The archives of radiostations are gradually opening up, and allowing us to hear many performers in a new way. Suzanne Danco (1911-2000) was a fairly prolific recording artist, and several of the mélodies in this live recital are also available in studio-made versions. The recording is beautifully clear, Danco’s attractive, slightly tremulous soprano sounding healthy and alert.

The opening Bizet and Gounod items set the mood: all are songs of love in the spring and the summer. It must have been a joyous night at the Vichy Festival in 1955. ‘Villanelle’ from Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été is taken very fast – without the orchestra (conducted by Thor Johnson in Danco’s complete recording released on Pearl), she can let go at the words, ‘Et dis moi de ta voix si douce, toujours!’

More unusual fare comes in the middle group, songs by Chausson, Pierné, de Castillon and Bordes. In particular, the tongue-twisting rhymes of Paul Fort’s poem Le petit rentier, set by Pierné, brings a joyous sense of mystery and humour into Danco’s voice. The completecontrast of Armand Sylvestre’s ‘Sonnet mélancolique’ in de Castillon’s song shows off the lower part of Danco’s range. She was aCherubino as well as a Donna Anna, and, as Renaud Machart points out in the booklet,her repertory embraced Monteverdi, Bach, Britten and Schoenberg. O triste, triste étaitmon âme, a Verlaine setting by Charles Bordes, precedes the more familiar songs by Duparc, Fauré and Debussy.

Danco, like Ninon Vallin, was never afraid to give plenty of voice to her performances of French songs. There is nothing precious or small-scale about her approach. She is rather more operatic in Duparc’s Chanson triste than many other singers, but this probably has something to do with the nature of the occasion. The final three songs, from a broadcast in 1949, are in much more restricted sound, but offer the only surviving examples of Danco singing Poulenc. She and Poulenc planned a disc together, but it never came about.

Poulenc is the pianist in the first group of Debussy songs in the Bernard Kruysen recital. In an interview in the booklet, Kruysen recalls that Poulenc was inclined to play ‘too loudly’ sometimes, but his contribution in all five songs is full of lively, colourful rhythm. Kruysen’s voice is not as light as that of his teacher, Pierre Bernac, nor does it have the dark resonance of Gérard Souzay, with whom he was inevitably always compared at the time. In 1962, the last year of Poulenc’s life, when he gave this, and a few other concerts withKruysen, whom he referred to as ‘l’enfant Bernard’, he was looking for another baritone with whom he could form a new duo. It was not to be, but Kruysen’s career continued well into the 1990s, and he made several recordings,usually with Noël Lee. In these earlierperformances, though, it is Jean-Charles Richard who accompanies.

There is a contrast between Kruysen’s voiceas it sounds in the concert-hall recordings,and those made in the studio of La Maisonde la Radio. For a Dutchman, Kruysen’s French seems well-nigh perfect – it may be that he accentuates the ‘e’ endings of certain words more than a native French singer would.Even in such well-known songs as ‘Clair de lune’ or ‘La grotte’ (three versions of this), hiscommand of the sudden pianissimi and evenness of breath-control are a constantpleasure. The most difficult song of all,‘Colloque sentimental’, from Set 2 of Fêtes galantes, is remarkable for the way in whichhe sings it throughout, while maintaining the sense of the hesitant conversation between the two ghosts.

Kruysen’s voice, as he admits, was not ideally suited to all these songs – when he sang Pelléas it ‘almost broke my voice’. Although he never achieved substantial international fame, Kruysen’s artistry is worthy of comparison with any of his more celebrated contemporaries. The Danco disc has all the texts, but the Kruysen-Debussy has none.