Now none of this would matter, of course, unless the singers took unusual care over matters of diction, and indeed every word registers with crystalline clarity. While laudable in itself, and marvelously done by mezzo Julia Bentley and soprano Deborah Bard, you might find baritone Stewart Figa a bit too eager to lapse into a Rex Harrison-like Sprechstimme, however authentic this stylistic conceit might be. Still, there's little to quibble about with respect to the vocals, and the musical arrangements by New Budapest Orpheum Society musical director Ilya Levinson sound absolutely marvelous (Cedille's state-of-the-art recording doesn't hurt either). To do this release justice, a review would have to be much longer than space allows here, and readers interested in this sort of project surely know who they are. To them this will be self-recommending. So let me conclude by saying this: More than a "classical" or "crossover" production, this set defies easy categorization. There's a world of history and culture hidden in this innocent-looking collection of songs from the first half of the 20th century, and you don't have to be Jewish to relish their richness.