As L’Ensoleillade in Massenet’s Cherubin at Covent Garden and then as a recitalist who brought Mediterranean warmth to the most wintry of London’s April evenings, Maria Bayo has acquired sunny associations which her new record can only strengthen. She is a charming Mozart singer, refreshingly bright and clear in the quality of her tone, even and fluent in florid passages, assiduous in attention to details of phrase and nuance. Indeed if there is a complaint to be made about her singing on this present disc it is that the thoroughness of her care for inflexions and dynamics leaves limited room for the exercise of a more fundamental skill, the command of a true legato. She has the ability (as we hear in the last aria of Ah, lo previdi) but rather too often for my liking chooses not to use it, preferring instead (hear the start of “Zeffiretti” or “Batti, batti”) a studiously ‘edited’ style in which the vocal line is characterized by accentuations and so forth in the manner of instrumental parts as marked up by a keenly rhythmic conductor: a lot to be said for it as long as the pleasure of a truly even singing-line does not come to be relegated as a matter of briefly tolerable indulgence.
The programme itself is well chosen and does not overlap too disablingly with recent competitors in the field, such as Renee Fleming, Sumi Jo and Natalie Dessay. “Ruhe sanft” is just about the most heavenly thing Mozart wrote for soprano (though it needs a particularly heavenly soprano to negotiate that octave rise to the high A on “Leben”), and the rondo melody of Voi avete un cor fedele is not unlike. Ah, lo previdi is as deeply felt, imaginatively dramatic a concert aria as any, and the performance, vocal and orchestral, does it justice. The Exsultate, jubilate comes up newly fresh on every hearing and suits this spring-like voice to perfection. Balance and recording are fine; the playing time is perhaps less than generous.'