Arianna a Naxos (1789). English Love Songs: Fidelity; Pleasing Pain; The Mermaid's Song; A Pastoral Song; Recollection (1794); 0 Tuneful Voice; The Spirit's Song; She never told her love; Piercing Eyes; The Wanderer (1795).

Arianna a Naxos—comparative version:

Bott, Tan (1/86) ECD84080

The introductory essay by J. T. Linford quotes Hamlet's advice to the players, the bit about the desirability of temperance and smoothness in a whirlwind of passion. For Hamlet as eighteenthcentury gentleman and perhaps for Haydn as Hamlet the quotation is a good one, but as a precept for Haydn's performers I'm not so sure. Singer and accompanist here are certainly temperate enough and as far as the emotions are concerned they are smooth too; what we want is a hint of the whirlwind.

Though this applies to the songs also, it is most apparent in the cantata. Ariadne, awakening, realizes that Theseus is no longer by her side and concludes that he is away killing animals or on some similar manly pursuit. She climbs the hill to look further afield and is in time to see a boat sailing out to sea with Theseus on the prow. Wretched and abandoned, she sings a final aria. Here, then, is matter for passion, however smooth and temperate the style. Both performers are actors in the drama. The pianist, for instance, climbs the hill and sees the dreadful sight in a chord before the singer cries "Che mirO?". In the comparative version on the Meridian label, Melvyn Tan, with his fortepiano, ascends step by painful step in his imagination, and is as surprised as Catherine Bott, who sings Ariadne, when he arrives at the top and looks out to sea. He enacts it all in his playing, and she sounds genuinely like one who had no idea that her next words were to be "0 stelle! Misera me!". Judith Nelson and Elaine Thornburgh hardly sound surprised at all: I'm not sure they even made the climb and looked over. They know the score perfectly well of course; but they don't seem to have gone further, unlearnt it and made it all appear to be actually happening.

In many other ways the new record is delightful. The voice is fresh, the intonation impeccable; scale-work and incidental embellishment (quite a lot of it in Domenico Cord's editions) are fluent and tasteful. The acoustic is suitably intimate without being too confined. But I don't discern much evidence of imaginative involvement in the performances, which are graceful, pretty, accomplished, but somewhat placid. Intending buyers might also like to check that the middle pages are included in their copy of the booklet; mine were missing, with the last part of the Ariadne text and the first section of the notes in German. J.B.S.