Since first listening to this disc I met a veteran opera-goer who heard Selma Kurz at Covent Garden in 1924: ‘warm’ was his word. And looking back at the notes I had made, what was the first pencilled remark? ‘Most lovely warmth.’ This was of the recitative ‘Surta e la notte’ and its aria ‘Ernani involami’. ‘Pure quality’, my note continued, and then: ‘wouldn’t satisfy Italians’.
Kurz is now remembered for her trill, and there are plenty of examples of it in this collection. But there was more to her than that. The warmth is partly of timbre, partly of character. Second in the programme is ‘Caro nome’, and one can hardly think of a more affectionate version; the dreamy, delicate manner of Maria Ivogun is here, but with it a roundness of tone, token of a generous heart. And it is all very much in the German-Austrian tradition of the gentle maiden with ethereal head-tones rather than the Italian ideal of brilliance and challenge.
In earlier years the voice would swell with quite remarkable power; these recordings come from a time when she was approaching her 50th birthday. She had not been in the best of health or the most reliable vocal condition since an illness in 1921, yet much here is touchingly beautiful and all is the work of a genuinely distinguished singer. The songs include a verse of Jocelyn’s lullaby, sung with a purity matching that of Alma Gluck, and an arrangement of Kreisler’s Caprice viennois finds the voice as smooth and long-phrased as the violin itself. The transfers are finely done, and the only regret is that room was not found for other lovely things from that period, such as Handel’s Sweet Bird, the Chopin Nocturne and Reger’s Maria Wiegenlied. A further issue, perhaps, with the electrical recordings, which are much better than she thought them.'