Memoir Classics have produced several attractive anthologies of this kind, and I rather think that the present addition is the best to date. It starts splendidly with Josef Rogatchewsky singing Herman's plea to Lisa in persuasive French, then with Heinrich Schlusnus expressing Yeletsky's nobler devotion in mellifluous German (the low notes not really in his voice at all but so skilfully managed that we hardly notice). We stay with The Queen of Spades for a few tracks more and move on to Iolanta, with Lydia Lipkowska charmingly fresh of voice and personal in feeling, followed by Vladimir Kastorsky, surely the finest basso cantante of all the early Russians. The Eugene Onegin group has five items, all winners, including Patzak's Lensky aria, masterly in its control of tempo and resourcefulness of coloration. The songs begin with Nina Koshetz, unforgettably poignant in her None but the lonely heart, and the programme ends with the Florentine Pimpinella, brimful of the gaiety, passion and richly varied tones of Enrico Caruso.
The (to me) previously unknown singer here is Max Maksakov, about whom the biographical notes are a trifle reticent, except for the news that he was familiarly called ''Monsieur Max'': a bright baritone voice and an ardent manner, firm up top, wobbly elsewhere. Xenia Belmas's songs, accompanied by her husband, who seems never to remove his foot from the sustaining pedal (or perhaps the hall's acoustic is to blame), were also unfamiliar and very fine too. The Queen of Spades Pastorale seems wrongly pitched (B flat instead of A). The transfers present a slight puzzle in that some sound deprived of 'top' (Lehmann's Tatyana for instance) while others are unusually bright (Smirnov's ''Vashem domye'' from Onegin). Minor irritants are the abrupt cut-off at the end of one item and the too rapid follow-on of the next. Tony Watts provides judicious notes on the singers, and texts and contexts are informatively dealt with by Andrei Daltonsky of whom I have heard little since his days with Garmoniya Mira.'