These four cycles make an excellent and generous coupling, with Dagmar Pecková, brilliantly supported by Irwin Gage, a most persuasive advocate. Hers is an ideal voice, unmistakably Slavonic in timbre, yet firm and pure as well as rich. She retains a freshness specially apt for the songs inviting a girlish manner, including Dvorák's most famous song, the fourth of the seven Gypsy Melodies, 'Songs my mother taught me', sounding fresh and new.
The four cycles represent the full span of Dvorák's career. The eight Love Songs, B160 may officially date from 1888, but Dvorák in fact reworked a selection from 18 songs he'd written passionately at high speed over 20 years earlier – charming pieces which already reveal his unquenchable lyrical gift. Next chronologically are the Gypsy Songs of 1800, bold and colourful, here nicely contrasted by Pecková and Gage with four simpler, less exotic songs, In Folk Tone, of six years later. Last and longest is the cycle of ten Biblical Songs, written in the United States in 1894, when he was feeling homesick. They are more often sung by male singers, gaining from weight and gravity, but here with the mezzo, Pecková, they prove just as moving and intense.
The sound is clear and well balanced.