This CD is a timely reminder, a generous one too, of Baker in her prime. At the peak of her career at the end of the 1960s, the tone is at its most beautiful, the singing as secure as it is intelligent. One realizes anew that here is one of the great singers of the century and one comfortable in so many idioms. It may be that some native singers of Faure and Schubert capture the soul of these songs more unerringly, but few actually sing them so glowingly, so intensely. Some, RTF among them (in Song on Record 2: CUP: 1989), question her French vowels. I found on rehearing that the readings gave constant pleasure in the comprehension of words and music, with the melancholy of Prison and the delicacy of Claire de lune, wholly approved of by RTF, particularly memorable in line and accent—listen, for instance, to the latter's third verse.
Baker's Schubert is still better. She was one of the first, on the old BBC Third Programme, to investigate the composer's lesser-known Lieder. Here she gives us the distilled essence of those well-remembered recitals. The typical Schubertian sadness brings out the very best in her. Nobody in my experience has sung Am Grabe Anselmos with so much sincere and deep feeling, nor have the lamenting echoes of Die Gotter Griechenlands ever sounded more haunting. The dark, rocking mood of Gondelfahrer, the rapture of Auflosung are just as remarkable, considered yet spontaneous Lieder singing of the most satisfying kind. Technically the performances are also without fault. As a pendant the two Strauss songs are memorable. She and Moore take Morgen at a dangerously slow tempo but bring it off by virtue of sustained mezza voce on both sides. The valedictory Befreit is no less successful.
In her own language, Dame Janet is at home in every sense. The gems here are the Stanford ballad, the tensions of the tale sustained throughout by both artists, the tender sorrow of Britten's Corpus Christi, the fervent outpouring of Quilter's Love's philosophy. Everywhere Moore is at one with his partner, always supportive, perceptive, with that soft and unrepeatable touch of his. The recording of that date was exemplary in balance and presence. Now EMI have started a Baker retrospective, please let's have more.'