A pair of musts for devotees of French song as distinct from canary-fanciers or opera buffs; doubly interesting for, although unmentioned in the packaging, Jose Serebrier and Carole Farley are husband and wife. During the past half century, there have been several such partnerships. Often, however, the individual talents are unequally balanced. A husband's participation may be a contractual condition of the wife's engagement, or a conductor may insist on the choice of his wife (or mistress) as soloist. The acid test is, always, do Mr X or Madame Y receive any spouseless offers of work elsewhere on their own merit? Here, the situation is clear: not only is Carole Farley a star of the opera house (more than 80 Lulus, in three languages), but Serebrier's Ives Fourth Symphony with the LPO, now on Chandos is world famous. Hailed by his mentor Stokowski as, ''the greatest master of orchestral balance'', he tends to suggest by his orchestral accompaniments on these two very desirable discs that so prestigious an accolade may not be as exaggerated as it might at first seem. All these songs are more often heard with piano. The first is sometimes heard with piano and string quartet but Chausson's equally authentic full score is virtually unknown. Apart from famous cycles by Mahler and Ravel, songs with orchestra, even those by Duparc, which take on new dimensions here, are concert-hall rarities, only since 1944 when it was rediscovered in London, has Faure's piano quintet accompaniment to La bonne chanson become available. The orchestral versions of the four Satie songs, his earliest compositions and first published privately by his father, are by Robert Caby, and as harmless as the music.
As one would expect from Farley's operatic repertoire and experience, her approach to this welcome anthology is marked by high musical intelligence. The smouldering nostalgia of Chausson's ceaseless song is brusquely interrupted by the dramatic urgency of the quest for Le manoir de Rosemonde. The other Duparc songs are as evocative, ecstatic, rapturous and gently melancholic as they should be. The Satie songs have the right artlessness, while La bonne chanson is sung with understanding conviction throughout, by a voice that triumphs in the tessitura of the two more taxing numbers. The French, almost immaculate, is more than acceptable, the 'r's rolled, the vowels pure, and, on the whole, vastly preferable to that of so many operatic song-birds who persistently pronounce the French definite article (le) as if it were Italian.
Over and above vocal and linguistic considerations, the immediately striking quality of this disc is that of the partnership already referred to, for it achieves a rare unity of expression and balance between vocal and supporting orchestral texture.
The second disc, as welcome as the first, includes items that one is never likely to hear in the recital hall more than once or twice in a lifetime. Again, Farley's voice proves equal in range and stamina to the demands of Chausson's Poeme de l'amour et de la mer and of the two Baudelaire settings by Debussy. Le balcon is, in effect, a taxing operatic scena, while, almost as difficult, Le jet d'eau has the probably least often performed of all Debussy's original orchestral accompaniments—its divisi writing for eight double-basses has never commended it to either dramatic sopranos or conductors. In all these difficult songs, the expressive authority of the vocal line, whether in the mezzo range or when it darts with pointed assurance to the ledger lines, like a brightly coloured butterfly out of a silken harmonic cocoon, is never without wonderfully balanced orchestral support. The Satie songs, complementing those on the first disc, provide sophisticated contrast and light relief, with nothing weightier than the old joker's two catchy waltzes, La diva de l'empire and Je te veux. All provide splendid material for the versatile Farley's vocal and interpretative gifts.'