Soprano Lise Davidsen recently gave a recital at the Metropolitan Opera with pianist James Baillieu.  The live recording of that gig is now being released by Decca in various formats.  My gut reaction was to think that a piano recital at the Met is not such a great idea but the recording turns out to be terrific.

It starts out with a couple of opera arias,  There’s a powerful but very beautiful account of “Vissi d’arte” and a very stylish account of “Morrò, ma prima in grazia” from Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera.  In this one she shows some interesting colours as well as terrific, clean, high notes.

Then it’s onto art song.  Four Strauss songs; “Zueignung”, “Allerseelen”, “Befreit” and “Morgen” are sung with considerable nuance and subtlety and those wonderful high notes again.  The only reservation I have is that in couple of places it sounds like she miked too closely.  Three Schubert songs; “An die Musik”, “Gretchen am Spinnrade” and “Litanei auf das fest Aller Seelen” follow.  The “Gretchen” is quite dramatic but really, to my ear, she’s more effective when she doesn’t over do it.  The “Litanei” is lovely.  Four Sibelius songs to Swedish texts are also very pleasing.  She’s clearly very comfortable in Swedish and I particularly like “Svarta rosor” where she really uses the resources of her colour palette.

Then she gets a bit cheeky.  What I suspect was the last number in the printed programme turns out to be “Heia, heia in der Berge” from Kálmán’s Die Csárdásfürstein.  Lise Davidsen doing operetta?  Shurely shomething’s wrong.  Not a bit.  The opening is rather dramatic but then she shows remarkable agility for such a big instrument and the audience goes nuts.

“I Could Have Danced All Night” was likely the first encore.  It’s sung with excellent diction and quite a cheeky piano arrangement… good fun.  Then the audience get what they have probably been waiting for… a superb account of “Dich, teure Halle” with no sign at all of fatigue and, finally, she sends them home with Grieg’s “Våren”.  It’s a hell of a recital.

It’s quite nicely recorded with no sense of the size of the hall except for the, thankfully fairly heavily edited, applause.  I listened to lossless 44.1kHz/16bit files which were the best available to me.  If higher quality comes through before release date of March 6th I’ll edit.  It will also be available as a physical CD, MP3 and a two disk vinyl set.

If you want to see why Lise Davidsen is so highly regarded this disk is a good starting point along with last year’s Der fliegender Holländer (see the Summer 2025 edition of Opera Canada).

Catalogue information: Decca Classics 4870691