On track: Elegance across many languages

By WILLIAM DART

Photographed in flattering profile on the cover of her new album, Czech mezzo Magdalena Kozena is the epitome of soignee.

This selection of 20th-century songs is her third release for Deutsche Grammophon, following on from last year's collection of French arias.

The five cycles on the new disc are perfect vehicles for Kozena's skill with a variety of languages. Even when her Czech accent isn't quite dampened in Britten's A Charm of Lullabies, it matters little: sharp admonitions of Quiet! and Sleep! in the sinister Charm enhance the witchery of the song.

Respighi's Il Tramonto is a 15-minute setting of Shelley's The Sunset, scored for mezzo and string quartet. Its harmonies look more to Wagner and Puccini than Verdi, although one is also reminded of the glories of the 18th-century Italian cantata.

Kozena's sometimes husky voice soars through Respighi's luscious lines and her partnership with the Henschel Quartet is unfaltering, caught aglow in a sumptuous recording.

There's also a Romantic spirit in Erwin Schulhoff's Three Atmospheric Portraits. Written in 1913, decades before the Czech composer would perish in the Holocaust, these lovely, sleep-laden works find Kozena at her most emotionally engaging.

Violinist Christoph Henschel and pianist Malcolm Martineau are simpatico partners and sharp ears might catch a premonition of Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo score in the opening chord of the second song.

Ravel's Chansons Madecasses are a good deal tougher. Flute and cello join the line-up and Kozena revels in the cycle's juxtaposition of the erotic and the political. In these dark days of the Middle East conflict, there are new and chilling reverberations to the second song, with its attack on European colonialism.

Things lighten and brighten when Kozena and Martineau tackle Shostakovich's 1960 Satires. Sasha Chorny's wicked poems tell of loveless springs, gender-confused poets and a relationship from hell between a rake and a high-minded poetess; the music nods to Mussorgsky and Weill, the circus and the cabaret. Singer and pianist acknowledge the multitude of styles and do them all justice.

This is a particularly welcoming collection that could well encourage you to explore more repertoire in this area.

* Magdalena Kozena, Songs (Deutsche Grammophon 471 581)