Culled from three vintage recitals, these groups of songs show Galina Vishnevskaya, if not in her prime, certainly still in highly characteristic form. The Songs and Dances of Death suited her splendidly when she recorded them in 1977. Shostakovich’s perceptive orchestrations were dedicated to her and she first sang them in 1962; alas that she did not record them then. But here she could still freeze the blood, with a sudden blanching of tone or the deliberate suggestion of a rasp, as well as through that strong instinct for the weight and rhythm of a phrase which she shared with Rostropovich in this sombre, thrilling music. The ‘Trepak’ is as haunting as anything she has done; ‘The Field-marshal’ is as powerful as it ever can be when not sung by a bass.

Instead of the original selection of arias by Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky, the record is now filled with their songs. The Tchaikovsky group is uneven. Vishnevskaya can seem too operatic for the nature of some of them, but the best of the original recital have been chosen, including ‘Was I not a little blade of grass?’, with its mood of gentle regret, and the darker ‘Again, as before, alone’. Some of the Rimsky-Korsakov can sound vocally uneven, less successful as she indulges her powerful low register, but there are songs, such as ‘In the silence of the night’, which are beautifully done. Despite the unevenness, and recordings that variously show their age, this is a representative record of a truly remarkable artist.