Search - Mozart, Bellini, Verdi :: Selma Kurz 2: Legendary Voices

Preiser's Volume Two Should be Your First Selma Kurz Cd!

Doug - Haydn Fan | California | 01/02/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Selma Kurz enjoyed one of the loveliest soprano voices of the last century, rich through and through and enveloping the listener with a soft bequiling warmth - Kurz was a wonder even in a Golden Age of Singing. Though diluted by old recordings, much of Kurz's voice shines out in an entrancing color of the deepest purple, the registers smoothly mixed together like the finest whipping cream, or, as she was the star of Vienna, schlag! Kurz became a star at the turn the century after her discovery by the formidable Gustave Mahler, director of the Vienna Court Opera, and it was under Mahler's tutelage and encouragement that Kurz branched out from the lyric parts she was singing at the beginning of her career, such as Eva, Elisabeth, and Rosalinde, to challenging coloratura roles, Elvira, Konstanze, Gilda, Violetta, Lucia. Yet Kurz was always at heart and remained the perfect lyric soprano, if a soprano endowed with an ultra-lovely sound! With this impossibly ravishing voice Kurz sang a wide range of roles with winning ease.



Although there are other Kurz Cds, I strongly recommend the Preiser Cds; they sound better than the others, and also include informative notes in German and English. I do wish Preiser had issued their two Kurz Cds in reverse order - with the late records made at the very end of Kurz's career on Volume II, and not as it stands, on Volume I. There are further problems - notably - the identical cover pictures create needless confusion. Finally, and most puzzling, why did an Austrian company specializing in reissuing early opera singers require over a decade to finally issue a second CD - and one containing the best examples of her singing - for such a legendary Viennese soprano?



Complaints aside, this is one stupefying display of vocalism. Kurz sounds remarkable - a full, nearly seamless tone of the greatest possible quality, rounding out all but the highest notes with a Romanee-Conti like quality of distinction. The soprano's much praised coloratura varies from excellent, even astonishing, to wayward and sloppy - sometimes, as in the case of her famous long held trill, she manages to be both amazing and incorrigible at the same moment! (Don't worry - this Cds abounds with examples of Kurz's seamless unbelievable trilling!) Note values may not always be perfectly honored, but for me Kurz's beautiful voice, coming through quite readily on even these old acoustics, now nearly 100 years old, always delights and astonishes. Kurz must have been one of the two or three most perfect soprano voices of the Twentieth Century!



This Cd only truly shows off what Selma can offer by about the fourth or fifth cut - her Verdi, though lacking the sharp musicality of the best sopranos, ravishes the ear and haunts the memory - this may not be exactly what Guiseppe had in mind, but once Selma's evocative other-wordly tones are heard Kurz's will always be a voice lingering in the background when other sopranos begin an aria by Verdi that Kurz recorded.



An excellent testament to one of the greatest of all turn of the century sopranos. If you enjoy old singers, from the early days of recording, Selma Kurz is a must listen.



There remain several wonderful Kurz recordings omitted from the two Preiser Cds. Perhaps a third Cd will this time include her greatest record, the Lockruf from Goldmark's Königin von Saba.







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