This is really a very curious record. I probably ought to extend a welcome and leave it at thatafter all, here are some fine performances, just the sort of thing one wishes to see salvaged from the pre-war catalogues, now transferred to CD, most of them for the first time. But what a haphazard collection it appears to be. The sequence is not chronological (either in terms of singers, music or recording dates), the artists are not grouped in any discernible way, the items are not notably representative. Why, for instance, start with the Attila trio? The booklet note suggests that it has been chosen to represent the excellent Rethberg, but after her short solo she is submerged by Gigli who takes full advantage of having the higher line. Any idea that he might moderate his magnificent tones out of consideration for his partner has obviously never entered his head. Indeed, I've always felt rather sorry for Rethberg in this particular record; at any rate there are plenty of others in which she could have been shown to better advantage. It's true that this one catches three birds with one stone, but Pinza was going to be heard again later, and with a playing time of less than an hour a solo by Gigli could easily have been fitted in if he was thought indispensable. It also seems odd to represent Tibbett with Rossini's Figaro, a role which he sang only once in his life and which was no more his natural element than was Baron Ochs to Kipnis. Then we have Mozart's Figaro, who does not go well into German; Domgraf-Fassbaender was a splendid singer, but again there is no shortage of more satisfying records to choose from. The choices for Chaliapin and Journet are similarly far from ideal, and Stabile did not always sing quite so badly as he does in the Don Giovanni Serenade.
This is announced as the first volume of a series. Perhaps like the-recent Nimbus first issue, ''Great Singers''((CD) NI7801, 10/89) it is intended as a kind of sampler (but though theirs was also a some what random, personal programme, it made more sense than this does). Anyway, the Nimbus series provides a comparison for quality of transfer in the Forza del destino scene with Ponselle and Pinza ((CD) NI7805, 10/89). In spite of the excessive hall and horn resonance on Nimbus, the sound is certainly clearer. If the Trovatore aria is then compared with the magnificent new Muzio collection on EMI References ((CD) CDH7 69790-2, 8/89) the difference is annihilatingly evident. Some of the items come out well—the Lauri-Volpi, Dal Monte and Crooks for instance, but generally the sound is a duller version of the originals even if superficially more easy to listen to. Two other exceptions, I should add, are the Tibbett and Thill recordings which seem to have been differently engineered, less bass-weighty. So, in sum, a cautious welcome to ''The Vintage Collection''. One final tantalizing thing about it: it appears on a BBC label, yet in the BBC Archives are so many rare 78s which one might hope could be systematically drawn on for such a series as this. And if the BBC are associated with the technical side of the production should they not be able to come up with something which stands more strongly in the inevitable comparison with EMI and their historical releases?'