As a complement to their reissue of the Nash/Beecham Faust (5/94), Dutton Laboratories released this CD devoted to the tenor at the end of last year, just in time to mark his centenary (he is now known to have been born in 1894, not 1896 as many reference books have it). Nash and Beecham co-operated again in this recording of Act 4 of La boheme, made in 1935 with Lisa Perli (alias Dora Labbette) as Mimi, at the time of performances at Covent Garden that year. Nash, then at the height of his powers, sings a spontaneous, quite Italianate Rodolfo and Perli makes a simple, heartfelt Mimi. The rest of the cast falls far short of the principals, but Beecham is at his most alert, and sensitive too. The transfers (including the solo items) are superior to any previous issues, bringing the voices into one's room without let or hindrance.
There follow Nash's only other discs made in the original Italian, all of Mozart. ''Un'aura amorosa'' from the complete 1935 Cosi fan tutte, a fluent and sweet-toned version, is marred only by a couple of uncomfortable moments on the repeated word, ''porgera''. The version of the duet (''Fra gli amplessi''), pre-dating Glyndebourne, is something of a rarity in its original form, though it differs little from that on the Glyndebourne set (Pearl, 3/91). In his notes, Lyndon Jenkins mentions that the postlude had to be left out for reasons of space, but seems unaware that there is also an internal cut in the singers' music. Nash's Mozart is most elegantly represented by the well-nigh faultless versions of Ottavio's arias, made at the time of his sensational Covent Garden debut in the part in the 1929 Don Giovanni. The phrasing is refined, the breath long, the big run in ''Il mio tesoro'' encompassed in a single span.
The Duke of Mantua's three arias tell us just why this was one of Nash's favourite roles early in his career. He makes the most of the execrable translation by singing it with total conviction, and his lyric tenor rings out with just the right elan matched by subtle colourings (listen to the close of the Act 2 solo or the diminuendo in ''Plume in the summer wind''). The disc of the Serenade from La jolie fille de Perth is justly renowned because it displays to perfection the elegiac, minstrel-like quality of Nash's tone and his impassioned delivery—and yet he is said to have had a cold on the day it was made! Finally, a frequent stage partnership is marked by the high-spirited account of the Fledermaus duet with Dennis Noble, who deserves a CD to himself. I regret that once more possibly Nash's best record, the solos from Handel's Jephtha, has again been excluded from a Nash reissue. With only 69 minutes of music there was more than room for them.'