Javier Camarena (tenor), Ángel Rodríguez (piano)
Pentatone PTC 5187 184 81:51 mins
The higher minded may wrinkle their noses at Francesco Tosti’s songs as being too sugary, yet singers from Enrico Caruso to Maria Callas have always loved them. You can tell it’s a Tosti song within four bars and, in the best Italian tradition, he offers a singer every opportunity for personal interpretation.
All credit to Mexican tenor Javier Camarena and Ángel Rodríguez, his keyboard companion, for putting together a programme that makes it clear that not all Tosti songs are the same, despite the rippling arpeggios that run through so many of them. There are salon numbers like ‘Malià’, which is not beyond the abilities of a musically educated Victorian family. There are Neapolitan-style flourishes like ‘Marechiare’ which effortlessly carry you south across the Alps. And there are heavy-duty late Romantic songs, with texts by the poet D’Annunzio that invoke Wagnerian thoughts of Night and Death.
Camarena undoubtedly feels an affinity with this repertoire. In the story of Nina in ‘L’ultima canzone’, who is marrying someone else, he artfully blends nonchalance with hints of a broken heart. The French songs are elegantly done too with Tosti chronicling a complete love affair in just three stanzas in 3/4 time in ‘Petite valse romantique’. There are times when a lighter tone would have benefitted interpretation, and Camarena hits his top notes pretty hard with a tad too much vibrato. However, Rodríguez is an exemplary partner. The extended postlude to ‘Che dici, o parola del Saggio’ is masterly and proof, were it needed, that a whole album of Tosti songs is not like consuming a whole box of rose and violet creams at a single sitting.