Classical CD reviews: Susan Graham, Nadia Reisenberg

Susan Graham: "Un Frisson Français: A Century of French Song"; with Malcolm Martineau, piano (Onyx)

An all-French recital extending from Bizet through Messiaen is bound to have passages where every third word seems to be papillons or charmant. But clichés are spectacularly transcended in a disc arranged in roughly chronological order, each composer represented by only one song.

Few are familiar, such as Henri Duparc's antiwar "To the Land Where War Is Raging" or Reynaldo Hahn's "To Chloris." The rest explore repertoire even Francophiles might not know about, including composers not normally associated with song, such as César Franck, Édouard Lalo, André Caplet and Albert Roussel.

Virtually every one is a distinctive, significant find, whether Saint-Saëns' "Dance of Death," which inspired his later orchestra work "Danse Macabre," with words examining the egalitarian elements of death, or Honegger's "Three Songs of the Little Mermaid," whose title character is heard calling out through watery piano figures in distant keys.

Susan Graham locates the core musicality of a piece while also characterizing the voices within each song with engaging theatricality. In terms of vocal luster, she has never sounded better -- or better framed, thanks to Malcolm Martineau's superb accompaniment.

DAVID PATRICK STEARNS, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

Nadia Reisenberg: "A Chopin Treasury: Studio and Concert Recordings (1947-1958)" (Bridge)

Most of these recordings were made for the Westminster label, but seem not to have had a long life beyond their initial release. Although her other recordings aren't always this distinctive, this collection of Chopin mazurkas and nocturnes plus "Barcarolle" and "Berceuse" ranks with the best.

With her flexible tempos, bright, lightly pedaled sonority and marvelous variation of touch, she's more temperamentally similar to Alfred Cortot than to Artur Rubinstein. She captures the different voices in these works but -- most distinctive of all -- is a master storyteller, giving these pieces a sense of narrative that sounds perfectly natural, but is rarely projected by other pianists. The sound quality is good for the era, but there's no mistaking that the recordings in this four-disc set are at least 50 years old.