The transfers are fine, the records themselves delightful as ever. Perhaps that (about the records) does not need saying: how could they be otherwise? It is simply that memory can so often be a failed photographer turned caricaturist. The ''Non so piu'' which opens the recital, heard internally before the record began to play, was (I found) an absurd distortion of a lovely performance. Memory had of course taken its cue from the scoop in the second line, ''ora sono di ghiacdo'', and also perhaps from the intimate manner of some of Schumann's Lieder singing, where the words are given a speech-characteristic, effectively shortening the length of the sung note. But there is none of that here; Cherubino's first song is scrupulously sung, the ''sono di ghiaccio'' phrase being the single instance of its kind amid a wealth of felicitous touches. The two solos of Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro are beautifully contrasted, the one bright-toned and playful, the other an invocation wooing the evening air with its warmth and elegance. Zerlina is both lively and tender, and the shepherdess of n re pastore captivates with youthful freshness, unstudied grace, and the adornment of the neatest of trills. Faults of technique show up in the Handel aria and the Mozart ''Alleluia'', yet they are light blemishes, small failures among so much that is beautifully accomplished.
These are recordings often found in very surfacy originals, and here they are blessedly free from all that. The voice is forward and well-defined, without hardness or any too-indulgent top-cut. To the given information naming Marjorie Hayward as the violinist in ''L'amero'' might be added John Amadio as the flautist in the St Matthew Passion aria and Leon Goossens as responsible for the oboe obbligato in ''Es ist vollbracht''.'