She truly was one of the great singers of our time – it is not just the seal and solemnity of death that confirms such a firm commitment. One felt it surely enough whenever she sang: I myself heard her on relatively few occasions, but they always brought that conviction, and what we hear now reaffirms it. The performance of the Lucretia cantata alone would be sufficient. Without quite the fierce utterance of a Baker or a Fassbaender, Hunt Lieberson brings nobility to the full range of emotions and (as she did with Britten’s Lucretia) an extraordinary sense of identification with the suffering woman. The voice itself was a noble instrument: warm, full-bodied and seamless in its passage over the vocal registers. It was particularly well suited to Brahms, and the three songs which open the programme here find in both voice and spirit sympathy and a rare reverence for the depth of feeling they embody. Then, it is touching to find how this same voice can lighten and rejuvenate with the Bilitis songs of Debussy. And I’ve rarely heard an encore achieve such a height of simple dignity as the “Deep River” sung here (you can sense it) to such a moved and attentive audience. If there’s a limitation (and I felt this in the London recitals I heard) it is the absence of merriment and the preference for slow speeds. And I’m not quite sure what we have here in terms of content: if a single, complete recital, the ordering and the anomaly of applause and for some items and not for others, is strange, and it seems, from what she says, that Drew Minter did more than sing (very beautifully) with her in the Cornelia-Sesto duet from Giulio Cesare. Certainly the disc is a precious addition to the singer’s legacy on records. And throughout we are conscious of our further debt – to the strongly imaginative collaboration of Peter Serkin as accompanist.