, about the beautiful boy walking past, with his feminine movements. One waits for a hint of irony, a slight smile of regret in the voice, but it isn’t there. Baker was not given to innuendo; her humour was more robust.
The succeeding Chausson Poeme de l’amour et de la mer and then the group of songs by Duparc, recorded nearly ten years later, show up a marked deterioration in her voice. Where once all had been steady, there is a beat that becomes intrusive, a sense of strain on some of the high notes, even here and there a slight worry over the pitch. Le manoir de Rosemonde is the best performance, the high drama bringing out the best in her.
The performance of Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -leben dates from 1975. I cannot agree with Eric Sams, who reviewed the original LP, who thought that this performance “outshone if not eclipsed” Baker’s earlier, justly famous Saga disc. The sound is certainly better on EMI, and for all Martin Isepp’s great rapport with Dame Janet, Barenboim is the more imaginative accompanist. Baker, though, in the mid 1960s, had the ability to convey both the hushed, girlish quality of the earlier songs and the mature, and then even tragic, tones for the last three. The extra verbal clarity of this later performance does not make up for the slight sense of strain.
There are no reservations whatsoever about the Brahms songs, with Previn. The extra darkness in Baker’s voice by 1977 makes these the highlight of the whole selection. In the Vier ernste Gesange, and then the two Op. 91 songs with piano and viola, Baker, Previn and Cecil Aronowitz achieve the perfect balance. As an encore we get four Brahms duets with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. The concerts that Baker, Fischer-Dieskau and Barenboim gave on the South Bank in 1969 and 1970 both deserve to be reissued complete – surely they would fit neatly on to one CD?
Everything Dame Janet recorded is worth hearing, and this pair of discs gives an unusual cross-section of her repertory. There are no texts or translations, nor even synopses of the songs. Since these mid-price reissues are presumably aimed at the widest possible audience, all I can ask is “Why not?”. As with every great Lieder singer, 50 per cent of Baker’s art resides in her enunciation of the text, to be denied the chance to follow the words is infuriating.'