Perhaps this is what you have been looking for too. For a long time I remained fond of these songs and of Canteloube's arrangements, and then it may have been a straightforward case of the appetite surfeiting, sickening and dying, for that is what it did; perhaps the lushness, the sense of overdressed orchestration, speeded the process up. The versions heard here are of an arrangement of Canteloube by a composer of whom we are told nothing except that he was born in Lyons in 1925. Jean-Guy Bailly has reduced Canteloube's forces to suit the needs of a chamber orchestra (the Auvergne Orchestra, founded in 1982, has 20 string players) with woodwind and harp. He did this in 1986, the year in which Jean-Jacques Kantorow became the orchestra's conductor, and he followed the first set of seven songs with a further ten the next year. I find the arrangements delightful, the effect coming just that needful degree closer to the folk-song origins, and easing the demands upon the singer (greater than is often realized) for sheer volume.
The singer, Marvis Martin, is new to me and so she appears to be to The Classical Catalogue. If this is indeed her debut as a recording artist it should be followed by an immediate long-term engagement. She has a splendidly firm voice, less remarkable, one imagines, for power than for quality, which is both rich and pure. She has not, at the present stage in her career, that kind of haunting individuality which some of her predecessors in these songs have had, but her expression is apt, her intonation excellent, and her mastery of the texts confident and convincing. The record stands on its own because of Bailly's arrangements so no comparisons are offered; if they were, it would certainly stand its ground.'