Solo song singing is a delicate art, perhaps the most delicate, if only because a very individual voice–and all of its inherent and learned qualities–must be matched to music that consists not only of notes, but of languages and words and their attendant pronunciations and meanings. Needless to say, these matches don’t always go well. Sometimes it’s the vibrato; sometimes the fullness, darkness, richness of the voice–or lack thereof; sometimes it’s just a misguided sense of interpretive inflection, an overdone or underdone accent that turns into a screech or cutesy affectation. Anne Sofie von Otter may be one of the world’s more active and respected song specialists, but this recording proves that even she can have an off day, or an uneven performance.
The best thing about her work here is the fascinating program, which offers many fine songs rarely included on disc or in recitals. The three Lars-Erik Larsson songs–from a set of 12–are marvelous little depictions of their subjects: “Watercolor”, “The Box Painter”, and “The Girl with the Divining-Herb”. Gunnar Hahn’s “A Song from Lapland” is a delightful little ditty that perfectly suits Otter’s vocal temperament, and the four Percy Grainger songs strike a happy, gentle mood. Otter nicely captures the flavor of Reynaldo Hahn’s Venetian folksong settings and does some of her loveliest singing in “The Fair Maid in the Gondola”. But when she tries to “get into” a character, as in “What a shame!”, the effect is artificial and silly. She seems to think that color and characterization come merely from exaggerating a vocal effect and, like overacting, it just becomes annoying. She’s back in form in the seven Kodály songs but unfortunately loses her way again during Britten’s French folksongs, which require a more subtle approach than Otter is inclined to give them. In this altogether bumpy recital, the singer is faithfully and expertly aided and abetted by her accompanist Bengt Forsberg–all of which is presented in decent sound that gives just the right weight and focus to voice and piano.
