Four items from her French repertoire follow, and they are very welcome, inasmuch as in the U.S. she did not find much opportunity to deploy what was after all her most thoroughly cultivated adapted cultural identity. There’s a “Divinités du Styx” from 1938, with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under Goossens, that is imposing despite some slight intonational slippage, and Bell Telephone Hour renderings from 1944 and ’45 of “Il va venir” (La Juive) and “Il est doux, il est bon” (Hérodiade), stylistically fluent, that show her rare combination of power, grounded low notes, and that girlish quality (in “Il est doux,” positively virginal) in the higher range.The disc ends with a somewhat bewildering sequence wherein several items from a 1946 benefit concert in Paris are separated by a 1939 NBC radio performance of Cleopatra’s “Piangerò la sorte mia,” in French. That last, of course, sounds strange to us, partly due to the language and partly to the absence of any trace of latterday performance practice findings—no ornaments, not even a trill and not even in the da capo, and a B section that shows a voice perfectly capable of velocity, but no practice in it. What the voicing does have is gravity and grandeur, the feel of a person of stature expressing something of personal importance and something beyond that, as well. Taken together, the Handel, Gluck, and Gounod pieces (Gounod’s is the Gluckian, or perhaps Berliozian, “O ma lyre immortelle” from Sapho) suggest the makings of a great classicist, enhanced by Romantic temperament, that never developed—it’s not hard to hear a superb Iphigénie, Armide, or Didon in this voice and manner. The otherwise well-sung Gounod, as well as Tatiana’s Letter Scene (in Russian), are to some degree compromised by calamitous encounters with single high notes.

Except for seven items from the intended soundtrack for the Interrupted Melody film (1955—Eileen Farrell was the eventual singer, but so far as I can discern, not because of any vocal shortcomings of Lawrence’s), the third CD in the set moves in a folkish direction, away from operatic material. But if you assume that this implies a weakening of voice or of artistic interest (as I lazily did before listening), you’d be off the mark. True, the soundtrack sequence is of curiosity value only (one verse of an English-language “Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix;” a sort of jump-cut shrinking of the Salome finale, etc.), save for glimpses of Lawrence as Lieder singer (a well-vocalized but unilluminating Der Lindenbaum, but then a splendid Erlkönig, with the father’s voice summoned from that solid lower-register foundation). It turns out, though, that like some other great singers (thinking of John McCormack, Feodor Chaliapin, Marian Anderson), Lawrence connected in a highly personal way with folk songs in her tradition, and had a touch of the music hall entertainer in her, as well. Heard here for the first time are previously unpublished sides of seven Scottish folk songs recorded by American Columbia in 1945, with an orchestrally accompanied I Love Thee (Grieg) weirdly stuck in among them. (The annotations say that these are from Lawrence’s personal copies, the only ones known to survive.) Lawrence sings them (A Highland Lad; Comin’ Thru the Rye; My Ain Folk, et al.) with infectious rhythmic relish; a deep, unaffected lyricism; and a delicious Scottish burr. (If you suspect you’ve never heard consonants truly sounded, try the refrain of Doun the Burn.) They’re irresistible. She brings those same gifts to a grouping from a Bundles for Britain benefit given in Carnegie Hall in the dark days of December, 1940. This consists of five of Percy Grainger’s myriad English folk song arrangements. As heard here in full orchestral raiment, they may strike some as a trifle overcooked at moments. Maybe, but they’re also expert—haunting in Willow, Willow; surging and mournful in the shantey Shallow Brown; raucously engaging in The Old Woman at the Christening and Hubby and Wifey—and Lawrence gives all these their full value. That’s Grainger himself tickling the ivories, too. If perchance you’re among those that remain with childhood memories, however faint, of broadcasts from London in the Blitz, of Gracie Fields warbling All for One and One for All, and much else from that time (or if you’ve found a sympathetic connection through historical curiosity, in which case I salute you), as Lawrence concludes the Grainger group with Rule, Britannia and the Carnegie Hall audience responds with a lusty cheer, the nape of your neck may feel a little crawl.