Robin Ticciati - Scottish Chamber Orchestra - Berlioz: Les nuits d'ete - The Sunday Times

With his second release for the Glasgow-based label Linn, Ticciati could do for the Scottish mezzo what Barbirolli did for the young Janet Baker in the 1960's. Cargill's tone is plusher, but Baker is clearly one of her exemplars: the sense of loss in the refrain "Ah! Sans amour, s'en aller sur la mer", in Sur les lagunes, has something of the older singer's poignancy, but her timbre is more sensual in Les Spectre de la rose and Absence, her manner more skittish in Villanelle. Cargil can't command the French of the incomparable Crespin and Danco accounts (Decca), but her Nuits d'ete and Cleopatra suggest a Trojans Dido of stature in the making.