Marilyn Horne.(In Salzburg: Songs and arias by Vivaldi, Schubert, Handel, Bizet, Falla, Donizetti, Saint-Saens, Foster)

* "IN SALZBURG" Songs and arias by Vivaldi, Schubert, Handel, Bizet, Falla, Donizetti, Saint-Saens, Foster. Katz, piano. Texts and translations. VAI Audio VAIA 1207

When it comes to the sheer craft of singing, nobody knows her business better than Marilyn Horne. This 1979 Salzburg recital, capturing the mezzo in her prime, serves as a sixty-eight-minute encyclopedia of the vocal virtues that have sustained her through a nearly fifty-year professional career. Chief among these is the fabled technique. Horne can sing at any speed and any dynamic, the tone staying even throughout its range, each note hit squarely in the middle. Then there's the sheer sound of her voice, at full cry as brilliant as a trumpet, marvelously resonant and steady in quiet singing. All this is achieved without any tricks or elisions: Horne is an uncommonly honest singer.

The diva supplies a CD booklet note, telling us that the recital concentrated on material she and Martin Katz had performed often together. Most listeners, though, wouldn't automatically associate her with the bulk of this program--Schubert lieder, Bizet chansons and Falla's Siete Canciones Populares Espanolas. Horne is an atypical Schubert singer, in that her focus is more vocal than verbal: she's more likely to inflect the tone than the text. She nonetheless demonstrates that Schubert benefits no less than Rossini from a prodigious technique. The brightness of tone she brings to "Im Fruhling" and "Fischerweise" is a reminder that she started her career as a soprano. By contrast, "Der Doppelganger" opens in a deep, rapt pianissimo, long-breathed and completely steady. Best of all is "Die Junge Nonne." Home rides the song's big, rolling phrases like a champion America's Cup skipper steering a sloop through rough seas. She and Katz refuse to fall into the trap of sentimentalizing the ending by slowing down. It's clear that despite the nun's pious "Alleluja"s, a wild ...