By a powerful effort of the imagination, it might just about be possible to envisage a day when a record of Spanish songs would not begin with the Magnificent Seven. (I should live so long!) At least it makes a change to have Falla's indestructible folk-songs performed here by a male voice: if it seems faintly incongruous for a tenor to be singing a maternal lullaby, by the same token it's just as odd for a mezzo-soprano to declare that she is a muleteer or for her to bid goodnight to her lover at his widow . . . But in other ways also this is a somewhat unusual reading, with numerous rubatos in piano sections and many unscheduled ritardandos in vocal passages. In the ''Polo'' Carreras is passionate without adopting the pungent harshness associated with the flamenco style; he takes the ''Asturiana'' so slowly that it becomes sentimental, and he doesn't seem very comfortable with the tessitura of the ''Cancion''.
There is plenty of robust singing in the Turina cycle, in which the ''Cantares'' is thrown off with bravura (but ''Los dos miedos'' only makes sense as a woman's song): in contrast, the Obradors love song is meltingly gentle and tender, the perfumed Mompou pieces are sensitive and ardent, and the Guastavino La rosa y el sauce is treated with maximum lyrical expressiveness. It is noticeable that almost all of Carreras's items contain an important role for the piano (the Turina even has an introductory movement for piano alone); and Martin Katz is an excellent collaborator, deliciously crisp and light in the Falla ''Jota'' and scintillating in Turina's ''Las locas por amor'', though he indulges in too many rubatos throughout for my taste, and in fortissimos he goes through the tone of the far from ideal instrument he has to play on. The close-miking of the singer, along with his impeccable articulation, ensures that every word is crystal clear. I have no doubt that this record will give much pleasure to Carreras's many admirers.'