August Enna’s reputation has never travelled very far beyond his native Denmark‚ where he is held in considerable affection for operas that include three on stories by Hans Andersen. The Little Match Girl is in Andersen’s most cruel/sentimental vein‚ relating the plight of a pauper girl on Christmas Eve who‚ one by one‚ uses up matches which noone will buy in vain attempts to find some warmth; with each flame she also conjures up visions of others’ happiness‚ from which she is barred until she freezes to death and is taken up into the bosom of the Virgin Mary. Enna had in youth been much impressed by Wagner‚ and not surprisingly the influence reaches him here‚ in 1897‚ by way of Humperdinck. There is a comparable use of popular melody‚ if not of motive‚ and also considerable charm and a fluent‚ sympathetic use of the orchestra. Henriette Bonde­Hansen has to sustain the whole piece almost singlehanded‚ and though her voice does not have a very wide range‚ it is to her credit that by keeping the touch light she does not let the pathos become merely maudlin. She is not helped by an undistinguished recording. The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep is a very different matter‚ and uses the story of the porcelain figures who elope up a chimney but decide to return when life on their shelf becomes safer. It is set as a ballet with a narrator‚ to music in which the stimulus to some attractive ideas is here Tchaikovsky instead of Wagner. Frits Helmuth reads Andersen’s tale in Danish‚ for which the text and translations into German and English are provided.