The songs of Guastavino were brought back home with him by Frederick Fuller in the 1940s but have been slow to gain general recognition in this country despite the ready appeal of melody and rhythm. Perhaps that has been part of the difficulty. They have tunes that can be remembered and hummed, verse structure with beginning and end, and sentiments that are often frankly nostalgic. They are not lacking in expressive delicacy, but when, as in the first of the Cuatro Canciones Coloniales, ''After the rain'', the subject invites some kind of Debussian impressionism in the piano part, the melodic line for the voice remains far closer to Italian song than to French. In the post-war years such things would have been labelled reactionary. By this time the label has washed off and we can enjoy the songs for what they are.
They are, for instance, good songs for singing. The writing for voice is that of a composer who sings in imagination as he writes, and so it lies comfortably, encouraging expressiveness without recourse to modernist extremes of vocal range or anti-vocal intervals and dynamics. Ulises Espaillat, a tenor from the Dominican Republic, takes due advantage: we hear a voice which can spend quite a high proportion of the time singing pleasantly at a mezzo forte in the upper-middle register where his tone is at its most attractive. At a forte as in the last song (''My throat'') of the Siete Canciones a rather dry quality comes into play. He is not entirely steady either (uneven vibrations, for instance, in both of the main title-words of La rosa y el sauce). A finer tone is brought to the songs, or to the eight included in his recital by Raul Gimenez (Nimbus (CD) NI5107). Yet Espaillat has the heart of them in his system. He catches the dreamy, midday atmosphere of Cita, the affectionate longing of Pueblito, mi pueblo and makes a lovely effect in that most haunting of songs, Se equivico la paloma. He is well accompanied by Pablo Zinger, and the recorded sound is clear and well-balanced.'