This, the latest instalment in Preiser’s Pinza edition (Vol. 1 was reviewed in 3/92) is made up of some of his American Columbia recordings. Pinza and Bruno Walter (who conducts the first six tracks devoted to Mozart on this reissue) were a formidable partnership right from the day Walter chose the Italian bass for his Giovanni at Salzburg in 1934. When Walter arrived at the Metropolitan in 1941 they renewed their musical love-affair. Off-the-air recordings of their Figaro collaboration (at the Met) show their instinctive rapport, confirmed here. Walter’s alert, forward-moving accompaniments support Pinza’s superb definition of Figaro’s character in both his Act 1 and Act 4 arias. In “Se vuol ballare”, Pinza varies his expression through subtle use of dynamic gradation and pin-point diction, bringing Figaro to life in a way so many modern interpreters fail to do in their one-dimensional, literally monotonous singing – and it’s just the same with his wonderfully smiling, sly “Madamina” in Don Giovanni. Then singing in his native tongue, Pinza makes wholly vivid Osmin’s relish in his expected vengeance. The tone and manner change entirely for as noble an account of Sarastro’s second aria as you could hope to hear, given as though it had been written in Italian.
In the same spring of 1946, Pinza re-recorded other items of his repertory under Fausto Cleva. These are disappointing only in comparison with the bass’s earlier HMV and/or Victor performances from the 1920s and 1930s. As Oroveso, Fiesco and Philippe II the tone, though still appreciable, isn’t as solid, nor is the legato as firm as it had once been, but “La calunnia (Il barbiere) is a wickedly amusing performance, “Vecchia zimarra” (La boheme) a musing, moving interpretation, both among the best on disc.
Pinza once played Pimen to Chaliapin’s Boris at La Scala in 1927, so his 1944 version of the old monk’s narration is a nice souvenir of that occasion. That, along with Boris’s two monologues, from December 1944 sessions, are sung in Italian, at a time when Pinza was the reigning Boris at the Met. Interesting though they are, Pinza is better heard in the part on off-the-air live portrayals when he is more involved and involving. Preiser’s transfer of this late-vintage Pinza is faultless.'