Not just a pretty voice, you might say. In his disc of Argentinian songs Jose Cura not only sings but also directs the performances – seven of them involving a small orchestra – and arranges some of the pieces, two of them his own compositions. It makes a crossover disc that is not just ‘middle-of-the-road’ but ‘easy listening’. It would be unfair to subject these unassuming songs and instrumental pieces to searchlight study, for with their tinkling melodies they might almost be designed to provide a sweet and unobtrusive background, rarely striking home with a tune to latch in the mind.
Surprisingly, the Hispanic flavour is muted. The charming little Ginastera song is one of the few exceptions with its tango rhythm, and needless to say the piano piece by Piazzolla, Adios Nonino, transcribed from his Piano Quintet by Laecio Freta, much longer and more involved than any other item, does finally lead to sections in elaborated tango rhythm, set against a climactic polka-like section.
Almost all the pieces forming the sequence are yearningly melancholy, with the tone set by the opening instrumental piece by Cura himself, which begins rather like a sweetened version of Barber’s Adagio, before bringing in the piano and then the woodwind. La Campanilla (“The Harebell”), the fifth of the eight songs by Carlos Guastavino, is lighter in tone than the others, with a delightful pay-off, and it is quite a relief, when at last in the 16th item in the sequence of 20, Carlos Lopez Buchardo’s Cancion de Perico (“Perico’s Song”), you have a fast, vigorous, albeit brief, piece.
In the face of the overall mood of gentle melancholy, the title of the disc, “Anhelo”, taken from the last of the Guastavino songs, is perhaps surprising. The booklet-note says it is untranslatable but the dictionary defines it as “vehement desire”, not the mood I gather from the brief Guastavino song. Yet Cura’s own commitment is evident throughout. This plainly is a project that means much to him, and his note about meeting up with Bitetti and Delgado, two boyhood heroes of his from his home town of Rosario, is totally disarming.
Though the recording acoustic and close balance do not allow the full bloom of Cura’s fine tenor to emerge, these are warmly expressive performances, not just from him but from his associates too. The sequence is aptly rounded off with Cura’s own setting of two linked “Sonnets of love and death” by Pablo Neruda, typically fresh and open, with a brief passionate climax leading to an indeterminate ending on a half-close, the music simply fading away.'