Dear Michael.
Thank you for your kind remarks. I feel it necessary
to qualify my contention that 1939 was indeed a crucial singing
year for Bjorling. This I will try and do by limiting myself to two
specific recordings regardless of their shortcomings.
Certainly there are many other excellent examples but
considering his experience of 1938, which I understand was his
Metropolitan debut, there appears to have been an impetus to tie
up some loose ends whatever the origin.
The first is the Nimbus NI7842 Prima Voce 2 Series:
The Nimbus covers the period 1936 to 1941 aged 25 to 30.
The second is Jussi Bjorling at Carnegie Hall March 2 1958.
Two and a half years before his death at 49.
The first task I set myself was to hear the natural exuberance
of his youthful singing. The _last_ four tracks of the Nimbus
supply this to me and reveal problems of unevenness of scale.
With some reservations about the Carmen: the La Belle Helene,
der Zigeunerbaron and der Bettelstudent give a clear sample of
his wonderfully natural 1938 technique but I feel you'd agree some
problems are obvious.
I don't know where or what part of 1939 the Adelaide was recorded
but it's clearly a studio recording of an intimate nature while the
other is of course a live concert recording. To me, the 1939 version
seems to show a singer re-studying his technique the revision of
which emerges in the perfection of the Schubert An die Leier of 1940.
From this time right up to his death in 1960 he seems to have retained
the same reliable technique with a noticeable darkening and tonal
enrichment.
The difference between 1938 singing and 1940 is quite marked and
rather than effort, in his earlier singing, I hear a failure to disguise
the application of his technique and I think he did too.
On both these recordings are amongst others, versions of
Adelaide, 1939 and 1958,
Tosti Ideale, 1937 and 1958
Schuberts An die Leier, 1940 and 1958.
Reg.
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