It is hard to believe that this recording took place in May 1976 and did not reach our columns until March 1978. Therein may be found a photograph of the youthful Jessye Norman and John Steane's review, fulsome in his admiration of the beauty of her voice, but critically offset by his reservations regarding the depth of her understanding and involvement with the French texts. Hearing the CD ten years later, one is more impressed by her versatility of tone and manner in this varied programme; it is indeed a beautiful sound. Technically too one has little to complain about. Philips have always employed 'straight' recording techniques, minimizing microphones, using relatively simple control desks of their own exceptionally quiet design so that noise processors were not needed and rarely employing any equalization. Their approach pays dividends in this CD era for their master tapes from past years can go straight into the digital domain with little if any engineering attention. In this case it is only Dalton Baldwin's piano which gives the game away; it lacks that stable solidity which characterizes digital recording, probably due to the absence of even the faintest trace of wow.'