She was the first singer who, heard 'in the flesh', gave me the kind of thrill I associated with the great singers on records: and that statement, I'm sure, is one which thousands of my contemporaries could make too. I remember it so well: a performance of Madam Butterfly, with the Carl Rosa Company on tour in, I should think, 1944, and at a certain point in the love duet (Butterfly entering on a top A just after the tenor) the excitement of that powerful, vibrant but very pure and steady sound made one hold on to the gallery seat for dear life. As we hear on these records, hers was an expressive art and certainly not one where a flat-out fortissimo was the norm. But the effect of that fortissimo, when she produced it in those days, seemed electric. That much, perhaps, may be permissibly added by the reviewer to the celebration, which this disc is designed as being, in honour of the greatly loved singer's eightieth birthday.
The records show much, but not all. They catch the brilliance at one end of the spectrum and softness at the other, but the full body of tone, which was certainly characteristic in the 1940s, somehow proves elusive. To my ear, this is compounded by the nature of these transfers, which 'improve' on their LP counterparts (for instance, the collection on HMV. RLS2900143, 5/84—nla) by brightening and clarifying still further. The trouble is, they do it without reference to the pleasure of listening, and end up with the all-too-familiar hardness that marks so many modern transfers of recordings from this period. There may be explanations, but it is disappointing to find the famous Gianni Schicchi aria so gritty and grainy in sound-quality (in memory, the recording always seemed remarkable for bloom and mellowness); and surely the wow on what was originally sides 3 and 4 of the Eugene Onegin is not inevitable. Some of the records come out better, for example the Don Carlos and the charming solo from Saint-Saens's Etienne Marcel, but I can't say I'm very happy with the sound for any long stretch in this anthology.
The singing is another matter. When the recordings first appeared, opinion was divided: she was a public favourite, and the critics were often dismissive or at any rate 'superior'. Looking up that Etienne Marcel aria, for instance, I find Philip Hope-Wallace partly liking it, but: ''Miss Hammond sometimes gives her attack a little extra croquet-knock, which is out of place here, and near the end one high note is ejected, like a fountain of sound, rather than 'taken'.'' The little 'croquet-knock' was a feature of her style, but the 'ejected' note here is an A flat of great beauty, and the description at best exaggerates. She did many fine and lovely things: the high C phrase of ''O patria mia'', the narrative in ''La mamma morta'', the majestic 'take' of ''to die'' in ''One fine day'' are three examples out of many. She respected the scores and was good at bringing out the inner turbulence and dramatic accentuation (a pity the Act 4 Trovatore aria was not included). She was also intensely personal, instantly recognizable: we owe her much.'