Joyce DiDonato: Eden (Erato); Asmik Grigorian: Rachmaninov (Alpha)

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DiDonato, Rating: 4 stars

Grigorian, Rating: 5 stars

The American mezzo-soprano is touring a programme of works that are designed to reconnect humanity to nature. On this evidence, her voice has darkened in the COVID absence, acquiring a warming reassurance and companionable presence. This is singing as a form of mildly polemical conversation, from her to us.

Her selection, accompanied by Il Pomo D’Oro ensemble with Maxim Emelyanchev, is colourfully varied, from a Baroque aria by Marini to an aubade by the film composer Rachel Portman. I am slightly confused by the presence of Mahler and Wagner but they add to the richness of the recipe and I would not have quibbled about them at all had this fine record not been followed by the most concentrated song recital that has come my way in a decade or more.

A world apart from wobbly recitalists of a past generation, she slices through each note with pathological precision, encasing each syllable in a wonderment all its own.

Asmik Grigorian is a Lithuanian of Armenian parentage who commands the most dramatic roles in world opera, from Salome to Jenufa. On stage, she is electrifying. This is her first recital record and I wondered if she could deliver the same degree of ferocity and beauty. It not take long to find that she is an irresistibly intuitive and evocative interpreter of Russian song. A world apart from wobbly recitalists of a past generation, she slices through each note with pathological precision, encasing each syllable in a wonderment all its own.

These are mostly love songs, and Rachmaninov is not big on love, but Grigorian mines the songs for drama and pathos in a way only the greatest of opera singers do. If you can stay dry-eyed through the fourth track ‘oh, do not grieve’, you probably left your heart on the bus-stop on the way to work. I would use it as a screen-saver if only it were not so intimately disturbing.

The Russian-Lithuanian pianist Lukas Geniusas is a challenging partner who keeps the singer on the cusp of constant surprise and evolution. The recording was made ten months ago in Paris. This is, simply put, a world-class recital of a calibre we hear all too rarely in these troubled times.