A major attraction of soccer's World Cup, and some would say the very best thing about it, is the musical component, with genre-crossing all-star vocal collaborations the norm. Who can forget Barcelona's unexpected and absolutely stunning duets between
Montserrat Caballe
and
Freddie Mercury
? This album may be the first in a flood of releases connected with the 2014 World Cup in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and if the games result in a new appreciation of Brazilian music they will have been well worth it from a musical standpoint. Brazilian music crosses over among classical, pop, and jazz without giving very much thought to the dividing lines, and the mix here touches on some of the major figures from each corner. The three singers and one guitarist are not Brazilian: singers
Natalie Dessay
Agnes Jaoui
are French; singer
Helena Noguerra
is Portuguese-Belgian; and guitarist
Liat Cohen
is French-Israeli. Some of the music is sung in Portuguese, some in French, but even in a French translation
Dessay
does not sound especially comfortable in
Antonio Carlos Jobim
's "Waters of March" (here, "Les Eaux de Mars"). Hearing her in
Villa-Lobos
, however, is an unexpected pleasure.
Jaoui
Noguerra
, both actresses as well as singers, have a reasonable feel for the material, although one wonders whether a Brazilian singer might not profitably have been included. Perhaps the album's best feature is
Erato
's studio engineering; the dimensions of the sound are ideal for the music, and the guitar is impressively well recorded. A reasonably satisfying souvenir of the World Cup. ~ James Manheim