An impressive debut recital by this young American prize-winner

Here’s an hour of enchantment from the American soprano who won the 2005 Cardiff Singer of the World. There she swept the board with her final item, Teresa’s taxing but rewarding aria from Benvenuto Cellini. Here it forms the centrepiece of a recital that takes her with extreme accomplishment through a varied programme.

Perhaps the French pieces suit her best of all, and she seems happy singing in the language. She delivers Juliette’s Waltz Song with insouciance, then follows it with a deeply soulful account of Juliette’s last-act aria. “Depuis le jour” is right up there among the best of the past, with the high note towards the end, so often a disappointment, touched with pure lightness. The dash of the bolero from Les filles de Cadix is a fizzing as it should be.

But Cabell can do many other things so well as to satisify the most fastidious connoisseur of fine singing. Her bel canto skills are disclosed in Julietta’s opening aria from Capuleti, with the even legato a pleasure to encounter. Norina’s flighty aria from Don Pasquale is done with just the requisite allure. The two popular Puccini arias again show off her clear, clean tone and secure technique, even if one would sometimes like a bit more light and shade in her bright voice.

It’s big leap from there to Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, but once more Cabell gives every evidence that she knows what she is about and the aching phrases hanging in the air. The Menotti aria is well sung but musically nothing special; “Summertime” gets a lovely reading.

Sir Andrew Davis and the LPO find the right mood for each piece in turn and the recording is faultless. Who knows, maybe Decca has a new Sutherland in view.

-- Alan Blyth, Gramophone [5/2007]