COMPOSERS: Debussy,Liszt etc,Purcell,Quilter
LABELS: Naxos
WORKS: Songs & arias by French & English composers,
PERFORMER: Maggie Teyte,Gerald Moore, Alfred Cortot (piano); various orchestras & conductors
CATALOGUE NO: 8.110757-58 ADD mono
The Wigmore Hall recently celebrated Cuénod’s 101st birthday. And Britain also gave honour, if slowly, to our own prophetess of French song, soprano MAGGIE TEYTE (born Tate, in Wolverhampton).
A great Mélisande, chosen and coached by Debussy, Teyte hadn’t Souzay’s or Danco’s vocal beauty or ease, but the same imagination, taste and discipline and burning intensity. Her famous 1936 Debussy sessions with Alfred Cortot, all but definitive, have been available before, but never at Naxos’s low price, making everything else on these well-filled discs basically a gift.
With a poetic Gerald Moore joining Teyte in Purcell, Quilter, Liszt, Fauré and more, and Leslie Heward conducting her in searing Berlioz, it’s a present you can’t refuse, unless you’re allergic to 78 surface noise (Ward Marston rightly hasn’t tried to over-restore the aged originals) or desperately need the texts (many are on the web, anyway).
