ICON - Nicolai Gedda 85th Birthday [Box set]

The article in the included booklet starts with a story of how Sir Charles Mackerras recalled that during rehersals of Gounod's Faust at the Paris Opéra in 1975 "Gedda spoke English to me, Italian to Mirella Freni, Finnish to Tom Krause, Russian to Nicolai Ghiaurov and French to the musicians." In addition to the more obvious languages of German, Italian, French and Spanish in these recordings he also sings in English, Swedish, Norwegian and Russian. His repertory includes songs and arias in twelve languages.

This box is incredible value for money. You get eleven generously filled discs with excellent examples of the immaculate art of this unbelievably versatile Swedish tenor. We get everything from Bach cantatas and 18th century French songs through opera arias and songs by all the most important composers of the 19th and 20th centuries to operetta and Broadway musicals. The French repertory is especially well represented with songs and arias by Rousseau, Gluck, Auber, Meyerbeer, Adam, Thomas, Berlioz, Gounod, Offenbach, Bizet, Lalo, Massenet, Fauré, Poulenc, Debussy and Hahn.

His other stronghold, the Russian repertory includes Glinka, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninov and Traditional Russian folk songs with a male chorus and a balalaika orchestra. We get popular Italian songs by Denza, de Curtis, Bixio and a terrific rendition of Lara's Granada.

The more central repertory of arias and songs by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Rossini, Bellini, Verdi (with impeccably stylish performances of Forse la soglia attinse...Ma se m'é forza perderti from Un ballo in maschera and the notoriously difficult Parmi veder le lagrime from Rigoletto), Wagner, Puccini and Richard Strauss is well represented. There is also a small section devoted to Nordic music by Sibelius, Grieg, Alfvén, Peterson-Berger, S.L. Sjöberg. All in all one could say that this a representative compilation of the most important Western music for tenor voice of the past three centuries.

Although I had I think about half of this music already in my collection this is still worth buying because most of the music has been remixed and edited so that things like the 1952 mono Boris Godunov aria and the 1957 Mozart arias, both from Paris, sound fresh and vibrant. Most of the recordings date from the nineteen sixties and seventies and sound very good.

Any friend of Gedda's art need not hesitate. Others will do well by having this boxed set in their collection of vocal music as an example of exceptional vocal style that comes from almost perfect vocal technique. I would have paid the price for only the eleventh disc of this 85th birthday tribute to Nicolai Gedda, which consists entirely of a 1995 interview. In it Gedda recalls an impossibly slow Flower aria from Carmen conducted by Beecham (of whom Gedda gives an uncannily witty vocal impression) and how difficult it was to perform. The interview is interspersed with musical examples so we get two different performances of La fleur que tu m'avais jetée from Carmen in this box.

All 228 musical numbers are very well notated in the booklet with the names of all participants, locations, exact recording and publishing dates and names of producers and balance engineers. If all compilations were produced as well we would live in a better musical world. To sum up I would say this is almost indecent luxury. If you couple this box with Gedda's 2 CD Gedda-Champagner-Operette recording, which he crowns with a high D flat at the end of Souchong's final aria in act 2 of Das Land des Lächelns, you will have ample material for a desert island.

Thank you, Mr. Koskinen for your wonderful and perceptive review.

I will not add any to this, however I must say that this and many of the other EMI Icon sets are a wonderful value. This set in particular is past praise. Who other than the incomparable Mr. Fischer-Dieskau has proven so omni-talented, flexible and made so many fine recordings? Mr. Gedda uses the term "document" in reference to many of his recordings. He is absolutely right. How blessed we have been to have heard Mr. Gedda and have these marvelous "documents" of his art.

And I whole-heartedly agree: the Interview disc is worth the price alone. One is struck by Gedda's near perfect English(should we really be surprised?). WONDERFUL all around. Buy this set before it is too late. Enough said.

State-side Music-lover

I hesitated at first about buying 11 CDs of one singer but went ahead and am delighted to have done so since Nicolai Gedda had such a wide repertoire and in so many languages that there is never any feeling of monotony. Gedda was surely one of the truly great lyric tenors of the last century. He had everything: beautiful even production, especially remarkable at the top of his range where there isn't a trace of strain even at full volume; a burnished silver tone; the ability to characterize and in addition perfect diction, whatever language he was singing in (he was an outstanding linguist, speaking at least seven languages fluently).

Although he made over 200 recordings he was never really a household name, mainly I would say because he never cheapened his art by taking part in publicity-seeking gimmicks, never behaved badly towards colleagues or cancelled at the drop of a hat. (I'm using the past tense even though Gedda is still alive at 86).

The opera extracts involving Victoria de los Angeles are a particular delight: the two singers got on particularly well together and indeed have much in common in the approach to their art. The Icon set of de los Angeles is also well worth acquiring.

Some of the tracks I already had on CD and a comparison shows that EMI has made a great job of the remastering: the voice is a touch more realistic and orchestral backings have greater depth. The CDs are also very generously filled, all with timings of at least 75 minutes.